The Song of Distant Bulbuls

In the autumn of 1939, seventeen-year-old Sammi, has been married for a mere twenty-one days, when her husband, Hari Singh, an officer in the British Indian Army, is summoned to fight in the Second World War. The deeply-in-love couple bid each other goodbye. Sammi awaits Hari Singh’s return in her village, Aliwala, a syncretic hamlet with Sufi bearings in the hinterland of Punjab.

It is now 1946. The Second World War has ended, but there is no word of Hari Singh, who has been gone for nearly seven years. Caught between her two feuding brothers, Jasjit and Kirpal, the now twenty-three-year-old Sammi, perseveres in the face of the uncertainty that looms over her.

As a determined India makes a concerted bid for freedom from the British, Jasjit worries for his sister, Sammi’s mounting agony and the rising Indian National Movement converging in his mind. Also weighing upon him is the lament that Indian Independence will sever age-old communal bonds and separate him from his brother-like friend Zulfi Sheikh.

In the changing political scenario, Kirpal seeks desperately to solidify his personal and social standing by coercing Sammi to marry his boyhood friend, the influential Bachan Singh.

Will Sammi be forced into a second marriage with Bachan Singh? Or will she muster the courage to step out of the narrow alleys of Aliwala in search of a new life?

Inspired by true events, 'The Song of Distant Bulbuls' is a moving saga of immutable love and deep friendships, human bonding and failing, set in a singularly turbulent time in world history. Spanning rural Punjab, the Princely City of Patiala and the Southeast Asian Theatre of the Second World War, the novel poses epic questions: is happiness an elusive goal? How does one know right from wrong? Is love the ultimate aim of human life or a means to something else? What does it take to realize who one truly loves and how much?