Translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha. Orginally published as Seemabaddha/Asha Akankha in Bengali.

Shyamalendu Chatterjee of Limited is a gifted student of Shakespeare who has become successful at marketing ceiling fans produced by a multinational company. The corporate job comes with attendant perks-posh flat and car, servants, parties, intense competition with peers, dangerously compromised morals.

Kamalesh Roychowdhury of Unlimited is a brilliant scientist who joins a government institution soon after his PhD. He is lured by the idea of service to the nation. The salary is low and there are no attractive benefits other than feeding India by making it truly independent in the production of fertilisers.

The stories of both men unfold alongside the troubled responses of Shyamalendu's sister-in-law, Sudarshana, and Kamalesh's new bride, Chandramallika, to the demands the jobs place on them. These two novels from the masterful Sankar pair to provide an extraordinary snapshot of a moment in India's transformation-of the loss of innocence and the consequent disillusionment in a young nation's passage to adulthood.