During the siege he is kidnapped by Daud Suleiman ibn Shams al Basri, a sharp young Arab physician and pirate based in Chittagong.

Finally Dhumavati persuades her to take part in a Tantric ritual which involves killing a child, and in disgust she gives up the life of a guru and disappears to seek her own truth.

In the background of Sher Shah Suri’s and Humayun’s invasions of Bengal (1538–1540), Chandu sets off to look for Bajja and finds her herding pigs on top of a desolate mountain in Assam.

The first part of the book is set against the spice trade from Antwerp to Indonesia, the greatest network of goods and ideas the world has ever known, and the struggle for supremacy in Chittagong between Bengal, Tripura and Arakan, and the Portuguese empire.

In this cultural cauldron, established Hindu and Buddhist Tantric, Vaishnav and tribal traditions meet the three-centuries-old incursion of Islam and the dawning of contact with the West.