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Journalist Smita Agarwal was born and raised in India until her family moved to the U.S. when she was 14. In the intervening 20 years, she hasn’t returned and had no intention to do so. When a dear friend and fellow journalist gets injured and needs help to finish covering an important story, Smita reluctantly leaves her vacation in the Maldives and flies to Mumbai.
As a writer who covers gender issues, Smita is used to constant travel, grabbing a small suitcase from her sparsely furnished apartment in New York and going where the stories are. She’s also accustomed to horrifying stories, but being back in India and taking a deep dive into the case her friend Shannon had been writing about becomes particularly painful and strikes close to home.
Meena, a Hindu woman from a small village, had fallen in love with a Muslim man and run off to marry him and live in his Muslim community. But her brothers and other village members attacked her for daring to marry a Muslim. They set fire to her small home and killed Meena’s husband and left her disfigured from burns. Despite the odds stacked against her, she decided to work with an attorney and prosecute the attackers. Now, they await the judge’s decision in the trial.
Smita tries to tell herself to stay neutral, to cover the story as a journalist, as she’s been trained. But she finds it increasingly difficult, as she wants so badly to see justice served and Meena to find peace. And after two decades of trying to bury the painful memories of her own past in India, they bubble to the surface as she works with Meena.
Smita also finds herself drawn to Mohan, a friend of Shannon’s who offers to drive her where she needs to go and serves as a sounding board and defender of modern India. She has a hard time understanding his love for his country, considering her own history there and the realities of Meena’s case: atrocities like this are still happening and still often overlooked by police and the legal system. How is it possible to love this country when it still can be so backward?
As the story progresses, Smita and Mohan grow closer, and Smita is able to work through some of her heartache and open herself to connections with other people, as well as a country she had abandoned.
Honor explores the story of two women, from very different circumstances, who both are looking toward the future and trying to stamp out ignorance on some level and who want to live a life that brings the best of their cultures and modern sensibilities together. It’s heartbreaking at times and hard for someone like me, so far removed from their experiences, to grasp how human beings can treat others as they do. It’s an important story, and while it can be devastating, it also has rays of hope.
Rated: High. Profanity includes almost 20 uses of strong language, about 35 instances of moderate profanity, about 25 uses of mild language, and nearly 80 instances of the name of Deity in vain. There are some sex scenes but little detail; one cuts from kissing to waking up in bed later; others are mentioned or implied. There are a number of instances of violence. One scene includes sexual violence; a boy and a tween girl are attacked in front of a crowd. The boy’s pants are pulled down. The girl is groped by another man. Things would have gone further for both but the attackers are stopped. There are several killings; a woman and her husband are burned badly in a purposely set fire; he dies and she is disfigured. A woman is beaten and kicked by a mob until she dies.
