Yesterday's Papers Synopsis
Joe Ross is a jaded music journalist for a slowly dying national newspaper. He has a raft of failed relationships, drinks heavily and often falls asleep in the work toilets. He's a mess and haphazardly believes that a press trip to India to investigate his beloved grandmother's ancestry might give him some serenity.
Elizabeth, Joe's grandmother, is a widow who has hidden her Anglo-Indian roots, encouraged by her bullying late husband Cecil, her entire adult life. She has been taught to be ashamed of her ancestry and of the fact that her Welsh father, a former World War One veteran and a tea planter in Assam, shipped her off to be educated, from ages 3-17, at a Himalayan hill station school in Kalimpong. Far away from her father's judgmental friends and away from her troubled Indian mother, Devoki.
Elizabeth's one succour growing up was her younger brother Seymour, but she feels let down when her treasured sibling falls in love with Chitra, an Indian servant at her father's plantation. The young lovers' affair is very short-lived and Dekovi cruelly expels Chitra from the plantation when she discovers her pregnant.
Seymour joins the Merchant Navy, never learning of the pregnancy, and dies, aged 24, from a terrorist attack near Port Said. Joe persuades Elizabeth to confront her past and the mercurial octogenarian meets a like-minded man, Robert, who once attended her school at a reunion dinner. This gentle soul brings out the best in Elizabeth and re-energises her interest in her own history.
Joe, after a number of chaotic episodes in London, engineers his way to India to cover a music festival in the Himalayas. After a disturbing time in Delhi, where he drops acid, witnesses a death and think he's fallen in love (with a hotel receptionist), Joe befriends two Americans and deeply irritates one of his fellow music journalists, before visiting Elizabeth's hilltop school and unearthing a letter that points to the whereabouts of Seymour's one great love.
Joe returns to Delhi, where he fortuitously lands his ideal job (as a cricket correspondent), encounters three surprise guests (including his grandmother and Martha, a colleague whose taken a shine to Joe) and meets a dying Chitra who, in a state of confusion, believes Joe to be Seymour and tells him that she loves him one last time. Elizabeth too visits Chitra, apologising to her and holding her hand as she passes away.
Joe Ross is a jaded music journalist for a slowly dying national newspaper. He has a raft of failed relationships, drinks heavily and often falls asleep in the work toilets. He's a mess and haphazardly believes that a press trip to India to investigate his beloved grandmother's ancestry might give him some serenity.
Elizabeth, Joe's grandmother, is a widow who has hidden her Anglo-Indian roots, encouraged by her bullying late husband Cecil, her entire adult life. She has been taught to be ashamed of her ancestry and of the fact that her Welsh father, a former World War One veteran and a tea planter in Assam, shipped her off to be educated, from ages 3-17, at a Himalayan hill station school in Kalimpong. Far away from her father's judgmental friends and away from her troubled Indian mother, Devoki.
Elizabeth's one succour growing up was her younger brother Seymour, but she feels let down when her treasured sibling falls in love with Chitra, an Indian servant at her father's plantation. The young lovers' affair is very short-lived and Dekovi cruelly expels Chitra from the plantation when she discovers her pregnant.
Seymour joins the Merchant Navy, never learning of the pregnancy, and dies, aged 24, from a terrorist attack near Port Said. Joe persuades Elizabeth to confront her past and the mercurial octogenarian meets a like-minded man, Robert, who once attended her school at a reunion dinner. This gentle soul brings out the best in Elizabeth and re-energises her interest in her own history.
Joe, after a number of chaotic episodes in London, engineers his way to India to cover a music festival in the Himalayas. After a disturbing time in Delhi, where he drops acid, witnesses a death and think he's fallen in love (with a hotel receptionist), Joe befriends two Americans and deeply irritates one of his fellow music journalists, before visiting Elizabeth's hilltop school and unearthing a letter that points to the whereabouts of Seymour's one great love.
Joe returns to Delhi, where he fortuitously lands his ideal job (as a cricket correspondent), encounters three surprise guests (including his grandmother and Martha, a colleague whose taken a shine to Joe) and meets a dying Chitra who, in a state of confusion, believes Joe to be Seymour and tells him that she loves him one last time. Elizabeth too visits Chitra, apologising to her and holding her hand as she passes away.
