Milk Teeth

by Amrita Mahale

Childhood allies Ira Kamat and Kartik Kini meet on the terrace of their building in Matunga, Mumbai. A meeting is in progress to decide the fate of the establishment and its residents. And the zeitgeist of the 1990s appears to have touched everyone and everything around them.

Ira is now a journalist on the civic beat, unearthing stories of corruption and indolence, and trying to push back memories of a lost love. Kartik works a corporate job with an MNC, and leads a secret, agonising, exhilarating second life. Between and around them throbs the living, beating heart of Mumbai, city of heaving inequities and limitless dreams.

Milk Teeth is subtle, incisive, unputdownable.

Genres: Fiction, India, Indian Literature, Contemporary, LGBT, Romance, Literary Fiction

287 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 22, 2018

About the author

Amrita Mahale was born in Mumbai and grew up in five cities across India. Milk Teeth, her first novel, was published to widespread acclaim in 2018 and was longlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature and shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award for Fiction. Her second novel, Real Life, was published by Penguin Random House India in July 2025. Amrita was trained as an aerospace engineer at IIT Bombay and Stanford University.

Reviews

[Ameya Joshi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I brought this book based on a extract from a chapter on the online portal scroll.com. To be honest, I didn't even read the whole extract - I read a part of it, liked it so much and thought to myself - this is a book I'm going to read in its entirety anyway, so why 'spoil it'. This is a familiar feeling for me (as it is for most readers or watchers of movies or eaters of fine meals I assume) where quite often even before you start, you've built certain expectations in your mind. And it is then so disappointing to have to say (as I often have) that "I really wanted to like this, but....".

But but but... it is even nicer to be proven right, when the cookie tastes just as delectable & heavenly as it looks and smells. When the book is as wonderful as you had expected (actually 'wanted' is the more appropriate word) it to be and you turn the last page, put it back into the dust jacket which you'd carefully put away while you were reading (everyone does that no?) totally satiated. Even more so when it's a newly released, debut novel which no one 'recommended', where you know that the expectations were based on some weird sense of your own intuition and not on anyone else's. Amrita Mahale's Milk Teeth is all of that, and everything more which I've not been able to articulate.

I read this cover to cover - starting Saturday night after dinner and because it was so good, I kept reading till I finished into the wee hours just so the spell wouldn't be broken. Two thirds of the way through (it's a three part book) my wife asked me "But what is it about and why is it called Milk Teeth?" and I found myself struggling to answer at that point. Is it a romance set in Mumbai of the late 90's - almost with candyfloss stereotypes from every rom-com worth its salt - a spunky female protagonist who follows her heart and a serious male protagonist who follows his head? But no, while that's the skeleton it's about so much more and it'd be unfair to reduce it to that. Is it about the ubiquitous Mumbai story we still continue to hear every day 20 years into the future from the world of Ira & Kartik - a building (finally) going in for redevelopment (the opening pages made me think of Arvind Adiga's Last Man in the Tower)? Well, again - not really.

I suppose the best I can come up with is that it is just about Mumbai, about growing up with and in the then Bombay - of its people, their homes and their relationships and how the manic metropolis envelopes all of them in its all-pervasive ether and touches them, impacts them and changes them in ways they don't realise and in ways they can't control.

Milk Teeth takes its time to set the context, introducing us to characters in the aforementioned apartment building, their families, their histories and so on and while your interest is always piqued it is not quite clear where the book is headed until a breathless denouement - where it suddenly picks up speed as the traffic clears - which at least I for one didn't see coming. Ending a story is so difficult (think all the Bollywood movies with a great first half) and as the stack of pages under my right thumb kept going down I wondered how would this be wrapped up so quickly? Is this one of those post-modern works with no ending at all - a slice-of-life tale where plot structure, ending and closure is for 'the bourgies'? Or is there going to be a sequel (which I find quite annoying)? But it's wrapped up most adroitly- telling the tale with what needed to be told, leaving you the hint of a tease to let your imagination wander and enough to think about.

