Centred around two prominent Lucknow families, the novel closes in on the lives and struggles of Qambar, a romantic revolutionary, and the three women drawn to him—Bela, the daughter of a mirasi-bhand couple, desperate to break away from her tainted ‘legacy’; Safia, the polio-stricken daughter of the Raja of Teen Katori, an independent ‘educationist’ dealing with the crushing rejection of her childhood betrothed and the demons that haunt her in its wake; and the eponymous heroine, Chandni Begum, destitute survivor of a once powerful landed family, looking for a way to get by respectably. A rivetting tale, liberally sprinkled with entertaining characters and biting political and social comment.
