India, May 30 -- A desperate businessman plans a family picnic, concealing a plan for a murder-suicide in order to escape ruin. A boy paralysed by aquaphobia signs up for swimming lessons in a pool where a drowned child's spirit seeks company. A husband battered by marital strife plans his wife's demise. A man starved of passion after months without intimacy tests forbidden desires with a seductive masseuse. An executioner revels in his record of hangings, until the world denies him glory. In this striking anthology, the lives of ordi-nary people take unexpected turns; the ordinariness fractures into crime, supernatural dread, tangled love and lust, deception and hard-to- hear truths about life, thus merging the mundane and the macabre. In the process, raw truths about life are revealed. This is a good read for anyone who likes stories that keep them on the edge....