Mahale's true gift is to take familiar environments and people ('personas' to stretch the MBA metaphor we started in the book) and let us re-look them with a new gaze within this story, while not dissecting them dispassionately like an academic would do to a frog. They are all around us - families, friends, neighbours, colleagues, gallis, localities, even the way bedrooms are organized and balconies are (were?) converted into the study room for kids. Play the 'think of which acquaintance of you does this character remind you of' with yourself through this book (a game Kartik could have come up with). These people especially were always familiar to us, who we always knew may have had warts hidden away but now we can see them and therefore we must reconcile ourselves to living with this new normal. Dynamics of class, caste, religion, sexuality and more come up and intertwine which each other before they're swept underneath the carpet again - but the lump is now forever visible much like the warp on the nice notebook of Ira's which met with the rains. I did feel I learnt more about a city in which I've grown up and lived in for most of my life. Recommended for everyone, but especially to those who've grown up in Mumbai to renew an acquaintance with pre-cell-phone city preserved now only by nostalgia and photographs.

PS : I also loved that there was no unnecessary exposition around so many details and specifics - the dishes, the locations, the references, the lingo - and that may be purely selfish here because it allowed me to feel (smugly enough I'm sure) like I'm in on the inside joke :-) But it makes the story feel so much more honest and unpretentious. And some of the text made me pause and take screenshots - one of those books which it is worth reading on a Kindle because it would have let you highlight so many lovely paragraphs and lines.

[Bharath · Rating 1 out of 5]

I felt good about the book just after I started on it. The descriptions of life in Mumbai felt very authentic. As the story moved on though, any hopes that this would be a worthwhile read very quickly receded.

A set of families living in ‘Asha Niwas’ in Matunga debate how to best handle redevelopment negotiations with potential builders (these parts of the book are well written). The Kamat & Kini families are part of the building since long. Ira Kamat and Karthik Kini have been friends since childhood, and are at a point where they have the chance to relook at their relationship. Ira had just come out of a relationship with Kaiz, which broke when he moves to the US for higher studies. But hey – he is back as well, and now Ira needs to decide what the future holds for her.

This is a book where there is almost no real character development. It feels as if the author probably decided on a set of political views, dialogues and lame philosophies which the characters need to mouth and then worked on a story which made that possible. At no point did I see any semblance of authenticity in the character development, and it comes across as very pretentious. Even If I were to overlook the simplistic & immature philosophies, the story is like listening to a listless flat monotone which gets progressively worse. Each section of the book is much worse than the previous one.

Well, this was my worst read of the year, and probably for much of the previous years as well, so it can only get better from here.

[Prerna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Five months into the year, I realised that I haven't read any Indian fiction yet and so I picked up this book. Gods I don't believe in, please save me from this 'woke' melodrama. The writing was so milquetoast and even parts of the book that were slightly intriguing were unbearable because of the drama.

And listen, you're not going to get any points for lgbtq representation if your lgbtq character is a misogynistic creeper. Now I know that there are queer misogynistic creepers out there. I just don't know what the author was trying to get at within this book, because clearly we were supposed to feel compassion for the characters, but all I feel is indifference. I don't care what happens to these characters and that's one of the worst things anyone can say about a book.

[Resh (The Book Satchel) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone who loves Mumbai will love the book. It explores relationships, friendship and the changing face of a city when urbanization takes over and communal disharmony sprouts up. The attention to detail is amazing. Definitely an excellent debut.

Much thanks to Westland for a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

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[Abhishek Rao · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first stumbled across Amrita Mahale’s writing on her blog in 2008. I was 18, she 23, a graduate student at Stanford after a year of consulting at BCG and four years of aerospace engineering at IIT Bombay. I devoured her blog in a single afternoon and felt an instant connection to her impostor syndrome and identity crisis of being a writer trapped in a rocket scientist’s life. “I am not bad at this, just a misfit. It’s not emptiness. It’s just a little vacuum. Can be filled.” I marvelled at how similar our souls were, with her general moods of ambition and epiphany, nostalgia and melancholy. But mostly, I was mesmerised by how she could move me with her words, the poetry in her language, the beauty in her metaphors. “Hinged on an absurd notion / Boomerang in perpetual motion; / Come closer, ricochet, / But never, never go away.” Several zigzags in California later, she returned to India, quit her job, and started writing full-time. In 2018, Milk Teeth was published: Amrita Mahale’s debut novel, that I had awaited for 10 years.

