The story opens in September 1969 in Calcutta (Kolkata) with three-year-old Varsha Gupta, a child from a strictly vegetarian Marwari family who startles everyone by demanding fish and recounting vivid memories of a past life in a mud house by a river.  Shoma’s nephew, who as an adult narrator is holed up in Brooklyn, New York during the 2020 pandemic writing a recollection of these events.