The setting is the New Delhi of 2014. The narrator is 1997 born Asmita Kaul, whose grandfather was killed and aunt was abducted during the 1990 Kashmiri Hindu genocide, and whose three generations continue to suffer, twenty-five years later.
The protagonist’s grandmother has schizophrenia. Her father is a neurosurgeon but because of that illness, he becomes deeply interested in psychiatry. The protagonist’s mother, an MBA from Harvard, owns and runs a large corporate hospital. Asmita, siblingless and friendless, feels lonely and depressed, and makes two suicide attempts, while her grandmother has made three. The story thus gets strong inputs from medical sciences, such as psychology, psychiatry, and neurology.
Asmita is writing an essay on pain and finds it unfinishable. But to complete the essay, she visits a leprosy colony and learns the value of pain in everyday life. She is forced to look at pain from many perspectives, including her childhood...