London, December 1944, Emy hates India. 16 years ago, she had lost her parents there. And all of a sudden, the past beckons. Rather accidentally, Emy chances upon the personal diary of her mother Amelia, a resigned young woman, straight out of rigid Victorian England, confronted, through a strange India, with her own sexuality. January 1928. Amelia sets sail with Emy on the first ship to Bombay, to reunite with her husband Thomas, captain in the army at Khalapur, in Rajasthan. But the reunion leaves much to be desired. Thomas, to be desired. Thomas seems to have changed unless it is Amelia who cannot handle the suffocating heat of the thar desert. Fortunately, there is Kenneth Lowther, Thomas’s Friend , an atheist philosopher, who tries to explain to Amelia, the disconcert in India, its religion, customs and the magnificence of its maharajas. The young lady finds it difficult to find her bearings in this new set-up.