Milk Teeth is the story of the lives and loves of two childhood friends Ira Kamat and Kartik Kini who grow up in the same building in Matunga, and through them, is the story of a changing middle class and a changing Bombay in the ‘90s. Ira is now a journalist on the civic beat, unearthing stories of corruption and indolence. Kartik has just returned home to Matunga, having lived most of his adult life away and now works as a management consultant at an MNC. Their parents decide to arrange a marriage between them, but their engagement faces challenges from Ira’s memories of a lost love for Kaiz, and from Kartik’s coming to terms with his sexuality. It is a coming-of-age novel set against the backdrop of redevelopment, liberalisation, and the 1992 communal riots.

It is a character-driven novel with most of it tracing the evolution of Ira and Kartik from children to adults, and sculpting the personalities of their families, their neighbours, and Kaiz. The city of Bombay is a prominent character with its rains, its local trains, its Udupi restaurants and architecture, and scenes at Malabar Hill and Nariman Point, at Colaba and King’s Circle. I could connect with the characters in no time, having grown up with several Goud Saraswat Brahmin friends and clued into their customs. The setting seemed familiar, as it will to every urban middle-class Indian, with friends and mothers spending afternoons in each other’s houses, money plants growing in empty bottles of imported whisky, and the ever-expanding class and communal divides in our cities. Pleasantly, this is the first Indian novel I have read that does not shy away from using Indian English phrases without translations or explanations. Bambaiyya like are you taking my phirki?, jhol, buddhi-ka-baal, classroom is not a fish market, brun maska, and havala sounded like music to my ears. There are also some gems, like when Mahale describes goosebumps as “poetry in Braille”, or my favourite: “words spun into cotton candy, sweet on the senses, only to vanish leaving no more than some grains of sugar.”

Milk Teeth is fairly well-written but lacks in scope and ambition. I would have loved for the plot to be thicker, with more layers. Amrita Mahale’s personality and personal journey are far more fascinating than her characters’. She could have achieved so much more with her debut. And I say this not to take away from her novel, but because I have experienced the beauty and brilliance she is capable of. One of Kartik’s anxieties in the novel is that he has peaked early in life: a gifted student and quizzer who went to the best universities in India, but ended up in a boring corporate job with a bad manager, Kartik thinks the star of model students tends to fade after adolescence. Amrita Mahale once enquired on her blog: “Can you use up a lifetime’s supply of luck in three months?” Hopefully, this debut is just Mahale cutting her milk teeth, and her best is still before her and not behind her. Hopefully, she moves on to bigger things, in her words, “bag and baggage in tow. Okay, only her bags. Let’s hope that the baggage went out with the previous year.” Milk Teeth is not the best novel I have read, but mine is not the opinion you should be seeking.

And having said all of that, I’d like to thank Amrita for being a role model like no other. For continuing to be a role model like no other. For her blog. For her TED Talk. For her book. For all of her future books. For telling 18-year-old me that it is okay to feel like a misfit if it compels you to express yourself for who you really are. For going against the grain. For pursuing her dream. For showing me that you can write a novel if you pour your heart and head into it. Thank you.

“Sometimes, it just doesn’t add up.
Because it adds up to much much more.”

[Vanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Bombay’ is not merely the former appellation of the present ‘Mumbai’. It is a word that has the ability to ignite a strange mesh of emotions — passion, love, nostalgia, and anger that stems from having no control over one’s own history and as a result, one���s future too. Where we live is not merely a piece of geographic detail in a mass of other surplus information that surrounds us at all times; it’s integral to who we are, how we perceive ourselves and even shapes the dreams and hopes that seep into our subconscious as we live and breathe the city and its minutiae.

Amrita Mahale’s debut novel Milk Teeth explores in arresting detail the Bombay of 90s, and then flitting to an idyllic past wistfully to ruminate on the Bombay that was and would never be again post the liberalisation of the Indian economy. At the centre of this poetic ode to Bombay are Ira Kamat and Kartik Kini, childhood friends living in the same residential building in Matunga.

