I felt that this story of three generations of a punjabi family from pre independance india to Indira Gandhi's emergency could have been a great novel , an epic saga of the changing times with each character vying for centre place but instead i thought it was more of a hurried chronicle of the family history. i found the writing a bit too detached to start with. As soon as one started getting more personal with the characters , the story moved on . The last phase , ' bombay' was the most enjoyable to read with the pace picking up quite a bit and also the writing was smoothed out as if the author finally settled down into the right rhythm. I started to appreciate the authors penmanship in the last few chapters of the book when sadly it was time to end it.