Most of the mathematical content occurs towards the beginning as the protagonist's character is being set up. She majored in statistics as an undergraduate:

Because of her choice of major and her success in school, she was pigeonholed into the role of the anti-social nerd:

However, the truth of the situation did not quite fit that stereotype. Her business internship after earning a graduate degree in statistics turned out to be a disaster, she continued to dream of romance and she did not share her colleagues' love of statistics:

Soon, she finds romance in the form of a physicist that a friend sets her up with. There is even a bit of statistics there, which she uses to analyze their sexual encounters, but mathematics becomes less important as the main plot develops.

The city of Mumbai, where they live, faces nuclear disaster and its society collapses into lawlessness. With the aid of a gay man named Jaz, she searches the city for her lover and witnesses both human horror and the appearance of Hindu gods.