In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman. So begins the story of Myshkin and his mother, Gayatri, a rebellious, alluring artist who abandons parenthood and marriage to follow her primal desire for freedom. With the Nazis rise to power, a German artist from Gayatri''s past seeks her out. His arrival in India ignites passions she has long suppressed. What follows is her life as pieced together by her son. Excavating the roots of the world in which he was abandoned, Myshkin comes to understand his long lost mother and the connections between strife at home and a war torn universe.