The Sound of Waves

A fractured country on the verge of freedom finds its people navigating the slippery crevices of love, morality and nationalism.

To escape the despair of his all-consuming, failed relationship with Dharini, Raghavan agrees to meet Lalita for an arranged match. Finding Lalita's cousin, the vivacious and captivating Sita, a far more amenable fit, he marries her instead. With a charming wife and a powerful government job in pre-Partition Delhi adding to his smugness and conceit, Raghavan turns a blind eye to the evils of the British Raj. Along comes Sita's cousin Surya, a dauntless revolutionary burning to right the wrong. His commitment to the socialist credo leads him to Dharini, a young and spirited party member, the woman Raghavan continues to long for. Cracks appear in the brittle foundations of their lives as the characters move from rural Thanjavur, Madras, Bombay, Karachi, New Delhi, Agra and Calcutta to Lahore.

With poignant detail and lyrical prose, Kalki's tour de force lays bare the emotions of ordinary people grappling with extraordinary changes, their circumstances riven with misfortunes, disasters and the carnage of Partition. The Sound of Waves is an impassioned tribute to everyday citizens and their woes, and an acute commentary on the aspirations of an emerging nation.

This book by Gowri Ramnarayan is the English translation of the bestselling Tamil novel Alai Osai by freedom fighter and novelist Kalki Krishnamurthy (1899-1954).