Sripathi receives a phone call from Dr. Sunderraj informing him that Maya and Alan have died in a car accident in Canada.

Nirmala wails and beats her fists against Sripathi after learning Maya is dead, blaming him for driving their daughter away.

Sripathi visits his old friend Raju and confesses his guilt over the nine years he refused to speak to Maya.

Sripathi purchases airline tickets to Vancouver, taking the first concrete step toward bringing Nandana back to India.

Sripathi spends weeks in Vancouver packing up Maya's house while Nandana hides in her room and refuses all contact.

Sripathi and Nandana fly back to India; Nirmala meets them at the train station and warmly embraces her granddaughter.

Sripathi's boss Kashyap informs him that the company is relocating to Madras and that Sripathi will be let go.

Ammayya sneaks into Nandana's closet while the family is out and steals Maya's old coat.

The family performs temple rites for Maya and scatters her ashes in the sea near Torturpuram.

Nandana accepts a dare from neighborhood girls to walk through the dangerous Tunnel and ends up taken in by Mrs. Poorna.

Sripathi goes out alone in a torrential storm to search for Nandana and suffers a complete emotional breakdown.

Arun finds Sripathi collapsed in the storm; Mr. Poorna returns Nandana to the family and she speaks her first words.

Nirmala arranges for Putti to marry Gopala Munnuswamy, and Arun announces he has accepted a job in Delhi.

Big House floods when a sewage main bursts beneath it; Ammayya collapses after wading through the sewage and dies at the hospital.

The family scatters Ammayya's ashes in the same spot as Maya's; Sripathi and Arun sit together watching sea turtles come ashore and reconcile.

Sripathi Rao receives a phone call informing him that his estranged daughter Maya and her husband Alan have died in a car accident in Canada, leaving their seven-year-old daughter Nandana an orphan. After nine years of refusing to speak to Maya, Sripathi must travel to Vancouver to collect his granddaughter and bring her back to the family home in Torturpuram. Back in India, the family strains under financial pressure and grief while Nandana adjusts in silence, and Sripathi soon learns he is also losing his job. A crisis involving Nandana's disappearance forces Sripathi into a storm where he suffers an emotional breakdown that finally cracks open his long-buried guilt and grief. Following Ammayya's death in the wake of a house flood, Sripathi reconciles with his son Arun at the sea's edge, and the family moves toward a new and hopeful chapter.

The headline events that drive the Rao family's story from devastating loss to hard-won renewal.

Sripathi secretly writes letters to the editor each morning under the pseudonym Pro Bono Publico, never signing his real name.

Nandana waits at Aunty Kiran's house in Vancouver, growing frightened as her parents fail to come and collect her.

Dr. Sunderraj and Kiran sit Nandana down and tell her that both her parents have died in an accident.

Nirmala teaches neighborhood girls traditional Indian dance, explaining that Lord Rama's humble walk makes him the true hero.

Nandana refuses to hold Sripathi's hand or let him carry her backpack when they depart Vancouver for India.

Nandana arrives at Big House and lies awake in Maya's old childhood bed, wondering how long she must stay in India.

Nandana attempts to walk to the train station to escape back to Canada, but Karim the Mechanic returns her home.

Nandana hides inside the wardrobe behind her parents' coats; the family searches the house frantically before finally finding her.

Sripathi begins reading a book of Pablo Neruda poems that Maya had given him as a birthday gift years earlier.

Sripathi sits quietly on the verandah with Putti listening to birdsong and realizes how completely he has neglected his sister.

The matchmaker Gowramma brings a kind but unattractive high-caste therapist as a suitor for Putti, whom Putti ultimately refuses.

Sripathi buys scalped movie tickets and watches a film while trapped indoors during a police curfew, feeling guilty for enjoying it.

Raju visits Sripathi and confesses that he has sometimes considered smothering his disabled daughter Ragini out of mercy.

Arun brings home a lost kitten for Nandana, who bonds with the animal after her ordeal with Mrs. Poorna.

Sripathi sits down at his writing desk and chooses to write about the beauty of sea turtles rather than lodge a complaint.

From Sripathi's secret habit of writing anonymous letters to the editor to Nandana's confused wait for parents who will never arrive, these events establish the world the characters inhabit before and after the central tragedy. Nandana's slow and resistant adjustment to India — hiding in wardrobes, attempting escapes to the train station, and struggling with school — runs alongside Sripathi's gradual awakening to the people he has long neglected. Small domestic acts, such as finally reading Maya's gifted poetry book or sitting quietly with Putti at dawn, mark the turning of Sripathi's character from self-absorbed to aware. Secondary pressures keep the story moving, including a failed matchmaking visit for Putti and Sripathi being trapped in a movie theater during a police curfew. The pool closes with Raju's startling confession, a kitten brought home for Nandana, and Sripathi choosing at last to write about beauty rather than grievance — the final, quiet proof of his transformation.

The quieter moments and supporting storylines that build the emotional texture of the family's journey.

Sripathi recalls how he cut off all contact with Maya after she broke her arranged engagement and married Alan Baker instead.

Nandana finds a spider crawling in her parents' closet, crushes it underfoot, and tells it that it is dead.

Sripathi borrows money from the Torturpuram Trust Company after the staff learn of Maya's death and agree to extend a loan.

Sripathi finds one of Maya's old saris while packing her Vancouver house and remembers failing to tell her she looked beautiful.

Nandana lets Sripathi take her hand at the crowded Madras train station, overwhelmed by the heat and noise around her.

Sripathi apologizes to Nirmala at night and promises to scatter Maya's ashes in the sea and arrange a puja for her soul.

Putti leaves Ammayya behind and walks to the lending library alone, the first open act of independence from her mother.

Sripathi stares at his reflection in a cafe window and feels he has no dignity or renown, sinking into painful self-examination.

Nandana screams in front of her open closet when she discovers that Maya's coat has gone missing.

Putti secretly takes Ammayya's keys and searches her cupboard, discovering Maya's stolen coat hidden inside.

Arun returns home bruised after a protest and reveals that Munnuswamy's men threatened harm to Nandana if he continued his activism.

Sripathi collapses in the rainstorm, overwhelmed by flashbacks of sheltering young Maya and Arun during a similar childhood storm.

Sripathi tells the family he has decided to sell Big House, accepting that it is time to let go of the past.

Sripathi hands in his resignation before the company can fire him, choosing to act on his own terms for once.

Nandana picks a cheap red pen from Sripathi's collection to write her first letter to her friends in Vancouver.

The pool opens with two quiet but decisive revelations: Sripathi's recollection of how his pride destroyed his bond with Maya, and Nandana's private moment of crushing a spider and naming it dead — her unwitnessed acknowledgment that her parents are truly gone. Sripathi's movement toward humility proceeds through small but loaded acts: taking out a loan with renewed purpose, finding regret in a remembered sari, and finally speaking words of apology to Nirmala at night. The middle of the pool traces the family's growing resistance to Ammayya, from Putti's first solitary walk to the library to the discovery of the stolen coat hidden in Ammayya's cupboard, exposing her cruelty without ambiguity. Sripathi's collapse in the rainstorm while searching for Nandana becomes the novel's emotional hinge, the moment where nine years of grief and guilt finally break through. The pool ends with Sripathi choosing to resign on his own terms, sell the house he has clung to, and share his pen box with Nandana — each act a small, hard-won surrender to a future he can finally accept.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that force each character to change course.