When a tsunami raged through the lands of Chennai, Ahalya Ghai (17 years) and her sister Sita (15 years) are left homeless and abandoned. Their entire family perished in the tsunami and they are now orphaned. Their only hope is to get a ride to the convent in Thiruvallur where they had studied, which is many miles away. A driver is ready to take them but the moment they get a ride, their fate is sealed. They fall into the trap of human trafficking and sex trade. They are sold into a brothel in Mumbai.
On the other side of the world, a Washington lawyer, Thomas Clarke, is struggling to cope up with the loss of his baby and the breaking down of his family. He takes a sabbatical and comes down to India to work with an international anti-trafficking …show more content…
When he realizes that the bracelet Ahalya had given him is a rakhi, he understands the significance of it and is now determined to find Sita and protect Ahalya. He even goes to Paris because of a lead and spots Sita there but he fails to rescue her. Using his contacts back in America he is able to upload her picture on FBI data base. A few days later he receives a call from his colleague in Atlanta who said that they had located Sita through a pornographic website where her picture was uploaded. Clarke immediately rushed to Atlanta on hearing the news. The FBI with the help of the police raid the brothel and rescue Sita and 8 other minor girls who are mentally …show more content…
Being a novel about sex trade, one would expect it to have gruesome and unpleasant details of the kind of torture the girls face. However, it is to the author’s credit that he is able to convey the same theme through the emotions that the girls face and the reader is left thinking for a long time about the situations and compulsions of the girls.
This is not an easy book to read nor is it a feel good book. But I would still recommend this book for the people of my age. Although I was aware about the problems of sex trade I couldn’t imagine the global nature and magnitude of this deep rooted malaise. This is an eye opening book which left me thinking a long time even after I had finished it. This book forces one to recognize the harsh realities of our
On the other side of the world, a Washington lawyer, Thomas Clarke, is struggling to cope up with the loss of his baby and the breaking down of his family. He takes a sabbatical and comes down to India to work with an international anti-trafficking …show more content…
When he realizes that the bracelet Ahalya had given him is a rakhi, he understands the significance of it and is now determined to find Sita and protect Ahalya. He even goes to Paris because of a lead and spots Sita there but he fails to rescue her. Using his contacts back in America he is able to upload her picture on FBI data base. A few days later he receives a call from his colleague in Atlanta who said that they had located Sita through a pornographic website where her picture was uploaded. Clarke immediately rushed to Atlanta on hearing the news. The FBI with the help of the police raid the brothel and rescue Sita and 8 other minor girls who are mentally …show more content…
Being a novel about sex trade, one would expect it to have gruesome and unpleasant details of the kind of torture the girls face. However, it is to the author’s credit that he is able to convey the same theme through the emotions that the girls face and the reader is left thinking for a long time about the situations and compulsions of the girls.
This is not an easy book to read nor is it a feel good book. But I would still recommend this book for the people of my age. Although I was aware about the problems of sex trade I couldn’t imagine the global nature and magnitude of this deep rooted malaise. This is an eye opening book which left me thinking a long time even after I had finished it. This book forces one to recognize the harsh realities of our