A story imagined in the backdrop of World War II and India’s Freedom Struggle. The protagonist of the story is a 16-year-old girl, Kayal. The story unravels as she maintains a journal to record her journey from her orthodox home in Madras to the war camp of Netaji’s Azad Hind Fauj in Burma and beyond. It is all about how the life of this school-going teen, with a patriotic fervour, takes a sudden turn when she leaves the traditional home of her parents who are all set to marry her off to 18-year-old Shiva. She decides to follow her aunt who she discovers is already a captain in the secret Army of Subhash Chandra Bose. Her prospective groom, Shiva follows her to ensure her safety but ends up signing up for the war camp too. The read does not come across as overly heavy or intense despite dealing with a subject of war but then one sees the risk of it being watered down so much that it could be both misunderstood and misleading.
The plot is set in the times of 1943. So, we are looking at the generation of parents of the Boomers. However, the conversation as well as the imagery in the story seems more like that of Gen Z. Perhaps, this has been meant to be that way so that the Gen Z readers relate to the characters easily, but then that results in leaving one tied up to these times and never getting carried back to times bygone thus NOT meeting an important need of a story woven around the historical past, which is to give a clear sense of time and context.