The novel is set in the heart of Kamathipura’s commercial sex industry. File pic

There’s a smell of the the city’s underbelly that overtakes the reader as one flips through the book. How did that happen?
This is a story of Mumbai/ Bombay’s red light district slowly dissolving alongside a hijra’s body, which is letting her down, rebelling against her, and in the process revealing to her some hard truths that she does not want to face. So the underbelly is not just a physical space, it is also the unheard, unloved part of a human being.