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The Patna Manual Of Style
Go to any party, in any country, on any moonlit terrace of the world, the best dressed man is always the one from Patna. In these nine interlinked stories we meet the not so quintessential Patna man-Hriday Thakur, Literature junkie, aspiring writer, inveterate lover of women and rain, Jishnu da, his acquaintance from Delhi University, who is now an importer of blondes Samuel Crown, the fastidious proofreader who mentors Hriday and instils in him an irrevocable love for the art of book-making, the parade of women in Hridays life: austere, doe-eyed Charulata, love of his youth, the one who got away, Chitrangada, his wife, who works hard to be accepted in his world of books, art, politics and activism, the beautiful Anjali Singh Nalwa, ex-flame who is now a fiery, controversial novelist, Imogen Burns, the intrepid chronicler of graveyards, Sadaf Khan Abdali, who loves the smell of listerine early in the morning and Sophia Loren , dream girl of many schoolboys, now a mother of two. Unsentimental to a fault, Siddharth Chowdhurys stories deal with relationships that are intimate and sensuous and sometimes hard to define, taken together, they are an affectionate nod to an idealist generation, insulated in a world of publishing, academia, gin-soaked brunches and Marxist philosophy.