I learned that I am, despite my early years spent as a swaggering boy, at heart just a middle-class, hardworking, risk-averse, uncreative, straitlaced, routine-obsessed conformist. In case I forgot to mention it, I'm also prudish to the point of being puritanical.

But at eight, Nira had only one overpowering wish—to pee standing up like a boy. In fact, to be a boy.

Join Nira as she steps into her brother's clothes and becomes the self-appointed Al Capone-esque gang leader of the neighborhood boys. Her oddball yet madly loving family shapes her personality, and a poignant relationship with her brother's best friend shapes her life.

She uses uninhibited candor to detail her coming-of-age journey from Calcutta to London, from tomboy to reluctant woman-in-progress ... always trying to fit in, but always failing. She's a-laugh-a-minute, and yet she breaks your heart with her subconscious, percussive yearning for the one person who is always too old, too far, too married to be hers.