Tara Lane — Shama Futehally

The Mushtaqs, a business family of Bombay, are gracious, cultured and - above all - upright. As Tahera Mushtaq grows up, her staunch loyalty to the family's values is accompanied by a sense of separateness from the real world, a sense of living inside a fragile cocoon. In the course of time, the cocoon itself begins to disintegrate. Labour troubles undermine the family business, and the moral squalor of the outside world comes inexorably closer. As the family's privileged lifestyle is threatened, it moves, almost without knowing it, towards the whisper-thin line where corruption begins...