Goa based writer Tashan Mehta has chosen the difficult genre of magical realism for her debut novel, The Liar’s Weave, set in the early 20th century. The protagonist, Zahan Merchant, resident of a Parsi colony in Bombay, is born with a unique horoscope —
one without a future. This cosmic mistake enables him to alter reality with his lies, a secret which only his older brother Sorab is privy to. Astrologer Narayan Tarachand grapples with the mystery of the child whose birth chart he has been unable to decipher.
Zahan’s adventures with his friend Porthos take him on a journey far away from the familiar environs of his home into the hinterland of Vidroha, a forest of outcastes where his special abilities expose him and his loved ones to immense dangers. This is an India both familiar and strange where he has to grapple with his secret powers and their consequences, culminating in the inevitable battle between good and evil. The plot meanders through so many twists, turns and dimensions that the reader is often at a loss to follow its tangled threads.
For instance, before the final denouement a solution is planned thus: "A boy’s palm is read by an in-between — the Greatest Astrologer that Ever Lived. This in-between shows the boy the impossible. He changes his lines. The boy wakes up one day in his good fortune to learn his bad luck has been redistributed. Worse, redistributed to the ones he loves. What does he do? He cannot say, it is in the stars. He is living proof that it is not. He must set it right himself — create
a world where there is an equitable distribution of luck… He must become like the man who saved him: an in-between… (But) he realizes that he cannot defeat the system simply by being within it… People will not follow him. They need something cosmic. They don’t know this cosmic person is invented. If they did, they wouldn’t come.”
The hardbound 330-page novel, published by Juggernaut Books in 2017, is priced at Rs 499.
S. V.