THE BOY WHO SAID NO is first and foremost a story of people and their travails, the world in which they live, the colors and the sights—a story of mystical and mythical India.

The reader will encounter the baked hardness of the dry summer, the lovely, soft greenness of the monsoon, the menacing river in a raging storm that brings out the hero and the humor in a village, and the cruelly severe customs involved in owning and losing land.

At the start, Babu announces his intention to organize the workers in the face of violence and of the old men’s, especially the old Chowdhary's, perorations. G.K. Rao, in his inspired book, manages to neither demonize the landowners nor idealize the workers and their cause. THE BOY WHO SAID NO is a short chapter in several lives, a once-upon-a-time tale of a community.