In between the tidy frame is a story well worth telling—of the unique socio-political situation of Goa that made possible a wide variety of relationships between people of different communities—Hindu Indians, Catholic Indians, Portuguese whose ties were with Europe, and descendants of Portuguese extraction who were as much sons and daughters of Goan soil as the Indians.
Among the protagonists of the novel are dwellers of Zamin Par, occupants of Zamin Andar and spirits of Zamin Upar, all of whose comings and goings have been inextricably woven together into the narrative. Intertwining the humdrum of daily human existence are stories of the superior knowledge or comprehension of prophesies, extrapolations, curses, and spells cast by supra-terrestrial peris
It is in these moments in the book that Dhingra’s extraordinary writing skills manage to transfer the olfactory effects experienced by her, for the readers to vicariously savour through her descriptive details about the fragrances.
Set in Nepal and its borderlands before the arrival of the internet, the novel begins by describing the marriage of a fourteen-year-old Meena with Manmohan, a twenty-one-year-old Nepali boy she has never met. The narrative documents Meena’s problematic marital journey and her diasporic life.
Death, the time and manner of its arrival, how it transforms people and their lives, and the ways in which each person deals with his/her loss, grappling with guilt, regret, questioning—is almost a character as it moves through the pages, forcing the reader to confront those very feelings of loss
The book also gives hindsight into the shrinking spaces in academic institutions and the rise of Right-Wing politics in India. This is demonstrated when the narrator’s student Salman is killed for his love affair with a Hindu woman. Pat, who runs a signature campaign for his justice, has been charged by the police for doing so.