In 1895-96, the American writer Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, went on
a world tour with his wife Olivia and daughter Clara. In the course of the voyage, which he wrote about in his book Following the Equator, Twain spent some time in bright, bustling Bombay. Across several chapters in the 1897 travelogue, Twain describes his stay in the city. He talks about the local servant, Manuel, whom the author employed to attend to the family. There’s mention also of the wealthy, often fairly Westernised Parsis; the graceful nautch girls; a sensational crime, which was making headlines at the time: the murder of a 12-year-old named Cassi, who was deprived of her jewels by a certain Tukaram.
All of this returns in an enticing introduction to Bombay at the turn of the century in Anuradha Kumar’s The Kidnapping of Mark Twain: A Bombay Mystery. Twain’s servant Manuel is here, as is the murder of Cassi, with Tukaram as the prime suspect. So are the nautch girls, the Towers of Silence, and the first ominous signs of plague.
Set over the few days of Twain’s sojourn in Bombay, the novel begins on the morning of his arrival. The story is told from the point of view of the American consul, Henry Baker. He is in love with the enigmatic and thoroughly maverick Maya Barton, whose past is as intriguing as she is, and it is she, who plays an important part in the adventure Baker finds himself flung into when the author inexplicably disappears from his room the plush Watson’s Hotel.
As Baker tries to find some trace of his missing charge, he gets entangled in other, more confusing webs. A magician named Freddie Bancroft wanders the city on stilts, turning up at the oddest of places. A fanatical temperance preacher named Arthur Pease goes about making a nuisance of himself. Maya, always on the lookout for adventure, does disguises and gets embroiled in madcap escapades, which leave the consul exhausted and worried. There is opium, there are tensions between the British and Indian, British and American, and even—in a distant echo of the ‘Great Game’ being played out far to the north—between the British and Russians.
The most powerful element in all of this is Bombay itself. The author’s historical research and ability to paint vivid pictures of a bygone era are at their best when it comes to depicting the sights, sounds, smells and ethos of the Maximum City of the 1890s. She can evoke the frantic pace, commerce, modernity as well as the sense of tradition. In particular, the cosmopolitan nature of Bombay shines through: a city to which just about everybody seems to flock, whether it is a Serbian musician, a German filmmaker or a magician looking to make a name for himself.
The final years of the 19th century, of course, were important not just for the city, but also for India. There are, in this book, glimpses of hesitant first steps towards the emancipation of women, and education of girls; of the gathering momentum of the Nationalist movement and trade unionism. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, while not a character in the book, is present as a significant force in the background. Attempts by the British to divide India—for example, the enforcement of the idea of ‘criminal tribes’—are also subtly touched upon.
Of the fictional characters Kumar writes about, Henry stands out as the most believable. Maya, while an intriguing character, remains a little too mysterious, her motivations and backstory are never quite clear. In that sense, she remains an enigma; some explanation, from Maya herself, about who she is and what she feels for Baker, might have been welcome. It would also have helped make their relationship a little less elusive, and a little more believable.
The mystery of Mark Twain’s disappearance is not the only mystery in the book. There is, too, the murder of Cassi and the disappearance of her jewels, along with other, relatively minor, puzzles. There are red herrings, as are clues that lead to deductions—all of it quite convoluted and complicated, with several interconnected episodes and elements. This web of deceit, of complexity and hidden motives, perhaps needed a bit more explanation, a more complete tying up of loose ends. Some of this (for instance, the Cassi episode) is based on fact, and fact rarely is solved in a satisfyingly complete manner, but given that Kumar does spin a fictitious tale around this period, some further imagination could have been used to answer the questions that remain. On the whole, however, this is a satisfying mystery novel, and Kumar’s evocation of old Bombay is superb.