Merchant Ivory production adapted from the Pulitzer prize-winning novel by V S Naipaul. Ganesh Mandvi is an Indian schoolteacher in Port of Spain, Trinidad, who dreams of becoming a writer. After learning his father has died, he travels back to his village to make burial arrangements, and decides to stay there and write, to honour his father's memory. Ganesh turns to healing to help make ends meet. After he has 'cured' a young boy, word spreads and Ganesh becomes a local legend.