"The problem with circular stories is that it is difficult to know where to begin. This story is circular, although no one told me that when I first entered it. A part of me wishes that they had; perhaps then I would have never travelled through it,” is how Tashan Mehta begins her novel Mad Sisters of Esi.
This is a work of fantasy, of "fables, dreams and myths… featuring a museum of collective memory and a festival of madness,” reads the blurb on the rear cover. There are far too many characters: sisters Mayung and Laleh who are keepers of the Whale of Babel; the Great Wisa; Rostum, Hormuz and Mad Magali; and the cosmic fish Ojda. The locale is the mystical island of Esi. There are so many twists and turns in the narration that the reader becomes befuddled and, as the author has written, "it is difficult to know where to begin” or where the entire exercise goes!
Tashan Mehta:"utterly original
Prof Helen Marshall, writer, editor and book historian has, however, endorsed Mehta’s work as being "wonderfully immersive, deeply pleasurable and utterly original.” Mehta is a published author and was a fellow at the 2015 and 2021 Sangam House International Writers’ Residence, India, and writer-in-residence at Anglia Ruskin University, UK (tashanmehta.com).
The 414- page book, priced at Rs 599, was published by HarperCollins India in 2023.
SHERENE VAKIL