The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Seher arrives at Cloud Cottage, where she experiences nostalgia for her family. Manav is embarrassed when his friends learn the truth about Seher’s departure. He tries to convince Seher to come home, but Seher refuses to return to the falseness and hypocrisy of her old life. Despite Manav’s appeals to her love for him, Seher insists on her desire to be alone, reassuring him that she will not seek divorce. Manav begrudgingly resigns himself to her answer.

Recalling Marie’s observation, Sonia encourages Ilan to seek help for his mental illness. Though Ilan acknowledges that something may be wrong with him, he ultimately declines.

Ilan becomes paranoid that someone wants to kill him. Sonia gives him the Badal Baba amulet for protection. Its design distracts him from his paranoia. Soon after receiving the amulet, Ilan gets more attention from art magazines and curators. Ilan turns ecstatic over his good luck, which affects Sonia as well.

One afternoon, they find a woman in Ilan’s apartment, who turns out to be Ilan’s wife. Though Sonia denies she is one of Ilan’s “secret girlfriends,” she moves out of the apartment immediately. Ilan’s wife explains that Ilan needs to cheat on her to become confident and therefore successful.

Sometime after leaving, Sonia realizes that she had forgotten to take Badal Baba back from Ilan.

Ulla takes Sunny to Prairie Hill to meet her parents. Though she assures Sunny that her parents will accept him, Ulla issues strict rules to both sides to prevent them from offending each other. Their restrained manners only irritate Ulla even more.

Ulla and her parents take Sunny on a tour of Prairie Hill. This ends with a visit to the house of an Indian American doctor named Reddy and his wife, Padma. Sunny is so fascinated by their assimilation that he offers to pitch a story about them at work.

On the plane back to New York, a standoffish Ulla reveals that her parents had been performing for Sunny. This makes Sunny feel a sense of falseness when they return to their apartment.

In late 1998, Satya shares that he is experiencing depression tied to loneliness. He has called his mother to arrange matches for him. He asks Sunny to accompany him to India to help select his prospective wife.

Babita hopes that Sunny will bring his American girlfriend to India, believing it will have a positive effect on her reputation. She recalls her vacation to the United Kingdom several years earlier. She had committed herself to studying English culture before she arrived, but was embarrassed to learn that many of the Indians there were working-class laborers. Sunny’s American life makes Babita feel that she can overcome the shame she felt in Britain.

Sonia loses her job at the gallery. Since she no longer feels safe without Badal Baba, Sonia takes Lala’s advice to return to India.

Sonia arrives in Delhi and learns about her parents’ separation. She tries to hide the wounds of her emptiness from Manav while Manav tries to hide the wounds of his humiliation. Manav immerses himself in studies of history and music. He takes Sonia to meet with his friends, nearly all of whom comment on Sonia’s failure to settle in the United States. The only exception is Ferooza, who relates to Sonia because of her experiences abroad.

Deciding that Sonia needs to work to overcome her sadness, Seher and Ferooza connect Sonia to a cultural ambassador named Srimati Mithal, hoping that Sonia can write for her culture magazine, Kala. Mithal redirects Sonia to her daughter, Maya, the magazine’s editor-in-chief. Maya asks Sonia to send her a writing sample.

Sonia decides to write a piece on Delhi, focusing on the rivalry between two kebab stalls in Khan Market. She momentarily doubts herself when she feels that the piece will offend Ilan’s aesthetic sensibilities. Manav tries to help, but his constant intrusions force Sonia to retreat to Cloud Cottage.

Sonia and Seher have a tearful reunion at Cloud Cottage. Seher immediately suspects that love is the reason for Sonia’s sadness, but she does not confront her about it. Sonia, meanwhile, is afraid of telling her mother about Badal Baba.

Sonia starts writing her article with confidence and patience. She wonders if this is the influence of being in an artist’s house, though Siegfried’s memory also reminds her of Ilan. Sonia decides that she must work towards becoming indifferent to Ilan’s opinion of her. She looks through Siegfried’s belongings to distinguish him from Ilan. Seher, meanwhile, starts translating Siegfried’s diaries.

One day, Mina Foi calls Sonia to inform her that Dadaji has passed away.

On the journey to New Delhi, Satya embraces Indian manners, which Sunny finds dishonest, though other travelers admire him for his behavior. Sunny, on the other hand, realizes he feels repulsed by other Indians.

