Mina Pereira's has never been your average household. Her elder sister Deepa was so brainy she calculated the family tax returns at the age of three and read Solzhenitsyn at eight. Mina's mother, employed in palliative medicine, has recently embarked on her own death-obsessed "State of Emergency" since undergoing surgery. She has become unaccountably and acquisitively passionate about birds' nests and all things ornithological.
Meanwhile Mina's father, who Mother refers to as "Inspector Gadget" has retreated to the basement of the house, ostensibly to rewire and repair foundations. Homelife undergoes a kind of Partition, with Mother virtually roosting above and Dad self-defensively burrowing below. How is a girl to react?
Growing up is hard enough without parents this weird and without Mina's own special physical spare parts - a pair of emotionally sensitive feelers attached, from birth, to her head. Goan family roots have also added Catholic religion, Indian spices and radical politics to the brew.
