Lucy and Tusker Smalley have stayed on in India after Independence in 1947. Given the chance to return to England after Tusker's retirement as a Colonel in the Indian Army, they have chosen instead to remain in the small hilltop town on Pankot, with its eccentric mix of the new order and the archaic rituals left over as a legacy from the Raj. Twenty-five years later the pattern of their lives has begun to crumble, as the winds of change sweep through modern India. Tusker's great friend Franky Boolabhoy protects them from his ruthless wife, who wants to evict them from the Lodge in which they live, and attempts to bridge the gap between the colonial glories of their past and the present realities of the new India.