In these eleven intersecting stories, Rohinton Mistry opens our eyes and our hearts to the rich, complex patterns of life inside this Bombay apartment building. The occupants - from Jaakaylee, the ghost-seer, through Najamai, the only owner of a refrigerator in Firozsha Baag, to Rustomji the Curmudgeon and Kersi, the young boy whose life threads through the book - all express the tensions between the past and the present, between the old world and the new.