And Then She ...

Adaptability is the key to survival – survival of a girl-child.

Maya, who survives intended infanticide, takes birth in a remote village of South India in the pre-independence period. She is the last of the five females born to a hard-working farmer and toddy tapper who resents her birth just because he instead wanted a boy to replace the son born to his wife but killed due to a snake-bite incident in its childhood. The indigent farmer is murdered when the girl is only ten years old leaving her, illiterate and helpless, to take on this world by adapting to the circumstances.

Gokuldas, born into a poor fisherman’s family of coastal South India, manages to study up to the eighth standard due to the benevolence of his teachers much against his father’s wishes. On an impulse, after the disappearance of his father at sea, Gokuldas stows away on a steamship to reach Bombay at the age of 16. He manages to survive, in spite of being repeatedly sodomised by his colleague which leaves a latent cruel streak in his psyche.

Maya, at the age of twelve, is brought to Bombay and abandoned at a busy railway station by a person whom she absolutely trusts. This person has problems which need to be attended to. How Maya survives the ordeal and meets Gokuldas, who marries her, forms the base of the novel.

There are other sub-plots which, and various other characters who, create suspense and turmoil in the lives of the two lovers. Murders, cheating, love, hate, revenge, greed, sacrifices, intrigue and jealousy - this work captures human nature, in the back-drop of the Second World War and the Quit India movement. Situations are created by circumstances and characters so as to force Maya to separate from ‘a wife and child-beater’ Gokuldas and seek divorce from him. Will she succeed from separating from Gokuldas and live life on her own terms? Who is the father of her first child if not Gokuldas? Who are the persons responsible for creating rift in their lives? How do the murders create problems or bring solutions? How does Maya survive all this? How events which took place even before Maya and Gokuldas were born unintentionally affect their lives is attempted to be portrayed in this debut novel.