Fireflies in Gyanganj

School summer vacations in Mumbai are as intensely memorable and often more instructional than the school year itself. This is the time when, devoid of a regimen and a timetable, children are left to their own devices to defend against the mortal enemy of any adolescent. Boredom.

12-year-old Simi and 15-year-old Shashi are siblings going to school in a teeming suburb of Mumbai back in its relatively lesser teeming times of 1995. The apartment building in which they live gets a new occupant, simply known as Dada, an affable 60-year-old man, who moves in on the first day of their school vacation. Both Simi and Shashi are charmed by their endearing new neighbor whom they befriend, but soon their peaceful holidays are upturned and they discover an entirely new adult world filled with greed, betrayal, low cunning, and most of all true courage in the midst of all this.