Ira is a journalist enthusiastically working on stories of the city bringing to light the negligence of the institutions that are responsible for its gradual decay. On the other hand, Kartik is back in Mumbai after an interlude of 13 years, employed in a consulting company that pays him handsomely in exchange for soul-crushing work. The Kamat’s and Kini’s are friends with incongruous principles living in a building whose landlord wants to oust the tenants, scrap away the building and construct in its place one of those modern apartment complexes with anglicised names that are, at best, misnomers and at worst, hollow promise of entry into the elite club for when you live in Bombay only two things matter - “dress and address”.

Ira is 28, an age that’s tipping over the marriageable limit for girls in most Indian communities while Kartik is 30 and unmarried too. The Kini’s decide that the daughter of Kamat’s is their best option as both they know her since her early days and Kartik should have no problem in rekindling their old friendship, they assume. This alliance is pushed zealously into effectuation, however, for reasons that run deeper than what meets the eye. But at the crux of this seemingly sweet matchmaking which has potential of blooming into a possible love story are lies, deception and conflict.

Mahale’s Milk Teeth is a promising debut with an elegiac tone that remembers Bombay of a bygone era. It is brimming with descriptions that would make you feel like every scene is unfolding right in front of your eyes. It has craft, and a pulsating story that fetters the changing face of the city to the characters’ inner lives as they grapple with sinful desire, forbidden love, broken hearts and on top of it, a dire helplessness of being mere bystanders as moments unfold to form history.

[Helly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful - breezy novel

[Apoorva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to come!

[Chandana Venkatayogi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this book only because it was on kindle unlimited and I was too lazy to pick my next book. Only good thing is that I could finish it off in a day. This is the kind of a book, which you can skim and scan and get away reading he first sentence of every paragraph and you are not missing out on much. The writing is not great or gripping. The treatment of characters is cliched. Very boring.

[Sagar Chamoli · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading positive reviews i thought of reading this book and was expecting it to be a good one. But i was disappointed and did not found this to be engaging enough. There were many instances we're i felt that author is dragging it unnecessary. For some reason i just couldn't connect with the book and completed it for the sake of completing. Overall, not recommended.

[Maruti Naik · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a jaffer of a novel; absolutely brilliant for a first time author. Loved the way she makes the city a central character in her book, embracing it with all its fears, hopes, prejudices, smells (do read her take on the smell of the sea), its chaos and the constant struggle to find one’s own voice within it. I am not much of a book reviewer, but i must say that this is a novel with poetry all over.

After a very long time, i started taking notes as i read, scribbling lines that i liked in no particular order. Just thought of an experiment; the attempt is to club these lines into paragraphs that hopefully bring out the poetry in her work. If the attempt succeeds, its all credit to her craft; if it fails, its purely on my accord.

So here goes…

a light sleeper at best - mumbai,
Lord Falkland —a blindfolded monkey holding the scales of justice,
new money shouts, old money whispers,
no imagination, no soul

the droning whoosh of the ceiling fan,
otherwise the room empty enough for the sounds of the street to pour in,
the irani cafe was enclosed within brackets of a city,
a part of it but also an island, islands within an island

like a pair of house slippers,
of his body entwined with hers like freshly washed laundry,
questions like fibre to let him spinning yarn,
goosebumps, rising and begging to be touched poetry in braille

hope for happiness,
like naphthalene balls vanishing softly,
a hooded mistrust he was now comfortable uncloaking,
hate shedding its milk teeth

private nicknames and inside jokes, a deep companionship,
another nakedness to get familiar with,
love once earned had to be sustained,
it had to be sheltered from the glare of truth.

some people unwilling to be followers,
even in declarations of love,
the first coat of paint shows,
the crinkled skin over a cup of cooling tea,
just different shades of misery.

this pillar of dust separated them,
an injured muscle which gives trouble from time to time,
no choice, they call this the spirit of Bombay,
like leaving a perfume bottle open to smell it.

you only begin to make sense under the lingering gaze of another,
is romance only allowed when it is used to sell things,
parked cars have pinched the streets,
each beam was a skinny brown atlas holding up the sky.

how should our society be,
brushing of the dust, in order to excavate, what remains,
of our friendship,
refuse that water has obscured, like love does

