London. 1950s. Naïve Amar Das arrives to study at
the LSE. The release from the war-torn skies and the daily threat of death had
unleashed a tide of unprecedented pleasure-seeking which swept over hidebound
English society. Gone was the Victorian prudery the British rulers had exported
to middle-class India, Amar realises, as he stumbles over coupled bodies in his
walk through Hyde Park. He has to struggle with the new mores, the pervading
permissiveness. At the same time he thrills to the intellectual freedom which
he senses all around, the challenge of ideas, the encouragement to question
orthodoxy. Casting a dark shadow over all this, though, are his bitter memories
of British rule and anguish at having been treated as second-class citizen in
his own country. His restless anger at the colonisers spills over from time to
time. Along the way, a lonely wife offers him her ambiguous friendship, an
attractive single mother her love, a manipulative student her bed and an enigmatic
girl his romantic focus. How does the unworldly youngster deal with the
challenges that adulthood and autonomy confront him with? A universal issue
that transcends both time and space.