'A Small Town Boy' portrays the life of a young man in the 40s & 50s in a newly independent India that was shrugging off the stupor of the foreign rule. There was no dearth of droll incidents that are recounted with gentle irony and more than a touch of humor. Mohan Ram joined the newly set up IIT at Kharagpur before it became famous. Alumni like him made the hallowed institution what it is today. Like the pioneers of the Wild West, he roughed it out in the East of India, as the hilarious anecdotes of his hostel life depict. The memoirs, penned in his patented self-deprecating and humorous manner, brings R. K. Narayan's Malgudi Days' to one's mind. The idyllic world of Mohan Ram's youth will never become stale.