"Does knowledge belong to the people who narrate it or to the person who recognizes its value?" (Pg. 180)
The novel is set in the eighth century in South India during the rule of the Rastrakutas and focuses on the protagonist Sharvay, an orphan who lives with the kitchen-in-charge. She becomes the peekadhari for Princess Avantika. In the initial pages of the novel, there is a section that delves into the inner recesses of the minds of the women from various strata in their approach to chewing tambulam, which in the North Indian context would be known as paan. Avantika, the princess “wished she could chew up her life and spit it out … She was surely and certainly heading towards a future in which she was the tambulam. A gift to be offered to some neighbouring kingdom's ruler. To be chewed and relished in political delight”. (Pg. 22) And then we have Sharvay who struggles to understand the properties of a tambulam, and how a red stain could be produced by chewing a green betel leaf. “Years of holding the spittoon for the princess made her detest anything to do with betel leaves. The only good thing was that, as she had grown older, the heavy spittoon had become lighter”. (Pg. 22) The contrast is a stark one and provides an insight into the socio-economic conditions that divide the two women and their thought processes. But what emerges as a unifying agent is that both are bound to what is expected of them as women. The invisible chains that tie them to their stations in life.