When Sunny arrives in New Delhi, Babita tries to get him to talk about his American girlfriend. Sunny is too embarrassed by how rancorous his relationship with Ulla has become to admit anything. Being in Delhi reminds Sunny of his father. Before he died, Ratan had been asked by his employers to engage in corrupt business practices, which he refused and was fired over. In the present, Babita still sides with the business, believing her husband should have abandoned his principles.

Ratan’s surviving brothers, Ravi and Rana, are similarly unprincipled, though Rana is now embroiled in debt with the criminal underworld. The brothers have proposed ending their conflict with Babita and selling Panchsheel Park. Babita has delayed her decision, though she wonders if this will allow her to follow Sunny to New York.

Satya is nervous about meeting his prospective matches. The first meeting is with a girl named Manjula and her parents. Sunny tries to break the awkward silence by asking questions about the family’s apartment building. This causes him to hijack their attention away from Satya. Leaving the apartment, Sunny expresses his disappointment with Manjula and her family, oblivious to Satya’s irritation with him.

The next house they visit is in a gated community. The girl, Payal, and her family have a Western lifestyle, though her father refuses to emigrate for fear of being treated like a second-class citizen. Once again, Sunny captures the family’s attention with his residence in New York, enraging Satya, who fails to impress them with his residence in Rochester.

That night, Satya calls Sunny to forbid Sunny from accompanying him to his next meetings. Babita suggests that they visit Sunny’s grandparents in Allahabad instead. Sunny tries to call Ulla, but she does not answer.

Sunny and Babita take the train to Allahabad. Bringing Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles to read on the journey, Sunny realizes that most Indians wouldn’t make good novel readers since few of them have the empathy and humility to appreciate other people’s stories.

When the train stalls, Sunny walks around with a journalistic interest in the other passengers. Among the various people he observes, he sees a woman reading Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. Curious, he passes by her several times to get a better look. Babita, fleeing someone she recognized in her carriage, finds Sunny and disrupts the potential for interaction with the woman.

Upon arriving in Allahabad, Babita and Sunny learn that the Colonel’s friend, Lawyer Shah, has died. Babita sees an opportunity to visit the Shah family when she learns that they are moving out of their house. Sunny follows to the house to pick her up and sees the same copy of Snow Country from the train.

Manav is shocked to learn that Dadaji has already been cremated on Mina Foi’s orders. He and Sonia take the night train to Allahabad. Sonia feels guilty because she couldn’t convince Seher to leave Cloud Cottage for the funeral.

When the train stalls, Manav walks around the carriage and bumps into Babita. They share their respective plans of traveling abroad. Sonia passes the time reading Snow Country. A man walks by several times to look at her book.

Sonia and Manav arrive at the house, where Mina Foi explains that their relatives pressured her into expediting Dadaji’s cremation. She adds that they have been evicted from the house and that she has allowed the house servants to go through Dadaji’s belongings.

When the power goes out, Mina overhears a woman speaking to the family cook, Khansama, offering him employment at her household. She learns that the woman is Babita and rebukes her for attempting to “steal” their family cook. Manav walks in on the confrontation and introduces Sonia to Babita.

Sunny then arrives to pick up Babita. Eager to meet the woman reading Snow Country, he tries to stall before he and his mother leave. He is introduced to Sonia, who describes her loneliness as the defining byproduct of American individualism. When they shake hands, they recognize that the other person is trembling.

After the Bhatias leave, Manav tells Sonia about Ratan’s honor and Babita’s lack of it. Mina reminds Sonia that Dadaji had attempted to marry her to Sunny.

That night, Babita cannot sleep. She is bothered by the discussion of her travel aspirations with Manav, which dredges up the shame she feels around seeing other people of color in Western countries. This leads her to realize, however, that the real reason she is awake is that she had observed Sunny’s infatuation with Sonia. She later reminds Sunny about the failed marriage arrangement and tries to misrepresent Sonia as a woman destined for spinsterhood.

The next morning, Sunny thinks of Ulla and recognizes her as the ideal American individual Sonia had described. Satya later calls to tell Sunny he has found a wife. Sunny feels envious that Satya’s life feels more real than his own.

Manav and Mina learn that Dadaji gambled most of his life savings away, leaving behind only a small inheritance. They submit the family jewelry for valuation, but the jeweler advises them to retain their pieces. When they get home, the siblings take their anger out on Khansama, who starts to resent his employers.

Due to her Christian leanings, Mina accepts an offer to work at a convent school as a dormitory matron. It is described as the happiest period of her life.