This is a new edition of Birthday Deathday & Other Stories by Padma Perera, first published by The Women's Press, England, 1985, with international reviews from the UK, USA, Europe, and the Commonwealth countries. Additional material now provides more oral history from the first four decades just before and after India's Independence, 1940s-1980s. The story "Doctor Salaam" was included in Salman Rushdie's Mirrorwork, an anthology of the best Indian fiction in English during the fifty years after India’s Independence.