Thackeray Mansion

Shanker, the naive and good-hearted young man whose story began in Chowringhee, is jobless again and has nowhere to live. After a hard search he lands a post as manager of Thackeray Mansion, a once-grand and now decaying building on Scudder Street, in one of the smartest quarters of the city.

From this post Shanker watches the people who live and work in the building, and he tells their stories with a sharp eye and a kind ear. Philip sahib's wife vanishes without explanation. Poppy Biswas, who has plenty of spirit, and the cantankerous Baradaprasanna each deliver comic outpourings. Sulekha Sen, a seductive woman, reinvents herself as the respectable Seema Chatterjee. Dorothy Watts nurses a deep love for Rabindranath Tagore.

Each resident's tale opens onto another, so the novel feels like a building of many doors, with a different life behind each. The mood moves between joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, despair and hope, as Shanker's own troubles unfold among his neighbours' dramas.