In 1956, the Senguptas travel from Calcutta to rural Malaya to start afresh. In their new hamlet of anonymity – a small settlement on the edge of a British rubber plantation – the couple gradually forget their troubled pasts and form new ties. But this second home is not entirely free and gentle. A complex, racially charged society, it is on the brink of independence even as communist insurgents hover on the periphery. How much can a newcomer meddle before it starts to destroy him? Shuttling in time and temper between the politics of a small Malayan town and the anguished years of pre-Partition Bengal, between the Malayan Emergency and Direct Action Day, between indifference and lust, A Flutter in the Colony is a tender, resonant chronicle of a family struggling to remain together in the twilight of Empire in Asia.