The young poet grows up to be an older poet, novelist, social activist, wife, mother, and grandmother. The young man goes to a monastery in the Himalayas for a bit and eventually becomes an important scholar of world religions. Her father orders the young man out of the house and threatens to have him deported if he tries to contact his daughter. They visit her elderly guru, they witness the beginnings of the Indian Independence movement, they go to the theatre and see Ravi Shankar’s older brother dance.Īlas, her parents discover their star-crossed love in the delirious beri beri ravings of her younger sister. Over the course of a number of months of miscommunication across cultures, everyone speaking their second or third language but never their first, the two young people fall in love - or think they fall in love - which amounts to the same thing. The Bengali scholar’s sixteen-year-old daughter, herself already a revered poet and philosopher, becomes the object of the European’s fascination. The scholar takes an interest in the young European and invites him to stay at his home as a member of his large household.
A twenty-something Romanian student with Fascist associations who happens to be quite fluent in French and has a bit of English arrives in Calcutta in British India to study with a renowned Bengali scholar.