Bhavika Govil

Mira, her older brother Ashu, and their mother have always been a family of three. Their life is filled with familiar comforts—singing together in the car, watching television on the sofa and spending holidays at a mango farm. From the outside, they appear inseparable. But beneath their closeness lie questions no one quite knows how to answer and secrets each of them is keeping from the others.

Nine-year-old Mira notices far more than the adults around her realise. Fourteen-year-old Ashu carries feelings and desires of his own, while their mother remains guarded about the past—particularly the absence of the children’s father.

Over the course of one sweltering Indian summer, the fragile boundaries protecting their family begin to break down. Long-hidden truths rise to the surface, forcing Mira, Ashu and their mother to confront parts of themselves and one another that they have tried to keep buried.

Tender, intimate and quietly unsettling, Hot Water is a coming-of-age family story about childhood, motherhood, secrecy and the complicated nature of love—particularly the ways the people we love most can both hold us together and cause us the deepest hurt.