Ravi Anand never planned to be seen. For years he made his living at a Melbourne start-up that promised to tidy the internet: drafting apology templates, nudging search results, filing takedown notices between the Docklands light rail and a perpetually humming server room. Then a stray internal memo he wrote about "compassion thresholds" leaks, and Ravi, at fifty-eight, becomes a reluctant folk hero and villain at once. He is invited on ABC Radio Drive to explain decency. A current affairs show wants his thoughts on shame. An ex posts a photo of him in a shiny Brunswick cricket uniform and the comments melt into accusation and praise.
Ravi has survived a thousand tiny humiliations: a marriage dissolved at the Dandenong Registry Office, a father's corner shop sold under duress in suburban Perth, an inglorious sacking from a bank after a printer jam exposed everyone's KPIs, a karaoke incident in Fitzroy that became a meme. He has navigated WhatsApp family wars about biryani, an adult son who won't return texts, a rented terrace in West Footscray with a roof that weeps, and a pandemic that made the city sound like an empty tram looping Swanston Street at midnight.
Just as the spotlight hardens, an archivist from a community radio station in Fremantle calls with the question Ravi has been dodging since 1989. Back when he was a student volunteer with a tape recorder the size of a lunchbox, he captured a protest and promised to donate the audio to their collection. "Do you still have that tape?" she asks. He does. Somewhere between an old Myki card and a stack of Officeworks receipts.
Told in brisk vignettes—Slack pings, ethics committee forms, recipe cards rescued from a shoebox, CCTV screenshots, cricket email threads—Ravi attempts to assemble a ledger of what he owes and what is owed to him: favors, silences, edits, apologies. In a voice at once sardonic and tender, the novel roams from Perth cul-de-sacs to Melbourne sharehouses and back again, asking what we surrender to belong, and what it costs to be seen at last. Ravi hasn't been able to submit a clean record of himself—he's been too busy maintaining everyone else's.
