The Night of Kaamini

Old sins have long shadows. Thakur Ram Prasad’s enchantment with a pair of beautiful eyes triggered a series of events leading to love, anguish and, finally, redemption, which unfolded over four decades and affected the lives of all who were close to him. His daughter, Kaamini, betrayed by the very people who should have loved her best, turned her back on the past and made a life for herself and her daughter, Mita, in Ram Prasad’s rambling old kothi, looking after the land she inherited in the small town of Mukundganj. Mita grew up unaware of the secrets that lingered in the walls and courtyards of the kothi. But once she went to engineering college and fell in love with a fellow student, Amit, she had to confront the enigmas of her mother’s life, and to bravely lay the ghosts of the past. Bela Lal’s beautifully crafted tale moves effortlessly between the turbulence of the 1940s – the time of Kaamini’s youth – and the sweeping social changes of the 1980s, as Mita and Amit try to plan their future in the face of silence, opposition and mistrust. Lal’s authentic characters, her ability to evoke recent historical periods with vividness and authority and, above all, her unmatched ability as a storyteller make The Night of Kaamini an unforgettable read.