Kushank Purandare is a young writer living off the goodwill ofa host of friends, relatives, and lovers while he waits to gainrecognition for his work. He is witness to their struggle as modernIndians to hold on to a semblance of truth and sanity in the faceof alienation, squalor, violence, and loss of hope. Nagarkar'sexplosive style and irreverent approach caused an equally explosive reaction when Seven Sixes was first published in 1974. Critics have struggled to reconcile its apparent nihilism with its underlying sense of optimism.