THE DEATH OF MR LOVE
By Indra Sinha
Scribner, 584pp, $27.95
Like James Fox's White Mischief or Dominick Dunne's The Two Mrs Grenvilles,
this first novel from Anglo-Indian writer Indra Sinha is based on a
real murder - the Nanavati case which electrified Bombay society in
1959. For those unfamiliar with it (which included me until Mr Love
landed on my desk), the details are as follows. When Commander Kawas
Nanavati killed his English wife Sylvia's lover, Sindhi businessman
Prem Ahuja, popular opinion was solidly behind him, with a jury
acquitting him on the basis that Ahuja, a serial adulterer who'd made a
hobby of seducing lonely navy wives, had it coming.
The judge refused to accept the verdict - a startling enough
development in itself - sentencing the outraged husband to a prison
term. After a public outcry, the state governor, Vijayalakshmi Pandit,
pardoned Nanavati, who sensibly left the country.
Those bare facts make a sensational enough story. But there was
another woman in the Nanavati case, known only as "S", and Sinha's
story speculates on how she might have been affected by Ahuja's murder.
It's narrated by Bhalu, childhood friend of Phoebe Killigrew, daughter
of English expat Sybil ("S"), another of Ahuja's lovers. He discarded
her once she became pregnant, and Sybil had a brutal abortion. Her best
friend is an Indian writer, Maya, Bhalu's mother, who fictionalised the
affair in a story entitled Retribution.
It set the scene for another crime that destroyed Sybil and Maya's
lives; all is revealed 40 years later, when the adult Phoebe, armed
with her mother's diaries, persuades Bhalu, now living in England, to
return with her to Bombay to confront the perpetrator of their mothers'
misery.
With its intrigue, secrets, scandals and love triangles, The Death of Mr Love
has much in common with a Bollywood extravaganza, starting with its
chaotic exposition. It has to be said Sinha is discursive to the point
of occasionally losing sight of his theme, which doesn't really emerge
until a few hundred pages in. It's the type of yarn usually described
as a saga, meaning voluble, colourful and ultimately developing its own
momentum under sheer weight of words. The exotic setting (to Western
readers) and wealth of detail about Indian life has its own charm,
however. Take Bhalu's aside on the correct way to dispatch a parent to
eternity:
"Had we been in India, my head would have been shaved, leaving only
a tassel of hair hanging down the back of the skull - the choti, as
worn by Hindu boys. Grandfather used to tie my father's choti to a hook
in the ceiling to stop him nodding off over his textbooks. I would have
circled the pyre five times, widdershins, before setting it alight.
Then I would have had to wait, enduring all the barbecue smells and
sounds, until the flames had exposed my mother's skull bones and baked
it brittle, after which, taking a heavy staff, I would break her head
like a coconut. This duty of the eldest son - my father had fulfilled
it for my grandfather, my grandfather for my great-grandfather, Great-
for Twice-Great and Twice-Great for Thrice-Great, the rebel, who
survived the carnage of the late 1850s to live to a ripe and
cantankerous old age - is done to free the soul to begin its journey
along that narrow ancient path which leads to the other world."
Mr Love offers a lot of story, in an anything-but-linear
narrative. So brace yourself for a torrent of information, be prepared
to invest some time in unravelling it, and settle back to enjoy the
journey.
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