Silk Fish Opium

At a time of extraordinary ferment, when India is poised for Independence and Partition, young Rohini, the daughter of a wealthy Hindu silk-trader, dares to fall in love with Hanif, an ordinary Muslim musician. A relationship with Hanif comes with the dangers and thrills that Rohini has only read of in Western novels, with clandestine meetings in cinema halls and trysts at local train stations. Yet it also threatens to sever her from everything safe and familiar – the sea-facing bungalow in Bombay, the security of familial love, the blessed ease of an arranged marriage to an affluent diamond merchant newly returned from South Africa. As India claims that dream of sovereignty, Rohini must opt for one of two lives. Will she embrace an existence that promises risk and happiness? Or choose one that comes with painless compromise, the kind her family had once made as traders in opium? Against the backdrop of an India transitioning from feudal aristocracy to industrial democracy, from colonial rule to Independence, Silk Fish Opium traces the journey of a girl from a land of imagination to one of vivid reality.