Monkey-man

Usha K.R. has been writing fiction for over two decades, beginning with short fiction. Her short story 'Sepia Tones' won the Katha Award for short fiction in 1995.

Sojourn, her first novel, was published in 1998 and the second, The Chosen, in 2003. A Girl and a River is her third novel.
Usha lives and works in Bangalore.

A brush with a strange creature would change his life forever.

3 January 2000. It is the start of the new millennium. On Ammanagudi Street in Bangalore, a strange creature is spotted. As the beast seizes the imagination of the city, the first people to sight it—Shrinivas Moorty, a teacher in a local college, Pushpa Rani, who works in a call centre, Neela Mary Gopalrao, secretary to an influential man, and Sukhiya Ram, her office boy—are invited to talk about it on Bali Brums’s hugely popular radio show. What was it that they saw? A bat? A malevolent avatar? A sign of the displeasure of the gods? The grotesque mascot of a city that is growing too fast and crumbling too soon? Or merely a monkey that has lost its way?

Using evocative prose that reflects her profound understanding of human nature, Usha K.R. delves into the lives of her characters and their unexpectedly linked destinies in a city that has grown from a ‘Pensioner’s Paradise’ to the frenetic hub of the country’s IT industry

ISBN: 9780143068563
Published by: Penguin Books India