Sacred Waters provides a glimpse of Bose’s efforts to get independence for India by forging alliances with forces which had their own agenda in the region. The author has taken great care to ensure that the story remains true to history for the most part and this makes the book all the more interesting.
Orphaned as a child, married then widowed at thirteen, Sita has always known the shame of being born a female in Indian society. Her life, constrained and shaped by the men around her, could not be more different from her daughter, Amita, a headstrong university professor determined to live life on her own terms.
While trying to unravel the mysteries of her mother’s past, Amita encounters a traumatic event that leads her down the path of self-discovery.
Unfolding simultaneously, their stories are set against the dramatic sweep of India’s anti-colonial struggle in the 1940s, and move between past and present, from rural India to the chaotic Burmese battlefront where Sita experiences life as a recruit in the Indian National Army, to modern-day Singapore.
Richly layered, the novel is a compelling exploration of two women’s struggle to assert themselves in male dominated societies of both the past and the present.
