Nevertheless, the first 216 pages of the book are so stiff with unnatural verb forms and cloying set-pieces about India in the rictus of the Independence Movement as to make one wonder whether two very different books have been ineptly stapled together by means of Shãn and a couple of other characters. The epilogue, entitled Trade Winds, repeats the style of the opening section. The book ends with a sudden crash, as the fateful Air India flight that bore Homi Bhabha to his death fetches up against the slopes of Mont Blanc in Switzerland.
Other oddities include proof-reading bloopers such as "Sieg Heil" repeatedly misspelt as "Seig Heil", "weir" for "wir" and the tilde above Shãn’s name which appears and disappears within a single paragraph. What place does a tilde have in an Indian name when words like ‘kisan’ are presented without italics? Blemishes of this sort may seem small, but they destroy confidence in the author. In the end, there is no way of knowing who she really is—the highly accomplished raconteur of Part II or the sentimental patriot of Parts I and III, staging yet another melodrama against the backdrop of the country’s all-too-brief glory days.
