In 1950s Bengal, Henna Rub, a precocious, wayward teenager, brings off a brilliant marriage to a wealthy romantic, Ricky Karim, trapping him with a web of lies that she has spun with her wheeler-dealer father. And so on his wedding night, believing himself married to an educated, sonnet-reading, tennis-playing soul mate, Ricky is horrified to discover that his new bride is in fact a lazy, illiterate, shopkeeper's daughter. As Ricky and Henna uneasily tolerate their loveless marriage, the way is paved for a future of double-lives and complicit deception - an unspoken family tradition that is inherited by their daughter Shona. But two decades later, with her own children grown, it is Shona who is forced to discover unpalatable truths about her loved ones...