The skilful grooming of a poet is described in 'A Lane in Lucknow', and a senile old nawab finds himself a stranger to an altered world in 'The Taste of Almonds'. In 'Through the Looking Glass' a man losing his sight finds he can get to the heart of all the books in his library by an inexplicable miracle, and in 'Play' the roles an actor enacts are a source of important life lessons.