bicycle dreaming

From one birthday to the next, thirteen-year-old Noor watches as her family comes apart. Her father, Mohammad Saidullah, loses his job pedaling his bicycle door-to-door to collect household discards; he is forced to join the ranks of those rag pickers who work New Delhi's landfills. And when Ameena Saidullah follows her son, Talib, in his exit from the family, Noor sees it as further evidence of her mother's preference for the son over the daughter. Noor's own dream of riding a bicycle is complicated by her conflicted feelings about her father's livelihood. Not until Noor falls for a boy from the lowest caste is she forced from her place on the sidelines to enter into the fray of her own story.