Book excerpt: ‘To say that, in fact, writing has been no more than a way of talking about the body and nothing but the body...’ Lost to the meaning of her life, a foreign writer arrives in Delhi seeking the wordless company of strangers. Delhi is an exploded sun, bleeding everywhere its untrammelled chaos: the feral dampness of bus fumes; the suicidal rush of scooters; the autorickshaw seats impregnated with thousands of odours—nauseous accretions of India’s muddy human tide. The men with their stinking bidis rule as masters and the women remain walled in by centuries of tradition. The author, infatuated by a quiet lady on the street, begins to seek the untamed and undiscovered country that lies below her sari, the delicate throbbing hidden beneath her silence. As she rediscovers her voice and the ability to write a story, and as monsoon arrives, low and heavy-bellied, washing away the concrete barricades of custom, a secret encounter in a music store opens up an ancient darwaza of forbidden pleasures. Bursting with sharp irreverence, Indian Tango is a story of fleshly transgression and unlikely liberation in the patriachopolis of New Delhi.