CORONATION TALKIES
By Susan Kurosawa,
Viking, Rs 475

Susan Kurosawa has a rather famous last name. But why should that make us feel flattered if she decides to write a period novel out of her ?obsession with India?? But Kurosawa has read her Forsters and Kiplings, also her Georgette Heyers. And so Lydia Rushmore of Coronation Talkies has unmistakable echoes of Adela Quested of A Passage to India, and Mrs Rajat Banerjee could be a character out of a Jhabvala novel. All of which could now make Kurosawa hot property in Broadway and Hollywood alike.

But this is not a straightforward raj novel. For the simple reason that the author is not a Britisher, trying to do a fictional take on the lives of her forefathers. Kurosawa is an Australian, so now we have one colony identifying with the colonizer ? by virtue of racial similarity, one would guess ? and looking at another colony just as the master would. Is it a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

This is, however, not to read any politically incorrect intentions into the author?s project. Perhaps colonial rule Down Under did not leave behind a treasure trove deep enough for Australian writers to mine. And India is always there, if there is a Commonwealth grant to cover one?s stay at the Imperial Hotel in Delhi and multiple trips to the raj hill stations.

The novel ? a farce is probably what the author would like it to be called ? is set in a fictitious small hill town of Maharashtra. The name, Chalaili, is a dead giveaway for the hill stations Kurosawa may have visited ? Chel, Deolali, Shimla (the rains remind one of Cherrapunji as well). There?s a neat, hand-drawn map of Chalaili, in the manner of Hardy?s Wessex, at the beginning. In this little, unexciting town, land Lydia Rushmore (n?e Burnett) from West Gamble, Surrey, and Premila Banerjee from Bombay. Lydia is newly married to William Rushmore, the meteorological officer of the Forestry Services ?whose specific duty lay in the charting of the annual monsoon?. The marriage rescues Lydia from the prospect of lifelong spinsterhood and William from a sexual scandal.

The desire to be the proprietress of a movie theatre brings Premila (who prefers to use the name, Mrs Rajat Banerjee, lest she sounds ?too independent and husbandless?) ? with her gold bangles and colourful saris ? to Chalaili. The theatre, christened Coronation Talkies to mark the ascension of George VI, opens amid as much fanfare as a small town like Chalaili can afford. The first film to be screened is Mrs Banerjee?s great obsession, the Clark Gable-Claudette Colbert starrer, It Happened One Night.

Mrs Banerjee and Lydia share a set of familiar ?upside-down? version of raj power equations. If Lydia is the white woman, Mrs Banerjee too is a convent-educated lady, whose confidence and presence are difficult to match even by the white woman. Around the two women grow a vine of relationships, often criss-crossing with mildly dangerous consequences. All the familiar stereotypes are there, including the club-going, whiskey-drinking white officers, their gossipy wives, and the natives with their exotic tales.

Kurosawa seems to have decided that a colonial encounter must end with a flourish. She fails most miserably in bringing this about. The epigraphs and finer details bear the mark of a seasoned travel-writer, which Kurosawa is. But the early-20th-century veneer is rent frequently with carnal details which a raj novelist would shudder to admit into his mind, let alone into the manuscript.