3 ideas
A Bombay film scriptwriter who shares the author's own name, Manohar Shyam Joshi, becomes obsessed with Pahuchelli, a mysterious woman who drifts through the city's film world, its street life and its circles of holy men. His parts, the romantic 'Manohar' and the sardonic 'Joshiji', each pursue and explain her differently. The novel ends without establishing who she is or what she wanted.
When a person is opaque, each observer's frame produces its own version of them. Romantic longing sees a muse, cynical sociology sees a hustler, and spiritual credulity sees an adept. The more frames applied, the less remains of the person herself, so her mystery reflects the observers' projections more than any hidden depth in her.
A screenwriter trained in commercial film conventions starts seeing his own life through scene logic, stock characters and plot twists. Real encounters get processed as 'material', which makes life readable but also cheapens it and keeps it at a distance. The novel's gossipy form, mixing fact, tall tale and self-mockery, exposes this habit by never letting the reader settle on what 'really' happened.