Book excerpt: Three Women. Three independent stories of how broken people see love. In the Sky of a Million Stars—For an introverted city-lad like Abheer, life in her dadi maa’s village, Kainat is exile. The only respite from boredom is looking at Fatima in the paddy fields from his bedside window every morning. But the poor girl is cursed, says dadi maa. Any silly superstition hurting Fatima is blasphemous to the things she makes Abheer feel. What is this curse? What shall be the fate of a friendship that blooms in its shadow? A Wistful Woman’s Chronicle—At 37, the sensual, immoral Mridula pleads herself a victim of the most horrible things a woman can face, which stem from two men in her past. Maybe she would not have loved and looted hundreds of men otherwise. Or maybe not. If these two men die, her past will stop haunting her. Only then can she truly discover who she is. On this killing spree, she meets a young, lively seventeen-year-old Rishi, and she is tempted to befriend him. Is this temptation limited to looting him, or will the destruction be deeper? What is Mridula’s story? What will this friendship cost Rishi? Fireflies—Adeeba is a lesbian. Why else should she have to leave her village Rohila, lose Ammi or her little sister Sabeena. If she didn’t love Bhoomi, she didn’t have to run her away from that nasty ritual. Sabeena didn’t have to lose her leg; Bhoomi her memory. After all, no one had saved Adeeba from that. But if she is a lesbian, why is love sprouting inside her for Veer? How can she love both of them, when her body can love only one? And how differently? How far can we go to make ourselves feel loved and understood?