"The memory of that parting had never once left Sammi...
How long was soon, she took to wondering. Was seven years soon enough for the mayhem to cease, for Hari Singh to return home, for her life to fall back in place?"
In the autumn of 1939, seventeen-year-old Sammi has been married for only twenty-one days when her husband, Hari Singh, an officer in the British Indian Army, is summoned to fight in WWII. The heartbroken couple bid each other goodbye. Sammi awaits his return in her village, Aliwala, a hamlet with Sufi bearings in Punjab's hinterland.
It is 1946 but there is no word from Hari Singh. Caught between her feuding brothers, Jasjit and Kirpal, the now twenty-three-year-old Sammi clings to her husband's memory. India is on the brink of gaining independence from the British. Jasjit worries that independence will damage communal bonds and separate him from his closest friend, Zulfi Sheikh. Meanwhile Kirpal plans to get Sammi married to his boyhood friend, the wealthy Bachan Singh. Will Sammi be forced into a second marriage or will she find the courage to step out of Aliwala in search of a new life?
Inspired by true events, The Song of Distant Bulbuls is a moving saga of love and loyalty set in a singularly turbulent time in world history. Spanning rural Punjab, the Princely city of Patiala and the Southeast Asian theatre of WWII. the novel poses epic questions: is happiness an elusive goal? 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?
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