Do read…

[Selva · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of a preamble here: Reading for me has sort of become like reading a textbook of your favorite subject in college. Yeah, you enjoy it - the learning part of it but at the end of the day, you just want to get through it. Most books have become like that. I start with a lot of interest, then depending on the writing the interest is sustained; some books rally around in the last 30% and have a terrific ending - the 5 starrers, that I relish. Else, I just want to finish the book.
A long-winded preamble coz I didn't expect much from this book - the kindle copy came free during Diwali for Amazon prime members-but It kept me hooked throughout and I wanted to return to it all the time in the midst of my other distractions. It is about two people- Kartik and Ira - who grow up in the same building in Matunga in Mumbai and then they go their separate ways, a reunion happens and what happens between them in the end forms the story. Also what happens in the in-between years forms the meat of the story and that is what lends the story its heft. Saying that Mumbai/Bombay is a character in a novel is almost a cliche. A lot of ppl say that about a lot of books. But in this book, it is true. That is one of the charms of this book. For a debut, the writing is very, very good. I liked the perspective of the author on many things and it had many interesting quotes. I liked the character sketches of all the involved people too. Very few things rang false in the entire narrative.
so why not 5 stars? Till about 60% of the novel, I thought it was going to end up like a great experience..like Margaret Atwood's Cat's eye(It is kind of similar in many aspects) but the author made it plot-oriented in the later 30%-40% of the book. That left me kind of disappointed.
Otherwise, a really good one. Recommended.

[Nayonika Roy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating 2.5

This book is supposed to have LGBTQI+ representation. Well, it did have it, but not in a way that I would have expected. Some things that I liked:

1. The portrayal of Mumbai. It's dreamy, the descriptions are full of culture.
2. The concept of it being set in the 1990s, focusing on the violence during Jama Masjid demolition. Though, much better work could have been done with that.

Things that did not work for me:
1. The writing. At places, I just felt that it is dragging and even if I skip a paragraph (or a page or two) there is nothing important that will happen.
2. The characters. I guess I was supposed to feel compassion for the characters (especially with Gay representation). On the other hand, I just felt anger and remorse. The male characters are highly misogynistic. The female characters are strong but rarely act strong.

The novel is so dramatic that it reminded me of Ekta Kapoor serials!!

[Arti Deshpande · Rating 1 out of 5]

The dumbest book I have read with no story, no soul - just keeps rambling on with no content and introducing twists that make no sense and are completely forced.

[Hamsini · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading it and I just couldn't stop - the only reason I took a day to finish it was that life came between me and the book. This book is one long love letter to Bombay - scars et al - I just loved and totally dug the descriptions of matunga, fort, the Udupi restaurants and the Irani cafes. I loved the descriptions of the 'thinking' classes and the contrasting descriptions against ira's own middle-class, Konkani family. Ira and Kartik are going to live in my head for a long long time to come. It is such a readable book with earthy prose on 90s Indian childhoods, stirring, sweet chapters on first romances and dating in the pre-tinder era and of this unmistakably Indian and hodge-podgy concept called 'family friendships'. Amrita Mahale, through telling writing of prejudices, fault lines and hypocrisy of the Indian middle class (just before and just after liberalisation) has delivered a great, memorable read. This is exactly the kind of Indian writing in English I want to read and I bet you do too!

[Rachna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Contains a Spoiler

Honestly, I did not like the read. I managed to skim 40% into the book and found nothing particularly likeable, be it a strong character or a storyline that I look forward to. Unfortunately, the book did not give rise to the nostalgia of the old Bombay times, being a Mumbaikar myself. I find the characters to be confused, and the advancement of the story (the sudden engagement of Kartik and Ira) unreal :/

[Mahashweta · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book made me really angry. It's possible that I'm missing a point, because it does have really good reviews. But it just didn't work for me. It had its moments (fleeting and far between) but the entire narrative culminated into a really abrupt, disappointing, and infuriating end.

[Manan Majithia · Rating 2 out of 5]

A miss!!To know Bombay read Shantaram.

[Anusha Avadhani · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found it quite boring. Unnecessary explanations in the middle of something curious. I skipped the pages and struggled to finish the book.

