Mumbai, April 13 -- I first came across Manav Kaul's work as a student when the college theatre society staged his play, Park, during a festival on campus. The story of three strangers fighting each other for space in a park, the play turns on discussions that eventually touch on what it means to belong. These themes of loneliness, heartache, isolation, and the human need for companionship recur in the eight stories that are part of A Night in the Hills, translated from the Hindi original Prem Kabootar by Pooja Priyamvada. From a group of friends navigating questions of love, family, religion and friendship in A Bunch of Old Letters to an artist figuring out that all art is, in some way, mimesis in The Copy Artist, Kaul's protagonists belong to a preInstagram, pre-WhatsApp world where owning an Atlas Goldline or proper football shoes was a marker of prosperity and writing a letter was the first step to a declaration of love....