The year is 1947, and yet the momentous events of that turbulent time register only as distant thunder to Leela, the raja’s 13-year-old granddaughter. Like an older sister of Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, or Leo in The Go-Between, Leela’s ambivalent age—not quite child, not yet grown-up—makes her an interesting player. Shivani manages almost flawlessly to capture her oscillation between precocious princess and frightened kid in a narrative pacy enough to sustain the momentum of a true whodunit yet rich in descriptive detail about the decadent courtly life of rajas and their ranis: "My mother and nani settled comfortably back among the antimacassars to the soft rustle of peacock feather fans and the clinking bangles on the arms of the vas gharianis as they pressed their feet. Cool rose sherbet and the pleasant sound of the gold nutcracker demolishing betel-nuts lulled me."
As with the Borgias, the price of maintaining the purity of family bloodlines lies in inbreeding and incest, and just like their Roman counterparts 15 centuries before, the rulers of Sirikot are being consumed by their own sins. It’s karmic payback time, as the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons with resounding accuracy.
In one particularly telling moment, a priest asks the newly-incumbent raja how to dispose of his recently murdered father’s body. When he hesitates to deliver the traditional response—"Take him away and burn him"—he’s sternly admonished: "Kingship is eternal and unimpeded by human death. You too are just a vessel."
"You too are just a vessel"—the phrase lays low prince and pauper. You are your karma: at birth, your die is, literally, caste. With its democratic ring, the phrase has upheld a most viciously iniquitous feudal system: that allows rulers to rape, that holds servitude sacred. The novel is a lyrical farewell to an extinct way of life, a lament for those—the rulers as much as the ruled—who are bound by its laws, and a satisfyingly plotted tale of sin and retribution. Highly recommended.
