Author(s): Anuradha Roy

Fiction

The servant boy of the house, Mukunda, a sensitive and intelligent foundling boy orphan who is casteless and without religion is the very best friend of Bakul, the motherless granddaughter of the house. Mukunda and Bakul spend their days reading the books of Mrs Barnum, their Anglo-Englishwoman neighbour whose life was saved long ago by Bakul's grandmother, Kananbala, the family matriarch who has become demented by loneliness.As Mukunda and Bakul grow, they become aware that their intense closeness is becoming something else, and Bakul's father is warned to separate them. He sends Mukunda to a school in Calcutta, where in the years after Partition he prospers and whence in time he will return to rediscover all that he has lost.The many strands of this intensely-fashioned narrative converge when Mukunda, by now a successful businessman, returns to Songarh years after he has been exiled from the only home he knew, to resolve the family's destiny.