City of Destruction by Vaseem Khan
Like the earlier books in the Malabar House series, this one has an intricate plot that must be unraveled by the delightful Persis Wadia, the newly independent India’s first woman police inspector. With those who govern the new nation already pulling in different directions, Persis manages to stop a lone young man from assassinating the hawkish politician defence minister.
To find out who or what goaded the boy into violence, Persis must come to terms with her own shock at the event and solve a literary conundrum, not to mention tangling with snobbish British spies who are working with Indian Intelligence. When she finds herself face to face with a well-known gangster, her impulsive character naturally tempts her into danger. Again.
With the Englishman Archie Blacksmith, her colleague and love interest, in a new kind of danger, Persis is not at her best. As events unfold, Khan plumbs her character ever more deeply, especially when Archie’s brother shows up and tells her more about Archie than he ever told her himself.
Surprisingly, Aunt Nussie proves both perceptive and sympathetic. Admitting that Archie is “dashing and intelligent, but…” Unable to finish her sentence, she leaves the words white and British “hovering in the air between them like a pair of angry hornets.”
Using brief scenes and bits of dialogue, Khan conveys the social atmosphere of the police station. When Persis’s colleague tell her his wife has joined the all-India Congress, he blames Persis for inspiring her, then complains that his daughter’s a “militant,” and he has to listen to his wife say he’s oppressing her. “Sometimes I think it was better under the British,” he comments. “At least a man didn’t feel outgunned in his own home.”
Vaseem Khan’s narrative technique allows him to maintain an intimate proximity to Persis while simultaneously embodying an ironic observer. This allows scope to share his humour, along with sharing fascinating historical details and posing philosophical conundrums.
This third person narrator comments on the scenes, situations and context around Persis, using delightful imagery. He characterizing of the ranting politician as a “ringmaster hurling sardines at applauding seals” serves as an acerbic evocation of contemporary news stories. In the early pages of the novel, this narrator prepares us for the setting, speaking of a turbulent India, “riven by communal tension, feudal agitation, and a crisis of identity.”
Back in the plot, we follow Persis into an office building that is “as hot as the inside of a tenor’s trousers.” Throughout the story, figurative language portrays Indian weather, culture and animals, thus grounding the reader deeply in time and place. On a second visit to a a certain scholar’s office Persis wonders what’s changed when she recalls recalls the previous occasion, when it looked as if “a pair of tigers had had a wrestling match in there. Refereed by an elephant.” Naturally she wonders what’s changed.
I love learning history by reading mystery,* and Khan never disappoints. In this volume, I learned a bit about the Bombay Jews, the Reserve Bank of India, and Delhi college. I also found out some background on the city of Delhi, where the Mughals arrived in the 1500s with ranked cannon. Led by a descendant of Genghis Khan, they quickly overcame the Mamluk Turks with their elephant cavalry, and went on to rule for three centuries. Later the city was taken by Marathas, Sikhs, and Iranians before the British arrived.
Equally fascinating was finding out the origins of infrared photography, Bombay University’s Wilson College, and the Bombay Cotton Exchange. As we follow Persis around the city, we remain sharply aware of the settings — from the shabbily furnished Ramayana Press to the opulent Taj Mahal hotel, “built by a Bombay businessman, reputedly in response to an insult.” It is in one of the luxurious rooms of that institution that Persis frets about the case and pours herself “a drink so stiff it could have been used as a girder.”
Goaded into disobeying her superiors by impulsiveness, guilt, and a burning desire to solve the crime, Persis is frustrated when she suddenly decides to go to Delhi. Buying a ticket proves so “unnecessarily protracted” that when it is finally accomplished, we see her fuming on the platform, awaiting her train with “a single suitcase and a grudge.”
This tale is further enriched by philosophical commentary. Persis is a deep thinker who takes the question of justice seriously and wrestles with a variety of moral issues. Waiting on a stakeout, she wonders what “the point is of having agency if you continue to make the same mistakes,” and concludes that hubris is “the ultimate leveller.”And death is “the ultimate democratic institution.”
*That was the title of a Studies course I taught at Simon Fraser University.