Jai loves detective shows on TV, and dreams of being one. He lives in a small one-room house in a slum near several high-rise buildings on the fringe of a huge Indian metropolis. When his school friend Bahadur is the first of many children to go missing, Jai, along with his friends Pari and Faiz starts questioning everyone connected.
The police are indifferent, and as more children go missing, people start blaming each other. Jai and friends take a trip on the purple metro line to the city center to enquire at a shelter, and also train a dog to help them track.
Eventually, a series of events leads to a victim close to home, as Jai’s older sister Runu goes missing. This galvanizes the whole community, and a witness comes forward and identifies a man named Kumar who, under torture from the police, confesses to the kidnappings. The community believes he does the kidnappings under behest of a rich lady he works for, but nothing comes of that.
The kidnappings stop, but Jai’s family life collapses. His mother seldom talks, his father becomes a drunk, and his friends’ families move away. He stops watching TV, having lost all faith in “detectiving”.
An excellent, well-written book which starts off much like poverty porn, but is actually focused on the thought-process, ingenuity and infinite fortitude of the main characters. Though the end is deeply depressing, it is inevitable and all too realistic. An excellent read.