A large historical panorama and the moving story of an unusual woman who lives for her art and freedom. "In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother ran away with an Englishman," thus begins the story of Myshkin and his mother Gayatri. It is the 1930s, and India is struggling with British colonial rule. Then two strangers arrive in the small town by the Himalayas: the German painter Walter Spies and a dancer, and Gayatri, who has always wanted to be an artist, seizes her chance to escape traditional marriage.