Mist in the Mountains

The book may be a work of fiction but it8217;s based on actual events during the rising Indian independence movement and the twilight years of the Raj. Christina Devenish, a Catholic by birth and a Theosophist by choice, runs a birth control clinic in Bombay when the rioting in the city begins. Violence is hardly ever discretionary and often fails to tell sympathiser from enemy. A mob burns the pro-Gandhian Christina8217;s clinic and Lakshmi, her friend, helper and link to the Indian world, is killed in the fire.

Then begins Christina8217;s journey to Bhutan, where her father Colonel Devenish is advisor to the Shabdrung, the Bhutanese equivalent of the Dalai Lama. From Calcutta, she is accompanied by Major Owen Davies, an officer from the intelligence service of the Raj, with whom Christina promptly begins a torrid affair.

The world of Calcutta is the world of realpolitik. Davies and the expedition Christina accompanies are actually going to Bhutan to bring back her father who the British government thinks is being inconveniently sympathetic to the Shabdrung.

The lama incarnate, the Shabdrung, was the head of Bhutan till the Wangchuks made a distinction between religious and secular heads. The Wangchuks became the maharajas of Bhutan and the Shabdrung the religious heads. The British, in their larger vision of playing one against the other, supported the Maharaja of Bhutan and wanted Colonel Devenish to stop playing advisor to the Shabdrung and return to the fold of the Raj.

The book8217;s sweep is quite wide 8212; from the moderates and extremists in the Indian independence movement to intrigue in the high mountains. Nobody and no ideology comes out looking either perfect or abhorrent. The Theosophists with Anne Besant as their heroine emerge as flamboyantly eccentric but that does not take away anything from their many contributions. Major Owen Davies is a thorough officer of the Raj who sits through tortures of Indian militants, who believes in the British Chaos Theory 8212; leave India and it plunges into doom 8212; but he8217;s not representative of his type either. He8217;s a Welshman, not born to power or privilege, who has worked his way up the ranks. He may have been party to many a colonial plot but at the end of the day he is just someone in the establishment doing his job. Christina8217;s father, on the other hand, may be an establishment man who8217;s crossed over but he too has done 8216;8216;worse8217;8217; things in his time.

It8217;s the shifting loyalties and the ambiguous texture of changing politics that makes Cressida8217;s Bed an interesting read. It8217;s a sparkling story of a momentous moment in history.