What Maya Saw + Interview with Sujata Massey + New books from Harper Collins

Unless my maths is completely out of whack, it’s the thirteenth edition of Dear Reader and what a coinkydink that this is the one in which I write about Shabnam Minwalla’s What Maya Saw: A Tale of Shadows, Secrets and Clues (Harper Collins, Rs 299). Set in Mumbai, it’s like a Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but with a geeky heroine, loads of Mumbai history and creatures that are basically zombie-vampire hybrids. Minwalla’s book is technically for kids, but it’s great fun for anyone with a bit of an imagination.

Daughter of a tiger mother, Maya the Misfit is selected for a prestigious summer school program at St. Paul’s College, which is evidently inspired by St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai. This is not good news, because she was looking forward to a vacation that didn’t involve studying. Plus, as if homework during vacations wasn’t bad enough, there are monsters in her class and no one seems to be able to see them but Maya.

It turns out that the monsters — they’re called Shadows and can disguise their ghoulish appearance to elude most humans’ gaze — want a treasure that an elixir that a dead priest has hidden in St. Paul’s. Said dead priest has also left a set of clues that will help you find the elixir, and to make sure the monsters don’t get it, Maya and her summer school classmates must find it first. This requires them to traipse across Mumbai, staring at old structures and getting up close and personal with gargoyles. What Maya Saw is tense, frequently goosebumpy and let’s just say that if I see a kid in a fluffy pink dress, chances are I will yelp and point my wand at them or run for cover. The point is, it’s not going to be a particularly grown-up reaction. I wasn't crazy about the end, but I do hope there's a sequel.

If anyone’s looking for a book to adapt into a movie or series that will be as much fun for kids as adults… insert manic eyebrow waggling here.

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Remember A Murder on Malabar Hill? Sujata Massey was very generous with the answers she sent me when I interviewed her by email, for India Today. Since space is limited in print magazines, the magazine could only carry an excerpt of the interview. Here’s the whole thing:

On the inspiration for Perveen Mistry and the decision to set the novel in Mumbai:

Back in 2008, I was surfing the web and came across an Indian newspaper article about Cornelia Sorabji, the British Empire’s first woman lawyer. I was intrigued enough to print out the story and place it in a file. At the time, I was trying to get an idea about what women had accomplished in early 20th century India. I didn’t think anything more about it, because I was hard at work on a historical saga set in Calcutta that didn’t have anything to do with women lawyers. About seven years later, I decided to write a book that combined Indian history with the mystery genre. I intended my protagonist to be a woman living in 1920s India, so I had to consider the circumstances under which she’d be qualified to get close to the mystery. I didn’t want her to be an innocent who got pulled in accidentally time and again—the situation of the amateur female sleuth, Rei Shimura, in my first mystery series. This time around, it would be more realistic. It seemed a natural fit for my Indian heroine to be a solicitor whose clients might have issues with divorce, inheritance, and being charged with crimes.

India’s first two women lawyers—Cornelia Sorabji and Mithan Tata Lam—both hailed from Maharashtra. Because of that, I felt my lawyer needed to be a Bombay woman. Also, Bombay is a great zone for a writer. I’d been to Bombay before starting the series, and despite the traffic, I feel like it’s a pretty straightforward city to do research in. I can walk through many old streets in Fort that still have original buildings standing in good repair. That means a lot when I’m trying to imagine what my character sees from the winddow of her office. The more a city works at historic preservation, the more attractive it is to everyone -- including writers.

On the importance of the 1920s as the setting:

For so many reasons, the novel had to be in the 1920s. Firstly, I knew this was when two early women lawyers were working, so setting the story in those years made it believable to me. If I don’t believe it, I can’t happily write it! This was also the time that the beautiful neighborhood of Dadar Parsi Colony was coming into existence, and I dearly wished Perveen and her family to live in a duplex there. In the early 20th century, Parsis were just 6% of the population, but 1/3 of its lawyers. The era was full of tensions between the government and Indians. The women’s movement was gaining steam in the 1920s, so Perveen’s ability to draw women out and encourage them makes sense.

