Apu’s World

Thanks to the number of long weekends and the holiday season in general, work has been much slower than usual this month. The silver lining to the lull is that I have managed to plough through many more books than is usual, including a couple of Georgette Heyers, a biography of Jane Austen, a re-reading of Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island (accompanied by much undignified snorting aloud) and a debut novel by an Indian writer that is also a murder mystery: A Nice, Quiet Holiday.

A Nice, Quiet Holiday by Aditya Sudarshan is true to its name. Despite a murder happening in the novel, the writing has a sort of ‘nice and quiet’ character to it and the book is over almost too soon. Much credit goes of course to the skill with which Sudarshan keeps the pages turning, while throwing in dollops of murder, local courtroom drama, romance and fear. This is indeed a nicely balanced book.

Set in the hill town of Bhairavgarh, somewhere in Uttaranchal, the plot revolves around a holiday that the narrator law clerk Anant goes on, along with his boss Justice Shinde. Sudarshan contrives a setting in the tradition of the best Agatha Christie novels - a group of people, all connected in some way land up at a common destination where a murder happens, and now this becomes a world in itself, an uneasy, claustrophobic one where nothing and no one can quite be taken at face value. The local setting of Bhairavgarh is brought into the plot skilfully (and unlike the previous Indian murder mystery I read, The Case of the Missing Servant, this one doesn’t feel the need to ‘explain’ India, or Bhairavgarh for that matter, except as seen through the eyes of different characters).

Apart from the solving of the mystery, something that Sudarshan has done so well is the unrequited love and longing of early adulthood, when heartbreak seems like a condition impossible to ever get over. Some of the best scenes in the novel revolve around Anant’s awareness of and preoccupation with a girl who forms part of the entourage (and though it is not spelt out, the possibility that she may be the murderer keeps the reader anxious).

Overall, a very nicely (and finely) done mystery novel, and a good addition to the growing cache of mystery writing by Indian English authors.

Publisher: Westland Books

Price: Rs. 250

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