[Shirley Coutinho (IllusionsWithinWords) · Rating 2 out of 5]

"𝐈𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫’𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥, 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫, 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐫, 𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐫. 𝐅𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞, 𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐝, 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝. 𝐈𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡."
~𝐌𝐢𝐥𝐤 𝐓𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐡
------
🍀Have you read any books that are locatinally based in your hometown/city?

In the vein of nostalgia, I read Milk Teeth a few days ago which is basically described as a love letter to the city of Mumbai. Living in this city, with its cacaphony and flaws, you tend to overlook the underlying beauty of the functional chaos of Mumbai as a whole, which the author seemingly captured perfectly.

The nostalgia aspect of it was reflected in flashbacks of when Ira and Karthik as kids are running around and playing games like mosquito cricket, climbing up water tanks and studying for the 'Indian epidemic of board exams'. It also shed light on the turbulence that followed the Babri Masjid demolition and the BSE bomb blast and how these events shaped the life of the protagonists.

But throw in ton of architecture jargon and an unexpected secret that there wasn't even a whiff of in the entirety of the book, until the last few pages made for a disjointed reading experience. The author also seemed to use a great deal of similes in order to describe the simplest of things in a fanciful way which just kinda ended up sounding pretentious.

[Neha Kulkarni · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot rave about this book enough! Books set in India are often written self-consciously, feeling the need to over-explain, or over-simplify things at different points. Their content is either mythological, or aiming to capture everyday Indian life either too academically, or in a way that is deliberately designed to entertain. Milk Teeth is naturally fluid, with so many insights about daily life casually thrown in. I couldn't stop reading certain passages out loud to whoever would listen, and let the meaning and beauty of a certain turn of phrase sink in. The book captures the changing spirit of Bombay/ Mumbai through political events and the (re)development of its urban landscape that provides a backdrop to the story of Ira and Kartik. It feels beautifully familiar and yet so revealing.

[Stephy Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flawless story

The story will carry you into the Bombay not Mumbai. The Story begins slowly and gradually unwraps the complexities of life.At the beginning it brushes up childhood then moves into the hardships of middle class and at last ascends into the hardest part of human life: relationship. Each part of the book delivers a different emotion to the reader

[Alecto Carrow · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am so confused with this book. I felt like the author focussed too much on the setting- the build-up and the language, more than the actual plot. It did not ignite me nor did leave me shaken. I would say I am rather disappointed, given how much this book was projected to the stars.

[Samruddhi · Rating 1 out of 5]