It’s a challenge not to default to one’s own sloppy modern language--nor make it stilted and old-fashioned. Being a reader of old books has helped me become comfortable, and I know there are ways to double check the date a term came into popular usage. I also have the added challenge of writing in British-Indian English rather than the American English I speak! How do I get a sentence across that is natural for someone who’s grown up in India? had the great pleasure of hearing an actress read aloud from the book in Delhi last week. It sounded lively and natural, and I was so relieved. The true test of dialog is reading it aloud.


The Parsi protagonist:

On the whole, I’ve heard the Parsis were very ambitious in encouraging their daughters to go to work. Perveen’s family expects her to graduate from college and do some work before marrying, which might seem unusual overall for the country, but not for the progressive, Bombay-based Parsis. I also knew that Cornelia Sorabji’s father was a Parsi, and both Mithan Tata Lam’s parents were Parsi. Because of how women lawyers started out in India, I felt the most logical thing was make Perveen a Parsi.However, I’m not part of that faith,so I consulted with Parsi people on customs, terminology, and so on. Nevertheless, I’m sure I’ve made some slips in language, so I look forward to learning more and staying in touch with experts in the community as I write more books that include Perveen.

On writing about women in a conservative, male-dominated era:

I love to write strong women characters, and both Perveen, who’s a Parsi lawyer, and Razia, who is a Muslim gentlewoman living in purdah, exemplify courage. Perveen is a 23-year-old Oxford educated lawyer who has to fight against everyday sexism just to be employed. She has the added stress of living as a woman separated from her husband, seemingly refused the chance to ever divorce and remarry. Yet she’s not bitter. Perveen is a friendly, confident friend to the whole Fort neighborhood and a responsible daughter committed to having a good relationship with her parents. Perveen can let her hair down a bit when she’s with her best friend Alice, a progressive Englishwoman she knows from Oxford who has moved to Bombay.

Another character in the novel, Razia, is a standout. Razia is a Muslim widow in her thirties who lives in purdah in along with two junior wives in an elegant bungalow in Malabar Hill. When Razia’s husband took a second wife, he suggested that Razia run the family’s charitable trust to stay busy and not miss him. She did this with skill and dedication, just as she worked at educating her daughter within the comfines of the home. When murder comes to Malabar Hill, Razia is the first to want to cooperate with Perveen, even though she’s putting herself at tremendous risk.

Which character of those two I like better is a tricky question. Razia exemplifies love and bravery and she’s just the kind of good friend I’d like in my corner. But I think my favorite is the irrepressible, determined Perveen! Because she’s got more books ahead of her—I hope--I’m working quite carefully to keep her options open. For instance, I’m not pairing her with a guy off any time soon. This is due to the boundaries of of the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, and also because I’ve found married female mystery protagonists face too many restrictions from their worried significant other. Perveen’s being single is a great boon, because it makes it easier for her to travel around India on more legal cases--and perhaps have a secret romance!

The importance of a backstory:

When a series begins, the protagonist’s personality is key to whether readers will relate to her. I wanted the reader to understand that Perveen wasn’t a feminist because she was a modern girl who listened to a lecture, but because she knows what it is to have a man raise a hand against her, and because she knows the unbreakable bonds of marriage can be deadly.

I chose to weave the backstory through the book. Even though the book is light on violence, Perveen’s post-traumatic issues play a role in the overall story. I want the reader to experience a scary cliffhanger with Perveen in 1916 and then slide into a 1921 chapter which is suspenseful in a different way. Our thoughts jump—why not story? Building tension is the name of the game in mystery.

