India- 1857: The East India Companyas disregard for the religious and social taboos of the Hindu and Muslim soldiers, who form the bulk of the British army in India, makes mutiny inevitable. One British outpost after another goes up in flames along the Ganges. The common manadriven to desperate measures by poverty and generations of inherited debtais trapped between native kingdoms where convicted felons are trampled to death by elephants and British protectorates where they are blown to bits by cannons. Helpless flotsam caught in the backlash are the victims: the soldier Daulat Ram who carries his British Captainas five-year-old daughter to safety; Kamal, his brother, who struggles to support his extended family and protect them from the terror that stalks the village, while Lila, heir to the impoverished kingdom of Paramgar, forced into a politically expedient marriage with a stranger in spite of her hopeless entanglement with a British officer, is hounded from one end of the country to the other in a bid to escape her almost certain annihilation.
