The Secret Keepers

‘I think I’ll go mad living in this house… What happens to my happily-ever-after?’ _  ‘Secret Keeper’, 1974 When Asha travels with her mother and sister from Delhi to her father’s ancestral home in Calcutta, it is supposed to be a temporary measure only; as soon as her father finds work in distant America, they will join him. In the meantime, there’s plenty to keep her busy: overcoming the conservatism of the extended family, becoming friends with her cousins, keeping her mother’s depression at bay, teaching a lesson to the neighbourhood boys who don’t think girls are ‘good enough’, fending off her sister Reet’s unsuitable would-be suitors, and so on. Overwhelmed by all that’s happening around her, Asha escapes to her rooftop hideaway every day, where she pours her heart out into her diary, her secret keeper. And it is here that she encounters Jay, her reclusive neighbour, who makes her heart beat faster…