For a Place in the Sun: A Calcutta Chronicle

Calcutta, British India, early 1900.

One evening while the Bengali scion Rudranarayan and the famous dancing girl Gauhar Jan are entwined in an ecstasy of togetherness, news reaches Rudranarayan that his wife, who has just given birth to a son, is critically ill. An unruffled Rudranarayan continues with his merry-making and remains so even when his wife Radharani, pronounced to be inauspicious by the family preceptor, is discreetly dumped by her mother-in-law into the cellar that is linked to the river Ganges. Radharani, however, doesn’t die. The same river endowed with the responsibility of eliminating her, restores her in the caring arms of an elderly European couple. But will she get a new lease of life in this era when the entire country is moved by anti-European passion? Set in Calcutta, the then capital of British Raj, this gripping tale chronicles a woman’s struggle for survival against all odds—as supposedly inked by her fate and subsequently superimposed upon her by her family.