“The Mistress of Bhatia House” is the fourth of Sujata Massey’s excellent Perveen Mistry novels, set in 1920s Bombay. The books feature a charming young woman who is the first female solicitor in the city. Polite, respectful and traditional, Perveen works with her father in her family’s law firm. Although she faces sexism at nearly every turn, she stands up for herself and others around her. She’s curious and open-minded to the swells of progress happening around her city, not infrequently thinking of another famous lawyer, who sits in a prison in Poona, Mohandas K. Gandhi.
This installment swirls around the building of a woman’s hospital and a shaky alliance between English and Indian participants. Perveen attends a fundraiser where she sees an Indian ayah, or nanny, bravely save a child, while seriously burning herself in the process. Perveen is shocked to see the woman, Sunanda, in prison for the crime of committing an abortion, several days later. She takes Sunanda’s case, who claims she couldn’t even have been pregnant, much less have had an abortion. “The police were such fools, Perveen thought. Why did they wish to investigate the business of abortion and menstruation? If the police truly wanted to protest women, they would arrest the family members who murdered newborn girls—a persistent problem all over British India and the princely states.” As Perveen supports Sunanda’s case and discovers how it may be connected to the women’s hospital, she’s also dealing with strife at her normally happy home where she lives with her mother, father and newly married brother and his wife, who’s just given birth. The normally sweet-natured women find themselves bickering with each other after the baby is born and Perveen finds herself bitterly longing for the simpler times before the baby came.
In the same way that Jane Austen taught us about eighteenth-century British marriage and property laws, Massey educates her reader on early twentieth-century British India, and the many ways it was set up to protect the colonizer and subjugate the Indian citizens. It’s clear that plenty of research goes into each novel and we’re given a refreshing point of view through the eyes of the non-colonizer. In selecting the subject of policing women’s bodies, Massey makes a strong statement about the current state of women’s health and independence, over a hundred years after Gandhi sat in a jail cell.
Massey fills these novels with exquisite details, including food and clothes. More than once I’ve gone searching the internet for a recipe or off to Devon Avenue for ingredients to create a tea she describes. She goes into great detail in fashion—whether it be silk saris or a Schiaparelli gown, and accessories, from Perveen’s leather briefcase by Swaine Adeney Brigg or the local heiress’ Vionnet handbag. The description of Perveen’s bedroom alone is divine, not to mention the adjacent garden-view veranda complete with a pet parrot that swoops in for fruit snacks, or her black-and-white tiled en suite bathroom. I can’t be the only one yearning for PBS to create an adaptation!
“The Mistress of Bhatia House” By Sujata Massey Soho House, 432 pages
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