A thunderstorm blows the roof off a village school. Guruji, the school teacher, who lives in the school building with his family is forced to seek shelter in the lock-up of an abandoned police station. The school house opens to the sky and this intensely poetic novel opens to the inner world of a dozen characters - guruji, his wife, their two children, the village watchman, the tailor, the teashop owner at the railway station, the station master. There is also the worldly-wise grocer, Jivrakhan and there is the grocers wife, who listens to the radio because nothing else will fill the emptiness in her life. In the background of the bustle triggered by the storm and the arrival of the rail road, the villagers some times hear the elders who play the song of existence. A multi-layered, intriguing novel that is at once magical and realistic, Once it Flowers is an extraordinary evocation of modern India.