Srinagar, 1986. A Kashmiri Pandit family has just moved into their new home. The patriarch Papaji is a clerk in a food cooperative and his wife Byenji is a homemaker. The narrator is their eight-year-old grandson who spends his days playing cricket and climbing the tang kul in the garden. Everything is rosy till 1989. But then, propelled by ISI and the Jamaat, a secessionist movement rises and changes everything.

Lolab valley, 1968. After years of prayers, a boy named Shahid is born to Zun and her husband. He grows up in a society where corruption and unemployment are rife. The trajectory of his life changes when he meets Syed Sahab ? an Islamic theologian and rabble-rouser, who wants to overthrow the Indian state.