This story begins in London in a house where Rita lives with her teenage daughter Sarla. They are planning their summer vacation when suddenly Rita, who is a TV reporter, gets a call to report a live war and Sarla is furious with her mother for suddenly leaving her alone. Sarla yearns for a proper family and decides to go down to India to visit her maternal grandparents in Daroga, a hill station in India. Rita is shocked at this turn of events, but she allows Sarla to travel to India. Sarla had last been to India, six years ago, when her mother had a big fight with her parents and took her back to London.

In India, Sarla meets her grandparents and another teenager, Bina, who is a little older than her but very strange and mysterious in her own way. Bina is the granddaughter of Sarla’s grandparents’ domestic helpers. Here the story takes many interesting turns and soon Sarla discovers the problems in Bina’s life and why she is always serious and mysterious. A sudden crisis brings the two girls together and they become best friends.

Bina’s mother, Shobharani, is in jail because she was once the bandit queen of the jungles and is treated like a goddess by the local villagers. Bina wants to study and become a doctor, but her grandparents are worried about getting her married and settling her down before anyone knows anything about her mother.

There is a parallel story of the guys from the liberation front who are trying to gather weapons and money for the fight to get the mountainous region of the state from a separate state. This brings a political view of the whole story. And of course, there is a sweet teenage love story that runs parallel, beginning with blushes, revelations, and ending in a strong lifelong bond.

There are more surprises in store for the reader towards the end as the various stories intertwine and unfold page by page. The relationship between Sarla and her mother Rita is shown to be a bit shaky at first, but towards the end they are shown to have a heart-to-heart like a mother and daughter and the special bond they share is clearly depicted there.

A beautifully written work! The story is very well narrated! The best aspect of this storytelling was that it was narrated by the two central characters, Sarla and Bina, both of whom are teenagers, and the story was told the way they saw things happening around them and themselves. All the characters in the story are well recorded and distinctively portrayed.

The story takes place mainly in an Indian village and speaks subtly about the problems faced by the poor and women in these parts of the world and points out the suffering and misery of women and girls as they are considered unwanted by their own parents. .