This is the story of an achiever who, right from the time he trudges to school carrying a heavy bag, asks several questions about the world and his role in it. He makes it to a prestigious engineering institute in Gujarat and then to Ireland and France for higher studies. He falls in love first with an Indian girl and then with a foreigner. As he struggles with the restrictions of culture, he wonders why an individual's happiness has to be submerged to uphold tradition. In all this, he holds a mirror to Indian society, wondering how a country can progress in this age of globalisation if it clings so strongly to age-old mores. These questions will find resonance in readers' own lives, making this much more than the gripping story of one young man's coming of age in the new millennium.