BOMAN DESAI

REVIEWER COMMENTS


Set against the backdrop of the last days of the Raj, Desai’s novel is a story of family conflict and skeletons in the cupboard. Secrets jostle against secrets and the [family’s pet] tiger cub grows as dangerous as the British Raj became for India. Both have tasted blood and both demand more. However, more dangerous than both the Raj and the tiger is another, older secret that lies at the heart of the Sanjana family. In his elaborate style, Desai spins a fascinating story of Parsi bloodlines, romance and intrigue, counter pointed by the events that made World War II such a watershed in the history of both India and the world.
Anjana Basu, "Tigers in the Cupboard," Harmony Magazine

Boman Desai's fifth novel, SERVANT, MASTER, MISTRESS, is a worthy successor to his A WOMAN MADLY IN LOVE. The language has the same drive and passion as his other books. At the same time, it is light, airy and beguiles us into the pages with a frothy dance. It is a sad observation that good authors like Boman Desai lose out on official recognition like awards simply because they do not rub their Indian-ness evangelistically into our faces.
"Thumbs Up," THE AFTERNOON DESPATCH AND COURIER, March 12, 2007

Boman Desai casts a spell as he inveigles us into the world of the Sanjanas. He has already created a gallery of vivid women characters who continue to people our imagination long after we have closed his novels. To this gallery he adds another memorable and passionately etched character in Dolly Dalal. The novel begins with the murder of Dolly’s mother by a servant, and the manner in which servants take revenge on masters and mistresses seems to reflect the relationship between the Indians and British. The structure of the novel is fascinating, the entire story wrapped around a single breakfast which takes place at the Sanjana residence in Navsari [during which the family’s pet] tiger cub gets its first taste of human blood.
Firdaus Gandavia, "The Day of the Tiger," Parsiana, March 7, 2006

Desai’s ability to be engaging in scenes of interaction between people, mostly between men and women, mostly between prospective lovers [is captivating]. The dialogues represent without effort the dialect of the tribe – Parsi, Indian, English, and Anglo – in question.
C. P. Surendran, "Disagreeable Daisy?" Tehelka, January 21, 2006

Servant, Master, Mistress


SERVANT, MASTER, MISTRESS (a summary)
The Sanjanas are at breakfast in the compound of their bungalow, Truth, in the town of Navsari, a few hours north of Bombay by train. The matriarch, Dolly Sanjana, prickles at the sight of her sons, Sohrab and Rustom, bickering over Sohrab’s English wife, Daisy. Sohrab is the son of her marriage to Kavas Sanjana (now long dead), Rustom the son of her marriage to Savak Sanjana (younger brother of her first husband). Dolly fears the rivalry between her sons may erupt in a violence as did the rivalry between the brothers she married in succession.

Adding to the tension is a servant, Alphonse Fernandez, watching from a window, blackmailing Daisy regarding a secret they share – and a tiger cub the family had adopted, planning to surrender the adult to a zoo, but the trouble begins when the cub, now an adolescent, gets its first taste of blood from a cut on Sohrab Sanjana’s finger.

This scene, spanning the length of the novel, provides the lynchpin for the individual stories of the protagonists: (1) Dolly’s progress from rural Navsari to cosmopolitan Bombay, her courtship by the brothers, Kavas and Savak, setting the foundation for the conflagration that erupts between them; (2) the childhood of Sohrab and Rustom in Bombay, providing the root of their disdain for Alphonse as much as their rivalry and anglophilia; (3) Daisy’s beginnings in London’s Clerkenwell district, her romance with Basil Ballard whom she follows mistakenly to Bombay, arriving the day before World War II closes the seaways behind her; and (4) Savak’s experiences during the Kut-al-amara campaign of World War I in Mesopotamia

The story spans the years from 1910 to 1945, encompassing scenes in which the “spirituality” of a yogi is exposed by a monkey, a ten-year-old English girl seduces an eight-year-old Indian boy, a suffragette dies following the example of Gandhi’s salt march, an English communist vanishes into Stalin’s Soviet Union, and themes of race and class are explored through the relationships between England and India, man and beast, colonizer and colonized, rich and poor, master and servant.

Selected Works

Fiction
Trio 2 picks up the story of Trio, bringing it to a close with the deaths of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms in 1896 and 1897, respectively – bringing to a close as well the largest work I have ever undertaken or will ever undertake. Germany grows in the hinterland from a conglomeration of 400+ principalities to one nation under Bismarck following the wars with Denmark, Austria, and France. The two books together have occupied me in one form or another from 1988 to 2006.
Sohrab Sanjana, the spoiled son of a wealthy Parsi family, marries Daisy Holiday because she is English. She marries him out of desperation, pregnant and stranded in Bombay, having arrived from London the day before World War II closes the seaways. Her deceit catches up with her in the shape of the Sanjana servant, Alphonse Gracias. Adding to the excitement is a tiger in the compound of the Sanjana bungalow and a family secret from the days of the Great War, perhaps more dangerous than the tiger.
A betrayed woman falls in love with a boy half her age only to find she has betrayed herself further. The novel probes the nature of love in its many forms, between husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and lovers, through the story of a woman who comes to terms with her strengths – and, more importantly, her weaknesses.
An epic portrayal of 19th Century Germany through the lives of its musicians, primarily the Schumanns and Brahms, but also Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner among others when their lives intersect those of the trio. A narrative of love, insanity, suicide, revolution, politics, war, and music. A great read for the beach, the summer, the winter, a holiday, a holiday in itself, a book in which one may live for a while.
Facing deportation, a naive Indian immigrant marries a lesbian and lives with her and her girlfriend and two dogs and four cats in a one-bedroom apartment. A romp and meditation with a rainbow of unusual characters (a witch, a stripper, a runaway, a conman, and a kleptomaniac among others) in the Chicago of the 70s.
A science nerd invents a machine capable of reactivating memory traces within his brain to relive the night he lost his virginity to an artist’s model (who subsequently dumped him) – only to have the machine malfunction. It leads him instead into the multi-generational saga of his own family, spanning three continents and a hundred years.

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