I am not like others. I know that. But I do eat like others. And sleep like them. I also cry…But I will not tell you how I look. It’s for you to imagine any which way you want to. Whatever your imagination is, I look worse than that.‘

So says the little boy who is writing this story, an intelligent, sensitive mind trapped in a tragically misshapen body. He writes about the world outside, seen from the window of his room: a Muharram procession in which a man with green eyes turns to smile at him; birds that perch on the windowsill like friends; boys who call him ‘monkey’ and hold out peanuts… And he writes about the world inside: Appa, who harbours a dream that his son will one day go to school, even as he battles his demons at night; Doddakka, his elder sister, who could never get married; Sannakka, his middle sister, who will only accept a suitor who accepts her little brother; Amma, who sells her gold to pay her husband’s debts; Hosakka, whom he had given up for dead till she mysteriously reappeared; Anna, his elder brother, who defies his father’s wrath to forge a perilous path… Only Tangi, his baby sister, brings some light into the house with her smile.