Tormented by incidents associated with his mother, relives the same dream/nightmare. Again and again.
As his family gradually forgets his mother Piyal leaves them and comes to the city. He rents an old stable converted into an apartment that adjoins a house in the residential part within an old Dutch Fort close to the sea.
That is all he can afford given financial constraints.
A could rents out the main house with which Piyal’s meager residence shares a thin wall. Thanks to a window, located high on this wall, Piyal becomes privy to the most intimate elements of their lives.
Amanda. Thirty two years old. Piyal’s neighbour. At the beginning she is just a woman who feeds his fantasies. Later, through incident and conversation, Piyal begins to see and seek in her that which his mother no longer provides.
Nadee. Amanda’s lover.
Amanda’s worth, in his eyes, declines gradually from the moment he learns that she is a cancer patient.
This receives a further impetus when she suffers a miscarriage and loses his child. Amanda cannot suffer Nadee’s selfishness any longer and announces that she is leaving Sri Lanka in order to receive treatment.
Amanda has second thoughts while waiting to board her flight and finally calls Piyal and goes with him to her father’s house, now abandoned and in a sad state
of neglect and disrepair.
Even as her physical value depreciates, Amanda, realizing that Piyal’s fascination with her includes a strong sexual component, decides to release him from this. She seduces him.
He then realizes that she is a cancer patient and had lost a breast to the disease. He is filled with remorse.
Convinced that this was the most vile act he had thus far committed, Piyal’s penitence takes the form of utmost commitment to taking care of Amanda.
He moves with her with complete equanimity towards the rendezvous with death.
Nadee realizes that Piyal has attended to everything which he ought to have done. He has to live with that knowledge and consequently suffer.
We are left with the image of Piyal resting his head on the lap of a half naked woman resolved to the execution of the most natural of laws, death, in the manner of an invitation to expiate all unresolved and unbearable memories in a similar manner.
