Sacred Waters

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.