In the early 1980s, a young Indian boy comes to London to study English Literature. Ananda is shy and sensitive and among his white-faced fellow British students, he feels out of place. Also in London is Ananda's uncle, a debonair, anorexic bachelor in his sixties. Having been made redundant from his job, Rangamama lives in a bedsit in Hampstead, hording plastic bags from Bugdens and torturing himself with thoughts about a promotion he never received. An eccentric virgin and a terminal loner, Rangamama is a foil to what the young Ananda fears he may become. Over the course of one day, the novel traces the movements of Ananda as he leaves his student lodgings and makes his way up to his uncle's house.
