Ayyan Mani is very smart, but resentful of his lack of opportunity due to being a Dalit (untouchable). The best he can do is work as secretary at a prestigious scientific institute, but still has to live in the slums. He secretly gets back at the privileged Brahmins he works for by doctoring the quote-of-the-day into something disparaging, or later by staging increasingly-complex schemes to make his 11 year old son Adi seem like a genius. Ayyan’s motivation for what he does with Adi is not solely revenge against the upper class; he’s also just bored and disappointed with his middle-aged routine of life, and the lack of fire in his marriage.

It all starts with Ayyan coaching Adi to ask profound questions in class; then he bribes a two-bit newspaper reporter to put in a fake article about Adi winning some prize; then cheats to help Adi win a high school science competition (personal gripe … the quiz show style competition was all about the history of science, not science…); then arranges for Adi to take the institute’s entrance exam – which is absurd since the test has a 99% failure rate for professional graduate students.

In the midst of this, we have the struggles of the institute director Arvind Acharya, a famous scientist at the end of a distinguished career. Acharya wants to devote the institute’s resources toward a high atmosphere air sample return which could prove the existence of alien microbes (thus proving panspermia); this leads to conflict with the institute’s #2 deputy director, who wants to pursue SETI with the institute’s radio astronomy “Giant Ear” array. Acharya has some of the same relationship boredom as Ayyan and against his better judgement has an affair with a young astrobiologist on his project. I won’t spoil too much, but this brings Acharya down before some clever machinations on the part of Ayyan (and which have to do with Adi) bring him back up.

Some interesting bits on religion. It’s claimed that the “black demons” in the Hindu mythology were really Dalit ancestors. Thus a lot of Dalit’s turned toward Buddhism instead, see Ambedkar. Then there’s Ayyan’s hope for Adi’s upbringing: “the religion of the upper castes could be used in his home for entertainment and education, and nothing more. He wanted Adi to grow up knowing morals, patriotism and the gods. And when the boy turned twenty, may he have the intelligence to abandon them all.”

I really liked this book; it felt unique and I feel like it helped me understand India at least a tiny bit better. One kind of disturbing thing though; both main characters kinda play into the sex-obsessed Indian man stereotype. I don’t know if that’s intentional or not, but just thought I would mention it.

Published June 17, 2026June 17, 2026