Synopsis "Half-Blood (in English)"
Description'You see, Moonie, I did a terrible thing for which I had to leave Bombay. I don't want toburden you, in this letter, with the details of my deed-or my life. It's a long story andI'm not a man of words.'It is 2009, more than a decade after Maya read this intriguing letter addressedto her. The awkward, adopted child of an odd Bengali couple, she's now a34-year-old journalist in an existential mess that she alleviates by smoking potand going on long walks with her latest boyfriend. But in order to find themeaning she craves, Maya must confront her past, and open a box of objectsshe inherited. When she finally does, she's led on a startling, sparkling journeyof discovery.At the centre of this journey is Burjor Elavia, a 'fifty-fifty', an 'Adhkachru'-the illegitimate child of a Parsi man and a tribal woman-born in anondescript village in Gujarat. In 1952, not yet eighteen, he made his wayto Bombay, where he lived a colourful life-promiscuous, reckless, involvedin a string of shady businesses, but also compassionate and a charmer. Hisgreatest achievement was an audacious venture for fifty-fifty Parsis likehimself, many of them strugglers, some of them on the make and all of themeccentric. In their tangled, mixed-up, funny life stories, Maya tries to find herbeginnings-and maybe her future.Set in the teeming, varied universe that is Bombay, Half-Blood is anentertaining, full-blooded novel about dysfunctional families, pluckysurvivors, chancers, mavericks and good-hearted rogues. A celebration ofvitality, impurity and other true virtues of life, it is a marvellous debut.
