Moth by Melody Razak, Hachette

Alma, a bright 14-year-old, is to wed a 22-year-old doctor. Her ma, Tansini, and Bappu [pa] Brahma, are Delhi university teachers. Sister Roop, five, traps moths in jars and tortures crickets. The kind Hindu couple has a Muslim ayah, Fatima Begum. Controlling grandma prays to the gods to win poker for a “class-A tip-top wedding”. She rigged Alma’s horoscope, saying it was auspicious when it was the opposite. It’s 1947 and independence from British rule is on the horizon. Optimistic, gentle Ma asks whether Keats won’t be taught, but Tagore (the Bard of Bengal) instead? Author Razak gifts her upright women beautiful voices as they ponder the shifting climate, listening to All-India Radio. Wedding off, Alma leaves for Bombay to stay with rich Cookie Auntie. We weave through the labyrinthine lanes on a tonga (horse-drawn taxi), watch kites fly in the sky at “the golden hour when everything is blessed”. Independence Night – effigies of George VI and Churchill burn. Then Mahatma Gandhi is murdered, girls on a train go missing, some never to be seen again – the rest never the same again.