Ma isn’t the novel’s only protagonist. Majumdar alternates between her and Boomba, a direly poor young man living in a shelter that Ma manages. He has come to Kolkata from his flooded rural village to establish a foothold for his parents and toddler brother, Robi, whom Boomba has cared for as if he were his own child. On arriving in the city, Boomba is astounded by its wealth. Even as Ma worries that she can’t survive there, stealing food donations from the shelter to feed her family, Boomba marvels at the houses with “furniture in the doorway simply for storing shoes.”