One day, while browsing through contemporary Indian fiction, I stumbled upon a recent story set in Mumbai/Bombay of the 90s and a fizzle of excitement burst that maybe this would be what I was looking for in the cultural scene, the story would be worth it. Maybe it's my own predilection or maybe the bar is too high but Milk Teeth is another of those where there's less intensity or even creativity and more ticking off the checkboxes for merely the sake of les labels.
Milk Teeth is set in my favourite city-the Matunga suburb of Mumbai, beginning from back when it was still Bombay till just as it had begun to fit into it's later name. The story is supposed to be about Irawati and Karthik, their childhoods adulthoods, relationships with families, societies and the city itself but I get ahead of myself- it stops itself short of exploring any of it's adopted themes thoroughly. The synopsis might fool people that there's more than what meets the eye in the story but I feel dismayed because it's far from anything advertised. The narrative is for some reason cut in three disjointed sections- 'Ira and Karthik'/'Ira'/'Karthik. But I would say in honesty it's more like- 'Nostalgia'/ 'Attempt at portrait of a complex female character'/ 'Haphazard attempt at tiny glimmer of a male character'. The first part is everything a millennial would feel nostalgic about- the strangely violent (at least as portrayed by the author here) childhood games, the adopted little ruthlessness in Indian society, the landmarks, the events, 'Byrdies' cafes, the delicate balance between compromise and elevations typical of a Mumbaikar, etc. The second part is focused for no apparent reason that I could glean, on Irawati Kamat, the caste hierarchies overtly simplified (effects of which are brushed off), the inter religious relationship Irawati dives in, etc and the third part is spent miserly over Karthik and his 'secret' (which I figured out after reading the LGBT label).
The first part is a juvenile exercise in nostalgia, the second in building a female character, and the last, not even an exercise but a bare glance at the obvious secret of the male character. The author's prose and style makes the reader detach too quickly and the nostalgia is hardly mesmerising enough to stay. The story is quite hollow, a sad patchwork that sort of fails to bring together, anything whatsoever the author might want to say. I think it's a reflection of the author's confusion about what exactly needed to be conveyed to a reader. The style seemed detached, a bloated corpse of similes, complete absence of humour or any sparkle of wit or even structure to the narrative. I didn't even like it enough as a debut novel because it lacked punch or flavour, too distant in tone and culture. I have heard that the author had a blog where her experiments in writing are visible but I found them mildly horrifying- no stuff of a budding author but there you go... It might be impertinent of me to say, but each time I read such books written by authors who have 'engineering' degrees (read: the author of Five Point Someone et all who spawned many followers) I want to scream to their faces that please stick to your 'engineering' spaces since you spent your youth chasing the subject (or in this case-aerospace engineering) because it has bleached, leached, slaughtered and whittled away at your ability to write (If you had any to begin with)... Such authors have telltale hallmarks in their writing that betray the spaces they grew up in and the culture they absorb (completely unrepresentative of the authentic) and I would advise them to stay away from writing as a profession because they only litter the space with 'novels' less than mediocre, thus lowering the bar of a sensible literary landscape; and if the standards are so low how will the scene thrive or ever improve? So people with degrees other than in Literature or creative writing/ MFA writing programs, please please stay way from writing novels! Have at it on your blogs and don't bring the bar any lower! Lit students at least have dissected styles, novels and stories, they know where the narratives and prose are coming from so if you want to get into the scene- do your research! Don't underestimate the space of literature and writing! Stories are journeys, they deserve respect and admiration, an awareness, a carefulness to assemble the delicate words, a passion and a streak of creativity; you can't just jump off boats because of a momentary feeling or the sparkle of fame- you need to do it when it's a matter of survival-when you prepare to jump understanding it's risks! I see the Indian contemporary literary scene overflowing with debris of novels from NRIs or Ivy League degree holders who have a fingernail of a story or voice yet get published solely because of the university mention in their author bios! And I am tired...
So with this heavy confessional rant off my chest, back to Milk Teeth- it's a light fast read with scarce essence; not really worth it for serious readers (though I would definitely not recommend it to anyone). Half star for the half-hearted remembrance of my favourite city and the other half for the very dry attempt to show a misogynistic LGBT character (Which seems written as some sort of a token more than anything else)... Read only the first part if you want some Bombay nostalgia? Or not, whatever...

[Muskan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story starts with a teenager delivering a note to the tenant asking them to vacant the house and to make the matter more serious, he points a gun made by his two fingers at his forehead baring his intention to the woman of the house whose husband and son weren’t in the house.

This boy might be somebody sent by their landlord or the builder, both of whom wants a more fancy flat at the place of this decades-old building which is not making them much profit, not even to cover the repair cost of the building. But the tenants have been giving pagri for years which means they hold the ownership rights to their flats.

Whereas this dispute around the ownership of the flats and the following deal the tenants strike with the landlord cover some parts of the story, the other parts are covered by the two childhood friends, Ira and Karthik whose fate together has been decided at a young age by an astrologer. Their mothers have been declared sisters from the previous births and the sisters that the relationship between Ira and Karthik will make them, for this birth.

Ira is a journalist on the civic beat, unearthing stories of corruption and indolence. She is a girl who has passed her most competent years for marriage, leaving her mother in hopeless hope for a perfect groom. Karthik is a studious young boy, who has always been first admired and then mocked for this very quality. After thirteen years of living away, he has come back to Mumbai to work at an MNC whose office is located in a five-star hotel. He is two years elder to Ira and earns more than twice the salary of Ira and his father’s combined.

They were two inseparable souls living around each other until college, after which their lives parted ways, one fell in love with a Muslim boy being Brahmin herself; other found out about his sexuality. One spent her time accepting and loving each inch of his lover on the background of her city, her only home; the other spent hours visiting shady localities of faraway cities looking for the fulfilment of his desire. One scoured her city for news/topics of interest for the job she loved; other scoured the accounts/market for his too-demanding and tiring job.

