Before dawn in 1900 Travancore, a twelve-year-old girl lies beside her mother, both weeping on the night before the wedding. Her mother warns that a wedding is "the saddest day of a girl’s life," hoping it will improve afterward. Night sounds sharpen the girl’s unease as she anticipates parting from home.

Rising early, the girl sits in her late father’s charu kasera and silently bids farewell to the lagoon and creek. She recalls her uncle’s oily announcement of a swift match and her mother’s nervous defense that life will be similar and the groom is of good means. The girl wonders why an older man with a child wants a poor bride without dowry and overhears her uncle dismiss rumors about a drowned aunt in the groom’s family.

Memories of her father flood in: learning letters on his lap, his promise of schooling, and his vow not to marry her young. She relives his fatal illness after a bishop’s posting to a damp, troubled parish; he returned fevered and died suddenly. That was her true saddest day, making her question how marriage could be worse.

She leaves the chair—her father’s relic—and readies herself as the household wakes. Steeling her heart, she clings to his teaching that faith reveals order beneath chaos. In imagination she speaks to her father and hears his reassuring counsel that God will be with her always. With that, she lifts her chin to meet the day and her fate.