Sagarika Ghose's book is about the irrelevant Indians - the English speaking privileged few who have controlled post-Independence India - giving ground to a new Indian order. She explores modern day India through the eyes of several characters, the "gin drinkers" of the book's title. Uma is the Oxford graduate returned to Delhi with the customary English beau in tow. Uma's father, Shantam, the civil servant, and her aristocratic mother Anusya. Addicted to gin and valium Anusya represents the decay of the English-speaking literate Bengali class - now seemingly quite out of place in the modern India.

Madhavi, the American-educated academic escaping from a cold and loveless marriage that was turned upside-down with the birth of her young daughter, Mira. Angling for the top post at the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation she competes with her former lover Dhru. He is now in a relationship with her former best friend, Zahra. Ghose centers the tale around a lecture at the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation. The retirement of Pamela Sen, the aging mentor of Madhavi, sets the latter and Dhru directly in competition for Pamela's job. The contest reverberates with sexual tension from their previous aborted love affair. Unused to India's ways, Madhavi has to be rescued in the park by middle-class revolutionary, Deekay, who develops an instant rapport for baby Mira and a deep attraction to Madhavi.

Ghose adds a little spice to the tale with the mysterious disappearance of rare first edition books. Valuable books about India classical dance from the home of Miss Visraram Bharatnatyan, teacher and landlady to Kamini, Deekay's love interest prior to the arrival of Madhavi. Books also disappear from the home of the Minister of State, father of Jaspreet and from Dhru's house. The thefts by the 'Kitab Chor' gang worry the group of young Indians comprising of Uma's friends, until the entrance of revolutionary Jai Prakash with his powerful ideas.

Jai Prakash is a Dalit and represents the changing order in India. Unlike Uma, Madhavi, Dhru and the other "gin drinkers", he is uneducated and yet gains admiration from all of Uma's friends and ultimately the top job too. Mrs Khurana, a Punjabi lady whom Uma first befriends in Oxford, is also a representation of the new "working class" in India. Although Mrs Khurana's displacement from Oxford to Delhi and her metamorphosis into a rich, fashion-shop owning merchant is a little hard to believe, Ghose probably meant her to be an allusion to the changes in India's class structure.

So too is the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation lecture - given by the aging Ikram Gilchrist - which acts as a focal point to the changing order. Despite the great oratory style of the lecture and Gilchrist's fleeting connection with Uma's mother Ansuya, one senses that this is the "final nail in the coffin" for the educated "gin drinkers".

If, like me, you miss many of the political points that Ghose is trying to make, the rest of tale is still enjoyable enough. Ghose's novel is rich in humour. We wonder why Uma's boyfriend Sam - son of a 1960's "flower power" mother - refuses to sleep with Uma? Is he conversely confined by his hippy upbringing or does he not love Uma enough?

Sagarika Ghose, who was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, gives the reader a glimpse of life among the rich and educated elite India and how the more dynamic and aggressive working population now threaten their way of life. Will this elite group continue to fade way, drowning their troubles in gin we wonder? The final denouement matters little, because by this time you are too busy soaking up the rich array of characters that Ghose has created.

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