The Sea has the Answers

Of burning social realities of contemporary India Urmimala Das’s elegant, upper-crust life is shot to pieces when several former women colleagues of her husband accuse him of sexual harassment and assault. Devastated, she leaves home and goes to a seaside town where she hopes to achieve a measure of calm. As she grapples with her dilemmas about the future of her marriage and the lingering trauma of her past, Urmi finds herself plunging into an affair with a much younger man. Set in Kolkata and a small town by the sea, The Sea Has the Answers is the layered story of a woman’s search for self-realisation and the rekindling of her sexuality after her husband has been outed as a #MeToo perpetrator. It also delves into the psyche of a powerful man who stands exposed as a sex offender, and throws light on some of the grey areas around ‘consent’. Narrated in vibrant, often lyrical, prose, the novel is a nuanced exploration of power and its abuse, misogyny and sexual violence, faith and betrayal, self-deception and the many shades of truth — all of which plays out against the backdrop of some of the most burning social realities of contemporary India.