Sriram is twenty. As a mark of his coming of his age grandmother allows him the pass-book to his savings in the local bank, but Sriram is growing up in other ways, too, and an enchanting and unpredictable girl leads him into the entourage of Mahatma Gandhi. Sriram's evolution into manhood is, for him, a strange and bewildering process. Bharati, the girl he worships, is witty, infuriating, capable and, wonder of wonders, condescending to the moonstruck Sriram. His first loyalty, though, is to the Mahatma, a saint blessed with disconcerting common sense, a man whose tragedy is that he is so much greater than his followers. Sriram is inspired by Gandhi, but he is too easily influenced by glamorous patriots of the type of Jagadish, a terrorist. It is a table of remarkable insight into the upsurge of Indian nationalism as witnessed through the eyes and hearts of Sriram and Bharati, and told with all the genius and compassion we have come to expect from R K Narayan.