Shashi Deshpande’s latest novel explores the lives of two women, one obsessed with music and the other a passionate believer in Communism, who break away from their families to seek fulfilment in public life. Savitribai Indorekar, born into an orthodox Hindu family, elopes with her Muslim lover and accompanist, Ghulaam Saab, to pursue a career in music. Gentle, strong-willed Leela, on the other hand, gives her life to the Party, and to working with the factory workers of Bombay.

Fifty years after these events have been set in motion, Madhu, Leela’s niece, travels to Bhavanipur, Savitribai’s home in her last years, to write a biography of Bai. Caught in her own despair over the loss of her only son Aditya, Madhu tries to make sense of the lives of Bai and those around her, and in doing so, find a way out of her own grief.

Shashi Deshpande, daughter of the renowned Kannada dramatist and Sanskrit scholar Shriranga, was born in Dharwad. At the age of fifteen she went to Mumbai, graduated in economics, then moved to Bangalore, where she gained a degree in law. Her writing career began in earnest only in 1970, initially with short stories, of which several volumes have been published. She is the author of four children`s books and seven previous novels, the best known of which are The Dark Holds No Terror, That Long Silence, which won the Sahitya Akademi award, and Small Remedies.

Shashi started writing children`s stories for her two young sons. She recreated her own happy childhood in a small town in her first book, A Summer Adventure, and subsequently wrote two more adventure books. The Naraynpur Incident, her fourth book for children was based on th 1942 Quit India Movement.