Adaptation of V.S. Naipaul's Pulitzer prize-winning novel. Ganesh Mandvi, an Indian schoolteacher in Port of Spain, Trinidad. After his father's death, he decides to stay in his home village and attempt to fulfil his dream of becoming a writer. In order to help make ends meet, he takes up his father's trade as a masseur. An apparent miracle turns him into a local legend and sets him on the road to success.