Full-cast dramatisation by Ayeesha Menon of Rohinton Mistry's best-selling novel set in India made for BBC Radio 4.
Two tailors - uncle and nephew, Ishvar and Om - come to the city to escape from the caste violence in their native village. They are employed by a Parsi woman, Dina Dalal who runs a sweatshop from her apartment and is struggling to preserve her independence. She has a lodger too, a reluctant student, Maneck, from the mountains. As their initial suspicion of each other turns to friendship and then love, their lives take dramatic and often shocking turns against a backdrop of India in crisis, during “the Emergency” of the mid-1970s, a period marked by huge political unrest and human rights violations. A comedy, a tragedy, a story of the triumph of the human spirit under inhuman conditions.
Starring Shernaz Patel, Anand Tiwari, Kenneth Desai, Neil Bhoopalam & Rajit Kapur. Music, Sacha Puttnam; Sound Design, Steve Bond; Produced by Nadir Khan; Directed & Executive Produced by John Scott Dryden.