Somewhere in the dingy lanes of north Kolkata, a young girl born to a family of
idol-makers learns to carve goddesses with her own hands, a right that her
artisan father had reserved for her brother. But, years later, when Ira
Chatterjee—a breezy, jet-setting ethnographer born in the same
neighbourhood—comes looking for the girl, no one knows where to find her.
Elsewhere, in the middle of America, Ira lives with her friend, Fasahat Zaidi, a
poet, translator, but mostly, a raconteur extraordinaire from Lucknow. One day
Fasahat is reciting ghazals at a bar in a saree, another day he is emailing Ira
outlandish tales starring the likes