"Was my life really like Black Beauty’s? A series of masters, no real choices, just making do with whatever came my way?"

Asha was a child like any other. Cherished by her doting father, she grew up poor but happy in the shaded embrace of the Shimla hills during the British Raj. He kept her isolated from the dynamics between the locals and the goras who had claimed the city for their own, until one day, his passing left Asha alone. As her childhood fell away overnight, Asha realised that there were some questions she would now need to answer for herself …

Set in pre-independence India, The One-Way Ships follows Asha’s unusual life as she struggles with questions about the meaning of home and the perils and rewards of self-determination. She finds herself not only getting back on her feet but also saving someone she never imagined needed saving. Inspired by the real-life accounts of a generation of lost, unsung victims of the colonial machinery, the baby ayahs who played an indispensable role in the households of the Raj as doting mother-surrogates, but too often found that they themselves were very much dispensable.