". . . His father an atheist, a patrician, an incorrigible snob is living his last moments. Tan leaves the United States, where he has lived for many years, for his native province in India. In the Chamber of perfumes, redolent of the past, present and future, where lies the body of his father before the last rites, Tan realizes how much he is torn between Indian and American cultures. He recalls his university days in America during the rollicking sixties when he was basking in the tragi-comic heroic status attached to his Indian origin in the US in the fantasy-reality world of his fellow students who couldn't think beyond Ginsberg and Marcuse. Divided between Hinduism and Christianity, atheism and faith, between traditional family mores and sexual liberty, between a society enveloped by castes and sympathies for the extreme left, Tan feels obliged, in front of the remains of his father, to soothe the internal conflict that has unceasingly wrenched his soul."