Firozsha Baag is an apartment building in Bombay. Its ceilings need plastering and some of the toilets leak appallingly, but its residents are far from desperate, though sometimes contentious and unforgiving. In these witty, poignant, and pugnent stories, Rohinton Mistry charts the intersecting lives of Firozsha Baag, yielding a delightful collective portrait of a middle-class Indian community poised between the old ways and the new.

Here is Rustomji the Curmudgeon, who is willing to let his apartment crumble around his ears to spite his neighbors. Here is the aging ayah Jaakaylee, who sees ghosts, and the thuggish Pesi, who tries to see up girls' skirts with the aid of his powerful flashlight. Their stories, told with playfulness and compassion, make Swimming Lessons an intoxicating literary experience, as elegantly composted as a classic raga and as intesely flavored as a lamb korma.

Contents:

• Auspicious Occasion
• One Sunday
• The Ghost of Firozsha Baag
• Condolence Visit
• The Collectors
• Of White Hairs and Cricket
• The Paying Guests
• Squatter
• Lend Me Your Light
• Exercisers
• Swimming Lessons