OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL SUCCOUR & OTHER STORIES

Growing up in suburban Bombay during the post-independence decades, convent-educated Appoo had a child's-eye view of the changes that swept through the country and lived vicariously through most of them. The innocent fun of the earlier years followed by the pessimism of the later ones wrought by an inept socio-political leadership all foresaw an upheaval of sorts, some of it of a personal nature, and which was to have a telling effect on him as a young adult. India saw an unprecedented exodus of students in the eighties and nineties, mostly due to a disappointment with the rigid educational system but also due to a new-found adventurism borne out of economic prosperity.

What did this brain drain have in store for an independent developing country? Did it betray a lack of trust in its own leadership? Would the later years experience a reversal of this drain of intellectual resources? And script a turnaround for a nation that promised much but achieved less?

The author throws open these questions into the forum of his readers with a meaningful effort through real-life childhood stories aided by an exclusive glossary to create an insight of the life of a middle-class citizen in the sociocultural melting pot that is quintessentially India.