His jaw lies here, but he is no more.

He was not his bones turned to ash.

He was not his flesh melted away.'

At the first step of a promising career, Ranchor returns home to face the sobering reality of his father's demise. A railway employee prevents a young man's desperate attempt at suicide. Elsewhere, a doctor faces the harrowing prospect of facilitating euthanasia for a friend. In an idyllic city, Keshav's life is slowly engulfed by a terminal illness, and the spectre of death looms large.

Written in searing prose, these stories by debut author Himanshu Asnani are a rich portrait of lives that mirror countless others. Probing and often edifying, they capture the pathos of life while offering succour to those traversing similar paths – a reminder of fiction's singular ability to lay bare life's fundamental questions.