In the prologue of this beautifully written novel, a young girl's father is shot by armed men, her brother disappears and her mother abandons her, all in the space of a couple of days. There appears to be a war on, although exactly where and when is never made quite clear.
The book then cuts back and forth between various points of view, many years later. Three elderly widows travel by train for a holiday in Jarmuli, a temple town on the Bay of Bengal. On the train they encounter a young girl, Nomita, who seems Indian, but somehow not quite Indian. On arrival in Jarmuli, other lives cross paths - the three women, Latika, Gouri and Vidya - the temple guide, Badal who is in the throes of a forbidden love for a young boy - the seaside tea vendor, Johnny Toppo - and Suraj, who has been hired to assist Nomita in her research of locations for a documentary on spiritual tourism.
Nomita is the girl who lost her parents when she was seven years old. We learn how she was taken into an orphanage in Jarmuli, run by an internationally renowned guru - how she was sexually abused, later escaped the orphanage, and was adopted by an English woman, and taken to live in Norway. Now she is trying to uncover the secrets of her past.
The story could have been harrowing, but the beauty of the prose, lifts it to another level, making it heartbreaking but at the same time tender and even hopeful in the midst of ugliness. The writing is full of sensory detail, evoking the sights, sounds and smells of India.
There is an excellent review here.
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