The Romantics

Samar, a young Brahmin, restless within a fracturing caste system, escapes a future of small town jobs to live in the holy city of Benares and lose himself in books and solitude. But, far from offering him an undistracted existence the city forces all his silent desires into the light.

Miss West, an English expatriate, introduces him to a world of bewildering otherness: idealist Americans and Buddhist converts and to Catherine, a Frenchwoman who will ultimately destroy his isolation and equanimity. And always, in the background of Samar's thoughts is Rajesh, the poor student he meets at the university whose tragically compromised life shows him that a self divided between two worlds can inhabit neither fully.