Letters to Pondicherry

In 1911, Velayudham leaves French Pondicherry for the rubber estates of British Malaya, carrying a single piece of paper that says no man can own him. Before he ever reaches the plantation, it is taken from him.

For twenty years he taps rubber in the dark, kneels on the white man's road, and writes letters home to his mother that are full of lies, and letters he never sends that are full of the truth. Then he meets Valli: born on the estate, sharp-tongued, fearless, and certain of one thing. Nobody ever goes back.

Through war, influenza and the collapse of the rubber trade, their family survives on love and stubbornness, until the Depression brings the repatriation lists, and Valli makes a choice that will cost her everything.

A century later, in Kuala Lumpur, a young doctor named Meera opens her great-grandfather's tin trunk and finds nine exercise books, a red silk sari, and a document that was never meant to be found.

A sweeping, heartbreaking novel of migration, colonial cruelty and a love that kept one secret too long, written for every family that crossed the sea and never came home.