Ayyan Mani works in the Institute of Theory and Research as a personal assistant to a brilliant, insufferable astronomer, Arvind Acharya, who is obsessed with his theory about microscopic aliens falling to earth. Mani is one of the thousands of men stranded in the slums of Mumbai, but ever the opportunist, Mani is also an astute observer and sly eavesdropper, and he makes sure he knows everything that is going on in the Institute, listening in on private conversations, and opening, reading and resealing confidential couriered letters.
Partly to entertain himself, partly to cheer up his once-animated but now work-worn wife, partly to bolster his ten-year-old son's confidence, Mani weaves an outrageous fiction around the boy—a fiction that captures the interest of his superiors at the Institute and threatens to set into motion an unstoppable and disastrous chain of events. And Mani, struggling to keep his own dreams alive, sees opportunity in everything.
