Oindrila Mukherjee’s work has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Salon, The Colorado Review, South Carolina Review, The Oxford Anthology of Bengali Literature and elsewhere. At present she is a contributing editor for Aster(ix). She is a regular contributor to Scroll.in, where she writes a book series called Bottom Shelf.
<p>"The Dream Builders is the story of one summer in a fictional city in India, told from the point of view of ten different characters and bookended by Maneka, a Creative Writing professor in the United States who returns to the country after six years away. In her absence, India has changed drastically. Maneka finds herself in the beguiling, new, Americanized city of Hrishipur, nicknamed Millennium City and known for its upscale malls, headquarters of global corporations, and booming real estate developments. What she doesn’t realize, however, is that in Hrishipur, nothing is as it appears.</p><p>Alongside Maneka, we also meet the immaculately groomed Ramona, her ambitious husband, their moonlighting chauffeur, a facialist at a posh spa, an entrepreneurial single mother, Maneka’s aging father, his young live-in maid, an irreverent photographer, and a crippled electrician. All summer, as the temperature soars to record highs, the longings and resentments of the people of Hrishipur simmer until they come to a boil, culminating in a tragedy no one saw coming."</p>
