The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey. Published in 2019 by Penguin Random House India Private Limited, 7th floor, Infinity Tower C, DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon 122002. Pp: 375. Price: Rs 399.
In The Satapur Moonstone, a remarkable whodunit, Perveen Mistry, a female lawyer who has studied at Oxford, plays the role of detective. After A Murder on Malabar Hill, in which we first encounter Mistry, author Sujata Massey captivates her reader in this atmospheric novel set in 1922 at Satapur, an imaginary princely kingdom in the Sahyadri mountain range.
Tragedy pursues the royal family of Satapur as both Maharaja Mahendra Rao as well as his elder son, Pratap Rao, meet with "untimely deaths.” The state is ruled by the British through the Kolhapur Agency on behalf of the two maharanis, the dowager Rajamata Putlabai, the mother-in-law and Maharani Mirabai, the daughter-in-law, until Maharaja Jiva Rao, the young prince who is presently 10 years old, comes of age. A dispute arises between the two women about the education of the future ruler. The Rajamata wants him to be educated in the palace by Basu Sahib who had taught both her husband as well as her sons and who, now in his 80s, seems to be well past it. Maharani Mirabai is firmly resolved her son should be sent abroad for further studies so that he can be fluent in English and hold his own in the court and with the British. As the ladies live in purdah, a female lawyer is required to adjudicate on the dispute between the two matriarchs. However, the job tests not only Mistry’s skills as a lawyer, but more as a detective as she gets drawn into a web of mystery and intrigue.
Mistry’s entry on the scene stirs the proverbial hornet’s nest. Whom should she trust? There is an apparent attempt to poison her; Jiva Rao himself is unwell when we are introduced to him. Is this a result of food poisoning? There is a plethora of characters who are difficult to keep track of and who really don’t add to the plot. However, the crucial characters are well delineated. Rajamata, arrogant and domineering; Mirabai, who loves horse riding and dresses like a man to avoid purdah; conceited and sinister Prince Swaroop, the prime minister, son of the Rajamata who would probably gain the most from the untimely death of Jiva Rao; the palace buffoon who roams around the palace with his pet monkey. And then on the periphery there is Vandana, married to a Parsi, whose role in the novel becomes clear only in the last chapters.
Mistry is an interesting character; readers of A Murder on Malabar Hill will recollect this feisty woman. Massey does an excellent job of portraying her as a Parsi; but the "Parsiness” is never overdone. It is woven skilfully into the fiction. Mistry holds on to her kusti in times of crisis. The "hierarchies” of the community concerning the priestly class and the men who "handle the dead” is tactfully brought into the conversation as is the matter of the vanishing vultures. Mistry brings out the inequities of the Parsi divorce laws under which she is unable to divorce her husband as "the accused spouse must commit adultery with a person who is not a prostitute.”
Mistry is all in support of women’s rights. She is appalled that little attention is paid to the young Maharani’s education and takes up cudgels against any man who suggests that she is less competent on account of her gender. Mistry has to devise a way to find her place in a society and a profession dominated by men as well as serve the British, whom she does not particularly approve of. A hint of this is given in the first chapter when, during breakfast offered by an Englishman, she plays with the kippers on her plate, reluctant to eat them. She is a strong supporter of Gandhi. She accuses the British of supporting laws "that keep daughters from inheriting as much as their sons, widows from owning property…”
Massey portrays a character who is not devoid of contradictions. Mistry’s relationship with Colin Sandringham is ambiguous: At times she seems to be condemning him as a representative of the British; yet she is full of sympathy when she sees him performing yoga and notices that he has a "stump where the bottom half of his right calf and right foot should have been.” She seems to be attracted to him and genuinely concerned about his welfare yet is a creature caught in the social constraints of her time.
A detective story should be "close to the bone.” We have completed almost a third of the book which serves as a long introduction to the setting of the scene, the politics at the palace and the journey there, before we reach the palace. Massey is rather indulgent in her description of journeys, landscapes, interiors and clothes, especially saris. One wonders if this picture of the opulent raj is a means to enthral the foreign reader. At a dinner party, a minor character, Roderick Ames, an Anglo-Indian is reluctant to be photographed with the other guests. Soon after, the camera disappears and when it does re-appear, the roll of film is missing. One wishes that the mystery of Ames could have been a bit more fleshed out.
The title comes as a bit of a surprise as the "moonstone” — which once belonged to the Rajamata, had been lost 18 years earlier, and which re-surfaces as a gift Mistry makes to her — does not really play such a vital part in the novel.
However, once Mistry reaches the palace, the writing is taut and the pace picks up. Massey keeps us guessing till the very end as to who the villain is and it does come as a surprise. F. G.
Gandavia holds a doctorate in English literature and is a retired chartered accountant. He is a compulsive reader of fiction.