A young woman with a tragic past, a photographer with a violent streak, three women with winter in their hair and a pilgrimage long time coming, a tour guide coming to terms with his homosexuality when he finds himself attracted to a boy working in tea stall, and the owner of tea stall who sings songs about melancholic earth and bright paddy fields; these people brush one another over course of five days in a temple town. Surrounded by rotting flowers, discarded fruits and sea air, they come face to face with the dark spot from their past and are forced to confront it. 
 Roy's prose is honest, brilliant and provocative. The violence is visceral and those odd tender moments, gentle. The characters struggle to maintain a semblance of normalcy while touring the town, their conflicts hiding below the grime of sullied streets. The town itself is a character, an instigator and reveals its seedy belly when no one is looking. Roy nails the ambiance of a typical temple town - its smell, the way the air feels, the people and the moving population that leaves a bit of it in the shores and takes something away when they leave. 
 What starts as a stellar narration slows down in the middle. The three elderly women become a caricature of their earlier selves. Intertwining lives of these characters becomes predictable. Some anecdotes are pointless as they offer no layer to the characters. And this is the reason why the book started off as an obvious five star read and reduced to two/three. 
 After half way through the book, I continued just to finish it. Though I didn't enjoy the second half as much as the first, Roy's writing is simply marvelous.