A heroine for all ages

After a long non-reading spell, I got this book to review. When you're just emerging from a reading drought, (if you will), what you look for is something that can quickly grab your attention and bring you back into the world of reading, as though you had never left. Luckily for me, Sujata Massey has created a wonderful character in Perveen Mistry so much so that I didn't feel the need to put the book down during my reading. In short, I read it in one sitting, after a long week at work, with nary a thought to the passage of time or the sleep that was beckoning.

Perveen Mistry is modelled after Cornelia Sorabji, "the first female graduate from Bombay University, the first woman to study law at Oxford University, the first female advocate in India, and the first woman to practice law in India and Britain" (from Wikipedia). Set in the early 1920s, this novel-slash-murder mystery is many things wrapped up inside a neat little package: a balanced treatise on early feminism vis--vis patriarchy; an indulgent journey through Parsiana - customs, food, culture, community - and its place in what was then Bombay; a gentle, non-judgmental look at cultural intersections of British, Parsi, and Muslim societies; a caressing glance at Bombay as an emergent maximum city; and last but not the least, a lovely little celebration of womanhood and coming of age. It is fantastic, to say the least, how Massey weaves all these components into a tight little narrative that doesn't feel hastily stitched together at any point.

Perveen Mistry, a woman in her early 20s, is the first female lawyer in 1920s India. Owing to societal strictures, she isn't yet allowed to practice law in court. She assists her father at his law firm, managing administrative details, keeping books, and closing details of the firm's cases. One of the cases she is given is the settling of the estate of a dead client who leaves behind three wives. The wives are from an orthodox Muslim family, purdah nasheens with no connect to outside society. That they have signed over their inheritance to charity doesn't sit well with Perveen, and she decides to investigate. This is where the two plotlines begin to intermingle: the fate of the three widows, and Perveen's own past that has led her to where she is now. And during this investigation, one of the secondary characters is found dead inside the zenana, thus adding to the complexity of the plot. How do all these plot points come together into a single story? Minor spoiler: they do. And how.

The reveal to each of the characters' backstories happens through a carefully orchestrated narrative, as it does to Perveen's history. Massey uses a beautiful plot device to reveal these backstories: through the emergence of some form of 'truth' in each of the secondary characters' plotlines, Massey brings you back to Perveen's backstory and the incidents that shape her into a woman with agency, with courage, with a voice. Constantly at odds with what she wants to achieve is her gender, and through several rites of passage, Perveen finds her calling and strides into the future without looking back. I don't want to reveal more about Perveen's subplot, for I think it will take away from your reading. Rather, I hope this review leads you to picking up the book and giving a holler to the author on Twitter. I don't say this lightly: you will find yourself whooping with joy during several developments in Perveen's story.

In this murder mystery-slash-bildungsroman, Sujata Massey masterfully does two things: she informs her readers of the cultural milieu and constraints for women in India back when feminism wasn't even a buzzword. And while she is doing this, the reader for one moment doesn't feel like they are being preached to. And in getting you to train your glance on a world that she has painstakingly researched, Massey - marvel of all marvels - tells an engaging story. A murder mystery at that! It delights me no end that this is the first in the Perveen Mistry series.

Massey also closes with a lovely juxtaposition of values: in the end, Perveen's own deliverance is the outcome of patriarchal overreach at the hands of her father. To what end feminism then? In Perveen Mistry, Massey has created a heroine for all ages, one I suspect will endure in the annals of fiction, much like Cornelia Sorabji has in the country's legal corridors.

Delightful read. Highly recommended.