Book description
Suffocating in the small-town world of his parents, Vijay is desperate
to escape to the raw energy of Bombay in the early 1990s. His big chance
arrives unexpectedly when the family servant Raju is recruited by a
right wing organization. As a result of an article he writes about the
increasing power of sectarian politicians, Vijay gets a job in a small
Bombay publication, The Indian Secularist. There he meets Rustom
Sorabjee - the inspirational founder of the magazine who opens Vijay's
eyes to the damage caused to the nation by the mixing of religion and
politics. A year after his arrival in Bombay, Vijay is caught up in
violent riots that rip though the city, a reflection of the upsurge of
fundamentalism everywhere in the country. He is sent to a small tea town
in the Nilgiri mountains to recover, but finds that the unrest in the
rest of India has touched this peaceful spot as well, specifically a
spectacular shrine called The Tower of God, which is the object of
political wrangling. He is befriended by Noah, an enigmatic and
colourful character who lives in the local cemetery and quotes Pessoa,
Cavafy, and Rimbaud but is ostracised by a local elite obsessed with
little more than growing their prize fuchsias. As the discord
surrounding the local shrine comes to a head, Vijay tries to alert them
to the dangers, but his intervention will have consequences he could
never have foreseen. David Davidar is the author of the international
best-seller, The House of Blue Mangoes, which was published in sixteen
countries.
