Opens in Bombay in the late 1970s, with the narrator coming from New York and being entranced by the city's underworld-- particularly an opium den with a brothel attached to it. Decades pass to reveal a harder Bombay, where opium has given way to Pakistani heroin, but sex is still the primary recreation. Finally, the narrator returns in 2004 to find a different Bombay-- one where those he knew are almost gone, but where his passion for the people and the city lives.