Janak, a mild-mannered tailor in the remote village of Giripul, tucked away in the Himalayas, is besotted with his beautiful but sullen wife. All he wants is her love. Instead, he must deal all day with the village women who come to him with bits of cloth to stitch and who want to share their dreams with him.

Then a dead body is found in the village, and everyone jumps into the fray to solve the murder. From the headman\'s third wife and his Chinese hairdresser mistress, to Shankar the fisherman-turned-sleuth, Lala the teashop owner and Lala\'s ex-contract killer cook, and a travelling magician each one is a murder suspect. Will the tailor of Giripul solve the murder?

Redolent with the smells and sounds of a village buried in another time, this is a novel about an India we rarely read about.