North-east India, 1945. Tensions are rising, but fourteen-year-old Joya doesn't pay much attention to 'political business' – she is more concerned with doing well at school and having fun with her best friends. Yet when her father disappears without a trace, Joya's life falls apart.

Forced to drop out of school and support her mother by working in a garment factory, she refuses to accept that her father is gone forever, spending her nights sewing him a suit from scraps of fine material. But as political unrest grows and rumours of corruption spread, Joya questions the true nature of her father's disappearance. And who is the sinister figure known only as the two-tailed snake?