The Violet Flowers, begins with the disappearance of a middle-aged Kashmiri hawker of shawls from somewhere around Kolkata. The son lands up in Kolkata, running from pillar to post, determined to find the father. A bus trip to the Bangladesh border lands him in trouble, as the border security personnel start misbehaving with him, taking him for a potential terrorist. Even the sympathetic young woman who befriended him on the bus feels that this is a futile search, but the diehard young lad is not ready to give up the search yet.