Never Never Land

Lonely | middle-aged | at a personal and professional dead-end | Iti Arya flees the towers and bright lights of Gurgaon for The Dacha | a remote cottage in the Kumaon Himalayas where she had spent perhaps the happiest years of her childhood. Over the course of that single monsoon in the hills | in the company of two grandmothers—ninety-something Badi Amma and Rosinka Paul Singh | aged one hundred and two—and a mysterious girl who may be her sister | Iti will make peace with her approximate life and quiet desolation. She will witness the vanity of youth | but also its vulnerability and tenderness; the indignities of age | and also its courage and consolations. She will submit to life and the eternal spirit of the mountains. With Never Never Land | Namita Gokhale shows | again | why she is one of India’s most original and daring writers | with an extraordinary understanding of the human condition.