This is a story of human emotions—love, greed, jealousy, forbearance, desire and forgiveness—asthey play out in the inner sanctum of the home.Maa revolves around four characters in a turn-of-the-nineteenth-century setting in the aftermathof the social churning caused by the Bengal Renaissance. Aurobindo Basu is the well-educatedscion of a rich, influential Kayastha family. He has two wives: Manorama, the charming daughterof poverty-stricken parents whom he married against his father’s will and who was soon disownedby his patriarchal father; and Brajarani, a beautiful, wealthy, strong-willed lady who Aurobindo wasforced to marry due to the threat of disinheritance.While the old patriarch also disowned Manorama’s son Ajit, Brajarani was unable to produce an heir. Manorama lived in dire straits but found fulfilment in caring for Ajit; in contrast, Brajaranihad everything that a woman could materially desire but was bereft of her husband’s love and wasimmensely resentful of her abandoned co-wife. What such a situation can do to a young, innocentmind is reflected in Ajit’s coming of age.Maa is a period piece on the private world of Bengali women as viewed through the unique lensof an extraordinarily gifted writer who belonged to and knew that society intimately.