The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay review

When I was a little girl, I spent hours crouched by the fence that separated my house from my neighbour’s. Balanced on my haunches, a wide unnoticed gap gave me a comprehensive view of their living room — where the twins (a boy and a girl, 12 years old) and their mother would spend the afternoon playing, watching TV, eating, arguing, squabbling and mostly not doing too much at all. They eventually spied me and I was soon part of the squabbling bunch. The voyeuristic trait didn’t die however. It made me a journalist, eager to dig out details from people lives and events. Reading The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi feeds this very trait.

Based loosely on the Jessica Lall murder, it narrates the story of a handful of people the protagonist knew — who they were and how they were affected by the tragedy. This, of course, includes the murderer and although Lall’s character in the story is a popular film actress, the murderer is still a politician’s son, the bar owners socialites and designers. Shanghvi’s style is obsessively lyrical and even as you make comparisons with the events that unfolded in the last decade, the novel stands entirely on its own.

Not much unfolds in terms of action — we know how the real story concluded but I always wondered what the story was behind the headlines, the convictions. How the people who retracted their testimonies slept at night. According to Shanghvi, quite well.

Flamingoes is of course a work of fiction, and some of Shanghvi’s resolutions too simplistic but I found myself waiting to go back home and pick up where I left off. It was both the thrill of a new insight on an old story and the fact that Shanghvi’s prose gave it a whole new personality.

The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, Penguin, Rs 499. Available at bookstores across the country.