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Parvati is a seven-year-old blind girl living in India with an alcoholic father, a prostitute mother, and a sadistic brother. But with two friends her age and a kind Jain to provide support, she manages to survive despite being a Dalit, or Untouchable.

Halfway across the world, Mortimer is an Oxford professor who discovers an old book by the economist Ricardo in a second-hand bookstall. A handwritten poem slipped within the pages catches his attention.

As Parvati struggles to avoid a child molesting sugar lord, Mortimer discovers the poem's author was a First World War British soldier who believed strongly in free trade. Mortimer's investigation into this powerful concept leads him to the book's owner, a doctor named Madeleine with whom he has an immediate connection.

As romance percolates between them, Madeleine heads to India to help a paediatric eye clinic where she sees the country's economic failings firsthand. She invites Mortimer to witness it for himself and thus sets all of these seemingly separate lives on a collision course with destiny that will change them all forever.