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Film critic Bhawana Somaaya’s family shifted to India after Partition. This is the story of the family finding its roots in a country that was at the cusp of change and how it shaped all of them and the nation; a story spanning more than a hundred years, five generations and innumerable dreams. The author seeks to make sense of and heal from the foundational wound of the two infant nations, exploring how it shaped the futures of the peoples partitioned along the Radcliffe Line.

In 1833, Frederic Tudor, an American businessman, made history when he shipped 180 pounds of ice harvested from Walden Pond in Boston, to Calcutta — a much-in-demand item amongst the British elite. Others were drawn to the country by less materialistic goals. There were also those who came to stay here. Like Satyanand Stokes. All of them were fascinated by their ‘Indian experience’. This is their story.

For 30 years of her life, Ji-hye has been an ordinary woman. Even her name Ji-hye is one of the most ordinary in Korea. She’s not the one to make waves by pointing out the absurdities of Korean bureaucracy or the injustice around her. But things change when Kyu-ok Lee joins the Academy where she works. She recognises him as the man who once publicly accused a professor there of plagiarism. But this guy seems different… Is he?