Spanning four generations and chiefly set in the darkening universe of New Delhi during Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Emergency (1976-77), Rich Like Us runs on the oddly parallel life tracks of two very different women. A time promising wealth for the corrupt, but terrifying with sterilization for the poor and jail for the critical, the Emergency changes forever the lives of both women. Sonali and Rose, one Indian, the other Cockney English, are deeply devoted friends. Because of her outmoded honesty, Sonali’s successful civil service career is terminated, waking her from her dream of a new India. For Rose, second wife of a Hindu businessman, the corruption of society sets the scene for the last episode of her long adjustment to her adopted home. Delicately insistent, Mrs. Sahgal demands that we see a changing nation through its own eyes. “Being Nehru’s niece or Madame Pandit’s daughter," the author has said, “has neither been a help nor a hindrance––it has simply been my inheritance and background––but being Mrs. Gandhi’s cousin as well as critic is another matter. It has given me a glimpse of how intolerant establishments reduce their critics to non-persons.”