Once upon a time by the sea, there was a story – and another and another – and some wandered into these pages to make up a city. So meet, among others, a travel guide who falls for a French tourist, a rice merchant with Kollywood dreams, a god whose editor proves elusive, a portly musical lawyer caught in a noir plot, and a man in search of family in the Great Madras Flood. Find yourself, among other places, in Town, at that gastronomic oxymoron, the Udipi cafe, in Velachery, looking for pot or maybe for love, on Kaanum Pongal day all across Madras, even in a fast car on East Coast Road, fleeing the city – till it lures you back with its lovely lies. It’s all here: the salt in the breeze, the eternal summer, the swing of the sea. It’s Madras on your mind.