A mysterious letter from a hundred-year-old English man. A body found on the railway tracks in an Indian gold mining town. An Australian journalist's trip to the abandoned Kolar Gold Fields. What connects these random events?Colour of Gold moves back and forth over the decades, in the process unravelling the secrets of a sleepy little town which in its heyday boasted the richest gold mines in India. White men and their white wives and Indian mistresses, Indian officers who tread the fine line between their traditional upbringing and Western lifestyle, men and women who fall in love and lust across boundaries of class and race -all come alive in this fascinating saga spanning a century.