NOURUZ MUBARAK

Each Spring, the Persian New Year is celebrated at the exact moment the sun crosses the equator, making day and night of equal duration. Zoroastrian families the world over gather around the traditional Nouruz table, upon which are placed the Haft-Sin, seven items beginning with the Farsi letter "S". (This one is at my cousin's home in Dahanu). As you can see, the picture frame of the Zoroastrian prophet Zarathushtra is garlanded with much love and reverance. And only inches away, a bottle of Whyte & Mackay scotch stands tall and proud. It should have been a wine bottle, but my cousins don't drink wine. Notice that the bottle is half empty. The celebrations have already begun. Happy Nouruz!

DAHANU'S FAVOURITE SALON

This is The Big Boss Hair Salon where my cousins get a head massage. (This photo has been taken after renovation, and the young man with his hand in an unmentionable place is, thankfully, not a relative.)

During one of my yearly visits to Dahanu, as I sat in one of the chairs at Big Boss and sipped chai, I heard about how a Warli farm labourer had committed suicide by hanging himself from a chickoo tree. That, coupled with an image of my great grandfather digging holes in the ground to hide whiskey bottles in the 1940s, were the two starting points for the novel.

But back to the salon -- I'd recommend the head massage. A young man will pour a mugful of oil down your head, his fingers will turn into claws, and they will work on your scalp with the speed of a whirring fan, ensuring that you sink into your chair with a feeling of lazy magnificence.

More on the novel later. Let me enjoy my massage.

THE IMAGE THAT SPARKED DAHANU ROAD

I was at a friend's house in North Vancouver about five years ago. His uncle was visiting from Kansas. His uncle told me about how my great grandfather used to dig holes beneath chickoo trees to hide whiskey bottles during prohibition. I knew that someday I would write about this. All my novels have started with a single image. THE CRIPPLE AND HIS TALISMANS began with amputated limbs hanging from the ceiling of a dungeon, and for THE SONG OF KAHUNSHA I envisioned a ten-year-old boy trying to push his ribs back into his chest because he was ashamed of how thin he was. Image and character come together, from the unknown into the known, and that mystery is what enables a novelist to stay with a story for years.

A Welcome Note

When people ask me why all my writing is set in Bombay, I say that I am unable to let it go. The city haunts me; it inspires me. The best way for me to describe Bombay is that it is a cross between a nightingale and a vulture: beauty and death. My previous novels The Cripple and His Talismans and The Song of Kahunsha reflect that. But when I am in Canada, my new home, the place that I ache for is about 65 miles from Bombay. It is called Dahanu and this is where my new novel is set.

Dahanu Road traces the journey of my people, the Zoroastrian Iranis, from Iran to Bombay, and then Dahanu, where they set up fruit orchards. They grew just one fruit, sweet and brown, called the chickoo. This novel is my love letter - dark, disturbing and ribald (as all love letters should be) to a place and people that mean a lot to me.

Stay tuned to this blog, and I hope that the music you hear in the coming days will haunt, inspire, and entertain.

Anosh.