Born in a big old Calcutta house on the same night, the wild, tragic night both their fathers were mysteriously lost, Sudha and Anju are cousins. Closer even than sisters, they share clothes, possessions, worries, dreams - and three mothers, who preside over the matriarchal Chatterjee household where the cousins grow up, cocooned in a timeless world of feminine lore. But when Sudha learns a terrible secret about the past, and hides it from her cousin, and then when Anju discovers the sister of her heart is secretly nurturing a forbidden love, their mutual loyalty is sorely tested.
As the day of leaving school draws near, a family crisis forces the cousins to abandon their university plans, and their mothers swiftly start the serious business of arranging their marriages to the sons of suitable families. And thus the inseparable pair is torn apart: Sudha moves to her new family''s home in rural Bengal, while Anju joins her immigrant husband in California. But although they hav
