Do a person’s thoughts and emotions die when his or her body does? Maybe the soul carries those into the great unknown. But what happens when the soul is not at peace? Does it hang around a bit, perhaps to go looking for ways to find closure? Does a soul have to depart the body to find peace? The river Nila would know. It is on its banks, that some of these souls, both living and the wandering, suddenly find themselves linked, like pearls on a string. Some seemingly more luminous than others, but each with its own inclusion, a dark secret, a festering wound and a palpable sense of fear.

The author takes you on a layered journey, through the emotions of various women including a celebrated writer, a wife, lover, a mother, an innocent child. The women, most of them at least, are survivors of sorts. They hail from different backgrounds, are of different ages and each holds her own story close to her heart. But there is something that connects all of them at a surreal level. Two or three stories down you will realise what it is.

The narrator herself is from the ‘beyond’ too, just a tiny bit of bone, plucked from the pyre of a woman writer who has killed herself. She is not a ghost, the bone holds her very conscious that refuses to merge into the elements with the rest of her body. Her story and her search clings onto that bit of bone. Heavy with memories, it lies forgotten in the back of an old wardrobe. It understands the fear of the child who hides from her predator in that cupboard. Pain and fear are emotions that don’t always need a common context to entice empathy.

Nor does shame. Whose shame is it to be? The woman’s? Or the man who has clawed at her, mentally, physically, emotionally?

The scars will last her a lifetime, and beyond. This is an essential read for men and women who are seeing the unfolding of #MeToo in India. As the stories tumble out one by one, we see how the pain is still fresh years after the assaults took place. The timing of this book is so perfect that it is almost uncanny.