A Distant Heart

2017 | Fiction & Poetry

Born to her parents in Mumbai as a result of prayer, pilgrimage, and every fertility treatment known to modern medicine, Kimaya is the first of her mother's babies to survive after seven miscarriages. Needless to say, her parents treat her like the miracle she is, and protect her from anything outside their mansion. But she develops a rare form or aplastic anemia at the age of ten that severely compromises her immune system and requires her to be isolated in a Laminar airflow room. Trapped in her ivory tower, she befriends the boy who shows up to wash her windows when he makes the math homework that befuddles her magically easy to understand with his brilliant mind. Rahul Savant was thirteen when his father died taking a bullet for Kimi's politician father. Rahul was left to take care of two younger siblings and his mother. He accepts Kimi's father's mentorship on the condition that he works off the charity as a servant in his home. As he struggles to take care of his family in his poverty and crime-ridden neighborhood he loses his beloved younger sister to illness and learns that blocking out his emotions is the only way to survive loss. But his friendship with Kimi is something he can restrict to the few hours he spends with her across the plastic curtain of her isolation room. As the years go by Rahul and Kimi develop a unique and deep friendship. He becomes her eyes to the outside world and she becomes his refuge in a cruel world. With Kimi's encouragement, Rahul makes his way into the extremely selective Indian Civil Services Police Cadre. When Kimi is given a new lease on life via a life-saving procedure, she and Rahul must navigate their undeniable attraction, their lost friendship, complicated family dynamics, and a web of lies that cut too close to home to learn the real meaning of courage, loss and love.

Sonali Dev (Author)