1-Minute read: Maya and the half-blood prince

Pronoti Datta. Pic courtesy/Anuj Rao

Industrialists, philanthropists, scientists, literary giants, doctors and typical do-gooders crowd one's imagination while thinking of the Parsi community. If you're a foodie like this writer, patra ni machhi, gajar mewa nu achaar, berry pulao and mutton dhansak also flavour these musings. But how often do you hear of Parsi cheats, killers and crooks, or for all their obsession with being pure-race Persians, a fifty-fifty Parsi?

The Bombay-inspired jacket aside - collage of a kaali-peeli, a vintage watch, Grand Hotel and Hamilton Studios in Ballard Estate, a peeping sepia-toned photograph and a raggedy letter - what led us to pick up writer Pronoti Datta's debut novel, Half-Blood, was the convincing description of Burjor Elavia, an "adhkachru" or a fifty-fifty bawa, on the back. It's Elavia's life that the protagonist and his daughter Maya, who he had given up for adoption, traces in this witty, dramatic title.

An awkward 30-something, Maya has been a desk editor with a daily for a decade, occasionally contributing as a city writer, thanks to her fascination with Mumbai's cultural and architectural heritage. As the adopted child of an oddball couple from Kolkata, she's every bit the "bheto", rice-eating and reluctant-to-change Bengali (that she believes she isn't), as she is a Parsi - a reality she manages to repress for over a decade since she finds out about her father. Perennially in the search for a greater meaning or purpose - except when playing city guide for her friends - Maya is compelled to dive back into her past, and her father's.

Through the colourful memories of Elavia's friends, business partners and fellow fifty-fifty bawas, Maya pieces his life together. We're steered back to his birth in 1935 to a Parsi liquor baron and his tribal mistress in a village near Vansda, Gujarat. And then to Prohibition-era Bombay, where the charming, daring Elavia, a perpetual ladies' man, climbs up the ladder - from waiting the tables to driving a kaali-peeli, to smuggling goods and selling liquor. As we follow Maya and Elavia from Naval Baug to Irani cafés, and Dhobi Talao to Santacruz, Datta skilfully paints a Bombay we've never seen. One with dingy aunty bars, liquor hidden in taxi tyres, and fifty-fifty Parsis working all kinds of odd, shady jobs to keep the city, and their lives, running. And through it all, we find ourselves resonating with the quiet Maya, looking for an anchor that ties her past, present and future together.

Like a tangy, chatpata Parsi pickle, the former journalist allows the story to ferment, regaling us with savoury details, and saving the best for the last. Pick it up, if you'd like to meet a Parsi rogue with a heart, an "ek number ka admi who liked doing do number ka kaam".

Title: Half-Blood
Author: Pronoti Datta
Genre: Fiction Publisher Speaking Tiger
Cost: Rs 499