A Googly in the Compound: a novel of the Raj

Dolly Sanjana brings her family together on every anniversary of her first husband's death, to the site of the tragedy in their Navsari home (200 miles along the coast, north of Bombay). On 25 September, 1945, the family comprises Dolly, Phiroze (her second husband, younger brother of her first, Kavas), Sohrab (her first son, fathered by Kavas), Rustum (her second son, fathered by Phiroze), and Daisy (Sohrab's English wife). The family breakfasts in the compound behind the bungalow as the novel opens. Victoria (a tiger, acquired as a cub, now a year and a half) occupies a freestanding room in the compound, once reserved for menstruating women. This scene spans the length of the novel, interspersed by the stories of each of the protagonists, beginning with Dolly's Story.Dolly Dalal, an orphaned 13-year-old in 1913, living with her uncle in Navsari, learns from her grandmother that whereas a rich man might lose his money, an ambitious man will win it back. She marries into the wealthy Sanjana family from Bombay, first the ambitious Kavas Sanjana-and, after his death, his younger brother, Phiroze.Phiroze Sanjana, Dolly's second husband, enlists during the Great War to secure the oil refineries at Abadan for the British, only to be pulled into the Siege of Kut-al-Amara-all because Dolly had preferred his older brother to himself. He returns with the loss of an arm to gangrene, bringing Dolly to the realization that she had always loved him best.Sohrab Sanjana, Dolly's son with her first husband (Kavas), enmeshed in a continual rivalry with his younger brother (half-brother), is an anglophile. He marries Daisy Holiday because she is English, despising himself despite his green eyes and light complexion for not being as English, recognizing he can be, at best, no more than an English wannabe.Rustom Sanjana, Dolly's son with Phiroze (Sohrab's half-brother), following in his father's footsteps when Daisy prefers Sohrab to himself, enlists in the Burma Campaign of WWII, almost dying before he exits the country with General Joseph Stilwell's column of refugees (114 Burmese, Americans, Chinese, Indians, British, and a dog named James).Daisy Holiday, from Clerkenwell (London), comes to Bombay on the eve of WWII searching for her lover, a journalist (and communist) who disappeared in the Soviet Union, from whom she receives a cryptic postcard from Bombay, only to find him married and herself stranded without means when the War closes the seaways behind her.The central scene, Day of the Tiger, relates the story of Victoria, adopted as a cub, the plan being to surrender the adult to a zoo, but the Sanjanas realize too late that the adolescent can be as dangerous as the adult. A family secret lies at the heart of the story, but the periphery is no less inviting: among other events, two lovers make a heartstopping escape from Stalin's Soviet Union, Londoners show themselves to be Parisians under the skin during Jubilee Day, and a yogi is exposed for a fraud by a monkey."A 'class' act of historical proportions, [the novel] rips into the conventional class hierarchies between British and Indians, upper class Indians and lower."-Deccan Herald"A family's long-simmering tensions boil over during a trip to the old homestead in this literary novel.... The result is a wide-lensed meditation on power dynamics-within countries and within families.-Kirkus Reviews

Author: Boman Desai
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 05/13/2021
Pages: 436
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.28lbs
Size: 9.02h x 5.98w x 0.89d
ISBN13: 9798716256620
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Historical | General

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