That Oriental Allure

It8217;s 1840 and undivided Punjab is about to erupt in violence. But the story isn8217;t just restricted to the walled city of Lahore, wi...

It8217;s 1840 and undivided Punjab is about to erupt in violence. But the story isn8217;t just restricted to the walled city of Lahore, with its cobbled alleys, famed rose gardens and guttural smells. It stretches all the way to Calcutta and back, and beyond to Afghanistan. Such is the historical sweep of the second part of Thalassa Ali8217;s romantic saga, whose protagonist 8212; no surprises here, she8217;s 8220;olive, neither of the East nor of the West8221;, the English braveheart Ms Mariana Givens 8212; risks it all to save the son and grandson of Shaikh Waliullah, spiritual guide of the Karakoyia brotherhood of mystics.

And before you dismiss Ali8217;s fictional attempt as another of those white-lady-in-shining-armour-here-to-save-brown-mankind tales, the Jewel in the Crown meets Far Pavilions type, it may be pointed out that the author embellishes it with a load of historical detail that lifts the story. Especially when she describes Lahore8217;s sights and sounds, and the battle scene at Huzuri Bagh. Where it fails to charm is in depicting the romance 8212; it8217;s too Mills and Boonish, if you like.

The first part of the trilogy, A Singular Hostage, ended with Mariana being hastily married off to Waliullah8217;s 8220;tall, dark and handsome son8221; Hassan, not least because she had rescued his child Saboor from the clutches of a dying Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The second instalment begins with Mariana in Calcutta, facing the scorn of her uppity brethren for having brought shame to them by her association with the natives. She8217;s still watching over Saboor, who now listens to 8220;Hey, fiddle diddle8230;8221; and calls her An-nah. Oh no, not another Kim acolyte?

Under pressure from her kind uncle and aunt, Mariana will have to undertake another journey up the Ganga to Allahabad and then on to Lahore, to break her marriage and hand Saboor back to his father. Of course, it doesn8217;t quite turn out that way. Mariana, who had once come to the subcontinent hoping to marry an Englishman, now is smitten by the burkha way of life. In the end, she will have to travel once more, this time to Afghanistan to save her wounded husband Hassan. Which will take us to the last part of the trilogy, which Ali is now writing.

Ali8217;s Mariana is an outsider among her people, the only one with heart. She8217;s the one looking in on stiff upper lip British society, peopled by the likes of Lady Macnaghten, who gesture with manicured fingers at the natives, warning them not to break her china and complain loudly about eating chicken fricassee a hundredth time. In equal measure is a sprinkling of native-isms. It8217;s a story set in the Victorian 19th century after all.

There8217;s a lot of Ali in Mariana of course, especially their 8220;spirit of adventure8221;, so what if they are thrown apart by centuries? Thalassa was born to an English mother and an American father who were both archaeologists. In the 8217;60s as a student at Harvard, Thalassa met Asghar Ali, married him and settled down in Lahore. But in 1974, two years after Asghar8217;s death, Ali went back to Boston with their two children, and began earning a living as a stockbroker. Years later, in 1990, she realised she had a book in her and quit her job. Her debut novel, A Singular Hostage, came out in 2002, and the sequel this year.