Inward Gaze

It was a natural choice for her to set her story in a Parsi household. “You write what you know,they say; so in many ways the setting was a given. Besides,some form of autobiography is going to find its way into any novel,especially a first novel,” she says. However,she is quick to add that not all of it is based on real people. “For instance,Piloo Vachha,Fancy Freny,the baker Zorabian,

the teacher Miss Battivala,the crippled Chhotu and the three eerie librarians are all fictitious characters,” she stresses.

Recalling the experience of writing this book,Jesia says that it was a cathartic one. “It took me about three years to write,and then another two years of revision. When it was finally done and sent away,I felt like a child of mine had suddenly got married and left my home,” she says.

Jesia’s work hasn’t made her a flag-bearer for the community. “Much of the novel is unequivocally critical of our outdated customs. Tower questions the utterly obnoxious death rituals of the Parsis. The way I see it,a death is hard enough to deal with,and Parsi customs only make it worse,squeezing the last drop of sordidness out of an already morbid circumstance,” she says matter-of-factly.

Her family,of course,has been very supportive,including sister Mehr Jesia Rampal. “My mother read and reread drafts of the manuscript almost as often as I did,while my father started rereading the novel as soon as he had finished it. Mehr,in her impeccably minimalistic way,told me to change the name of the book from The Tower to Tower,” she says.