The joys and challenges of writing:

As a girl, I loved playing in my dollhouse, setting up rooms and rearranging furniture and creating stories about what the dolls are doing. When I create fictional homes and offices and palaces in my books, I feel like I’m playing again. I also adore the historical research and realizing how I can work aspects of the British-Indian dynamic into plot twists. For instance, the dhak bungalows that remain throughout India are absolutely fertile spots for mysteries, so Perveen’s heading out of Bombay to stop at a dhak bungalow in the Western Ghats in Book 2. She’ll also visit a palace and I’ve spent time in Udaipur’s City Palace to get a sense of that luxury!

The hardest part was being able to describe scenes of old streets without having the luxury of being able to visit them the very day I was writing. I’d have to store that scene as a blank for fact-checking later in the year when I could travel to Mumbai. I suppose there may be virtual reality travel ahead to help me in the future. But that sounds wrong for a historical novel, doesn’t it?

Perveen’s next adventure has the working title The Satapur Topaz and is set in princely India. “This book was exciting to research and included travel to the hills for me,” she said. “And I’ve read a lot, from EM Forster’s memoir about working as secretary to a maharaja in princely India, to the late Maharani Sunity Devi’s Autobiography of a Princess. The twisted relationship between the British government and the royals—friendly on the outside, but still highly controlling—gives me many intriguing paths to follow.”

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Upcoming titles: Harper Collins

Harper Collins India has a lot of good stuff coming out in March. Here are a few that caught my eye.

The City of Brass
S.A. Chakraborty
Fiction, Rs 399

The first book of the The Daevabad Trilogy is set in eighteenth century Cairo and about Nahri, a healer and a con woman par excellence. When she accidentally summons a “daeva warrior” (seems like the first cousin of a djinn), she and the warrior must go on the run because they’re being chased by ifrits. As you do if you go around summoning magically warriors and falling in love with them. Reason for much excitement: the setting and characters are all Muslim, and that’s good news in the largely-bleached-of-colour landscape of modern fantasy.

Red Clocks
Leni Zumas
Fiction, Rs 599

Set in an America where abortion is illegal and in-vitro is banned, the novel is about five women find themselves wondering about the roles that society wants them to perform.
It’s quite bold to describe a novel as “The Handmaid’s Tale for this generation”, but yeah, I’ll bite.

Bring Me Back
BA Paris
Fiction, Rs 399

Finn’s girlfriend Layla disappeared ten years ago, while they were holidaying in France. Ten years later, Russian dolls are showing up on a much-married Finn’s doorstep and Layla’s sending him emails. Incidentally, his wife is his ex-girlfriend’s sister. Cue in shpooky music.

Borne
Jeff VanderMeer
Fiction, Rs 399

This is the first line of the synopsis: “In a ruined city of the future, Rachel scavenges a strange creature from the fur of a despotic bear.” How can you NOT want to read this book? Here’s a little more about this despotic bear whose name is Mord: “Mord once prowled the corridors of the biotech organization known as the Company, which lies at the outskirts of the city, until he was experimented on, grew large, learned to fly and broke free. Driven insane by his torture at the Company, Mord terrorizes the city even as he provides sustenance for scavengers like Rachel.” This is all sounding so strange that I feel like abandoning everything and starting on this right away. Plus, VanderMeer wrote Annihilation, which I enjoyed.

Other Minds: The Octopus and Evolution of Intelligent Life
Peter Godfrey-Smith
Non-fiction, Rs 499

How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually ‘think for themselves’? By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind – and on our own. Sold.


Soon: An Overdue History of Procrastination, from Leonardo and Darwin to You and
Me
Andrew Santella
Non-fiction, Rs 499

I am sold just by the title and the fact that I have spent more time doodling the cover of my notebook than actually writing in it. Santella draws on research in psychology, biology and behavioural economics, and on historical case studies of high-achieving procrastinators, from Leonardo da Vinci to Charles Darwin, to present a sympathetic, fact-filled and
highly personal defense of procrastination. When we procrastinate, Santella says, we are asking whether the things the world wants us to do are really worth doing. I feel like if I hadn’t been procrastinating, I could have written this book.

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Dear Reader will be back next week. Thank you for reading.