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 Hari Singh’s return in her village, Aliwala, a syncretic hamlet with Sufi bearings in the hinterland of Punjab. It is 1946 but there is no word from Hari Singh. He has been gone for nearly seven years. Caught between her two 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 age-old communal bonds and separate him from his closest friend, Zulfi Sheikh. Meanwhile Kirpal plans to solidify his social standing by forcing Sammi to marry his boyhood friend, the influential Bachan Singh. Will Sammi be forced into a second marriage or will she find the courage to step out of the narrow alleys of Aliwala in search of a new life?
Inspired by true events, The Song of Distant Bulbuls is set in a singularly turbulent time in world history. 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?
