A Naxal renegade elopes with the wife of the protagonist Mahendra Chamar who is supposedly dead for him after a police encounter. Other Maoists kill both. Years later the unmindful killing helps Mahendra to see through the stones, the reality which is opaque.
The book goes deep inside the mythical lands where magic is a part of life, where a nun leaves the church to raise the son of a Maoist, where revenge of a landlord leads to unthinkable scale of killings of innocents, and where a former armed guerilla transcends all barriers to become a 'god'.