CHENNAI: My first impulse was to rush through this yet another boring, boarding school mystery, a girl’s school at that, to finish the review and move on to better, interesting volumes. The rather plain-looking cover and the plainer-sounding title couldn’t have been more misleading. Later, I somehow avoided words like gripping, unputtownable, racy and hot in this review but it was not easy.
The novel begins and ends on the same day, 12 years after the actual events occured in 1974. Charulata Apte goes to teach at Miss Timmin’s School for Girls, run by Christian Missionaries on the remote, rain-washed Panchgani Hills on the Western Ghats. Hailing from a conservative Maharashtrian Brahmin family living in anonymity in a small town due to an ugly past, her cloistered world suddenly opens up to the new atmosphere where the girls are taught Scottish dancing among other English snobbery by uptight British teachers in floral frocks, in their quest to uphold the boarding school legacy of a bygone era.
Things go well until the sensitive, submissive Charu with an indelible red blot on her face, befriends the vivacious lesbian British teacher Moira Prince. Friendship spirals into passion and Charu soon finds herself in the middle of pot-smoking hippies. Still the Shakespeare-loving, meek teacher during the day, her nights find solace in smoke, drugs, rock ’n’ roll and sex.
One fateful, rainless monsoon night, there is murder on the treacherous table-land near the school. There are too many secret visitors at the time and place of the murder with different motives and too many fingers pointing straight at Charu.
There are two main narrators, Charu and her brilliant student Nandita. The 15-year-old girl's version stands apart from Charu’s. So distinctive is the voice and tone. The first person narrative is so authentic and compelling that it leaves us confused as to whom to trust.
Kudos to Currimbhoy for her terrific characterisation. Despite the extra-large cast, each one is exclusive. There is the white purse-toting principal Nelson, the old, half-mad Hindi terror Raswani, the hippies, the insolent mali Shankar, Inspector Wogle, blind Irani, the girls, Baba, Ayi, her family, the rebellious Shoba and Merch, Charu’s male lover. But Prince towers over all. Interestingly, the characters are presented as they are seen by different people.
The pathos of 1970s are brought out beautifully. We can see the bell-bottoms, smell the joints and can almost hear Beatles, Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Macbeth looms large throughout the book and the relevance is interesting.She neatly ties all the raw ends only to reveal more but there are a few loopholes in the story which I'll leave you to discover.
You can’t help arguing in your mind about the murderer at the turn of the chapters. It’s ultimately not about what happened on the table-land but about the distortion of reality through different people’s perspectives.
Speculations run riot as the suspense stretches to the last page of this bulky debut. It is marvelous, fascinating and intense and never reveals what really happened. We can only deduce the truth. And one cannot know the truth, however rational one claims to be.
------------------------
Miss Timmins' School for Girls
Author: Nayana Currimbhoy
Publisher: Harper Collins
Price: Rs 709
Pages: 512
-- sivasubbu.sundari@gmail.com