The Lost Man of Bombay (Malabar House #3)

by Vaseem Khan

left by the departing British. If Delhi had been a city

of forts and mendicants before, it now served as a bastion of political cutthroats and blowhards with the moral scruples of rutting goats.

The trick to living, her father had once explained, was to decide early on what you liked and what you didn’t, and then pitch yourself headlong into the things you disliked anyway. Because if you didn’t, fate would notice, and nail you to the cross of your worst fears.

She’d learned long ago that her worst fear – her only fear – was failure.

Corruption, sectarian violence, and the tumult of a thousand factions pulling in a thousand different directions had put the lie to Gandhi’s vision of a post-colonial utopia.

accepting the reality of the human condition meant accepting Man’s inherent weaknesses.

To Bombay: city of dreams.

In a place like Bombay, the concept of innocent until proven guilty only applied to those with wealth, power, or influence.

The city was like a woman who’d lived through a succession of fraught marriages, each husband demanding that she dress to please his whims.

That was the problem with needing someone. As soon as you allowed another person into your life, you also gave them power over you, including the power to hurt.

The academy had forged her into something formidable. A woman who’d retreated inside herself, raising the drawbridge behind her.

For nigh on three centuries, men like Cox had called the shots in a country not their own, content that their right to do so was ordained by God, nation, and the colour of their skin.

That had been Gandhi’s great achievement. To demonstrate to the world that you couldn’t claim to be the arbiters of fair play while cheating your fellow man at every turn.

Shukla, a

had always struck her as one of the new breed of senior Indian officials who revelled in keeping their underlings off-balance.

‘Come now, Persis, we’ve discussed the nature of truth before. Wasn’t it Gandhi who said that truth will stand even in the absence of support? Be content that you’ve discovered a version of the truth.’

The battle with India’s colonisers was over, but the battle for women to take their place in the new society Nehru was fashioning was just beginning.

Sometimes, the illusion of forward momentum was as important as the destination.

‘The British spent three hundred years here, but still couldn’t bring themselves to trust us. I can’t help but think that that’s where they really failed. A failure of the imagination.’

the top of the road, a community of cafés and roadside eateries had sprung up, catering to famished pilgrims.

These were the moments when she felt truly alive. When life’s vagaries fell away and all that was left was the purity of her mission.

‘None of us are entitled to a long life or even a good one,’ he’d told her. ‘Make the most of every moment.’