There is something almost absurd about a life being reduced to ten inches. Twenty-two years of pouring tea. Twenty-two years of knowing who wants extra ginger, who will pay tomorrow, who needs a cup on credit, who comes to the cart simply because there is nowhere else to go. Then someone draws a chalk line on the pavement and decides that those ten inches matter more. That is where Shekhar Nerala’s Ten Inches: A Novel of Bada Shehar begins to become interesting. When a Tea Ca