Krishna
This is the story of the Judge, Jemanbhai Patel, who as a young man, went to England to complete his education and returned. He was a lonely man in UK and was seething with anger at everything. He, after retirement, lived alone with Mutt, his dog and his cook of many years in a sprawling bungalow in Kalimpong, at the edge of the Himalayas, in troubled times where GNLF men were asking for an independent Gorkhaland. The story also involves the judge’s wife, who was abused by the judge and sent away to her parents, and the child he never saw, who married a Parsee and gave birth to a daughter, Sai.
Sai was in a convent and was fourteen when her parents died in a car crash in Russia, where her father had gone after being selected to be a comonaut in a Russian space vessel. She then came over to live with the Judge and the cook. The cook had sent his son Biju, to America to make money.
The story inolves Lola and Noni, who are in competition with Mrs Sen (Sen’s daughter only went to America which has no history and joined CNN whereas Lola’s daughter was in UK and with BBC). Lola was widowed and lived with Noni. Uncle Potty and his foreign born friend Father Booty, who had to leave India as he did not have papers after a lifetime there.
Biju, having won a visitor’s visa to US melts away in New York and tries out a series of jobs as a cook and lives illegally with no medical help (He falls and thinks he has a broken leg)
Sai is initially taught by Lola and Noni and when, at sixteen, her lessons become too much for them, the judge hires a Nepali student Gyan, who falls in love with her and she with him. But he gets dragged into the GNLF sympathizing protest movement and they drift apart.
Lola’s house is totally taken over by the GNLF “boys”, she is humiliated when she goes to complain; the judge’s guns are stolen by other boys who some in; the police who come to investigate are not much better.
Biju ultimately decides to leave US and return; he cannot wait to meet his father again…
The story has several facets and at most parts, interesting. The narration brings to life several things – the north east with its terrorist movements barely controlled by a weak state government, an old cantankerous man living alone after antagonizing everyone around him, a fearful child who comes to live with a grandpa she has never met, the realities of the community where the strive for one upmanship with each other…
The ending seems a bit hurried and confusing. Generally a good story to read.
I would say a 7/10
— Krishna