When they both finally meet, they realize they have both always been poles apart just like they are now, yet their childhood together kept them more than connected. Each other’s silences were understood, even their lies. Few doubts as to their compatibility remain till the very end but the end also contains surprises, heartbreaks, social norms and truth.

A well-thought story covering so much more than the familial relationship, the various issues faced by the residents of the city or even the exploration of one’s sexuality. It was remarkable how a single plot contained so many significant subjects. The characters come alive fantastically. Their course of relationship reminding you of your own past relationships, the situations in the story giving you more clarity on your own situations, even the sadness multiplied.

I have always loved cities as much as I loved people and how! Reading this book felt like writing a letter to all the places and people I once prized (and still do). Sadness thus is simply the unavoidable aftermath. Gloom tails where love goes.

Ratings-

Concept- 4.7/5
Plot- 4.7/5
Characterisation- 4.3/5
Flow- 4.2/5
Feels- 4.5/5
Narration- 4/5

Inclusive Ratings- 4/5

[Akshay · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This city was our common ground, I want to tell Kaiz. Not simply its soil, nor its salt or tides, not lines on any map, nor buildings and streets. Something else entirely. An image, a dream, an idea that beguiled both of us: a magical place with chaos in its code, where our stories collided briefly."

Milk Teeth is an intensely personal novel. The telling of a lived history through the lens of love. Those of us who grew up in the India of the 90s will recognise our parents, friends and the pace and rhythm of life the book so wonderfully describes. For me personally, it is amongst the best articulations of how it felt to grow up middle class in an emerging India.

Kartik's drive to do the right thing and his simultaneous lack of imagination and clarity and Ira's simplicity, courage and drive are both equally middle class. Both represent elements of what I personally loved and hated about myself growing up.

Kaiz stands in stark contrast to the families of Asha niwas. In his name and his background. Yet he has the same fallability - endearing and frustrating in equal parts - as most of Milk Teeth's characters.

Mumbai is woven into these characters and as the writer so beautifully describes, acts as the common ground where all of them make sense together. Take the city away and their lives, and their history are not the same.

This is a book about Mumbai and her people. Their love, longing, flaws and courage.

[Viju · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the big read Shantaram, I was looking for a relatively easy read to ensure I don’t lose my recently regained reading mojo. The premise of Mumbai drew me to this book (almost a Shantaram hangover for me with my Mumbai love)

Milk Teeth has three main characters - Mumbai, Ira and Kartik. The book turns out to be a journey of Ira more than that of Kartik. The 90s nostalgia with the relatable middle-class way of life is something that makes this book work. There are no bombastic words or huge twists and turns in the book. It almost seems like reading about someone you already knew.

Ira’s segments are the strongest in the book and Kaiz is a decently likeable character. The character Kartik’s actions in the first part made a lot more sense after his dedicated part. Nevertheless that was the weakest part of the book in my opinion.

A good Sunday read!

[Saumya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written book. Full of nostalgia and relatable characters( Ira for me specifically). The background is the Mumbai of late 90s and initially it begins on a seemingly light-hearted note but eventually I found myself reading about the intensity of human emotions intertwined with the essence of Mumbai( talked about through various events and things that define the city). Ira, kaiz and Kartik are three main characters the reader comes across. While Ira's character made me relate to her, Kaiz infuriated me(sometimes)and Kartik showed me the personality of someone with many layers. All in all, this book made me feel so many things. Very engaging!

[Alik · Rating 1 out of 5]

Going into this I had heard a lot of good things about Milk Teeth. a lot of positive reviews and people saying it is like a "love letter to the city of Bombay". However, I failed to connect to any of the characters or the story at large. It just wasn't interesting and became a task to read through. While reading it almost felt like 75% of the text was filler and did not give me a reason to continue investing time into.

[Subhadip Mukherjee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not my cup of Milk!

The book started well, with different charecters gradually revealing themselves against the backdrop of ever changing Mumbai. But somewhere in the middle, it was started to become boring and predictable. The twist in the tale regarding sexuality of Kartik wasn't convincing enough.