Miss Timmins’ School For Girls, Nay-ana Currimbhoy’s debut novel, revolves around a possible murder and its chief narrator Charulata Apte’s life. Except the preface and epilogue, the story is set in 1974 with Charu joining a girls-only boarding school in Panchgani as an English faculty. Charu, the narrator, says, “Not only had the missionaries created a British boarding school in this corner of India, they had even managed to create the Victorian boarding school of their own childhoods.”
The just turned 21 Charu meets resistance from some of the girls who aren’t much younger than her but more than that she has a tough time coming to terms with something simple: a mark on her face, near her lips, on her lower cheek. She makes friends with a fellow faculty member Moira Prince, who is left in the school by her deceased Christian parents under the care of Miss Shirley Nelson, the school principal. Moira hates the principal. Charu and Moira start frequenting the town, doing a bit of cigarette and dope in the company of their friend Merch. The women get close to each other, intimate. Then on a rainy night, after a tiff between the two, someone is found dead.
The action now shifts to the death. Saying anything beyond this would be giving out some parts of a story which makes for a fine thriller. Yet, this is one of those thrillers whose poetic and visual language is so seductive that layer by layer the reader keeps entering deeper into the minds of the characters. Rumours become myths become memories and they have you ensnared.
Currimbhoy also beautifully evokes Panchgani, its mountains, its dark alleys, the mist, the nature scenes, quite like the old Hindi movie Gumnaam. Then there are thrilling reflections on Macbeth:

“Let us put ourselves there. It’s dark and rainy. The castle is large and echoing... You’re going to do this. It will be easy. And then your weak husband would be king. You have always guided him... You enter the king’s chamber, adjust your eyes to the dark. You hold the dagger up with both hands, practice how you would plunge it. Then, a flash of lightning. You see this old man, his mouth slack. Maybe he is snoring, like your father.”

In one part Currimbhoy flips the point of view from Charu to a student Nanditha, like Jean Rhys does in Wide Sargasso Sea. The flip goes on for a bit long and, to me, feels like a flaw because the first part did build up so tightly and sensitively. The book is thick and is held together with just one thread — the death. The other threads don’t quite add up in intensity.
The very strength of the book — its language — leads to the book seeming a bit overwhelming because one is focused on the whodunit and tends to not savour the simple delights of the interior monologue of its characters.
At certain places, the book is overwritten, the plot refuses to move and that goes against the flavour of a murder mystery because such thrillers thrive on suspense.
Pick up the book if you have a couple of long afternoons and are willing to let it drown you. It makes for a good, albeit long, read. I hope Currimbhoy writes more for she has that skill with language.

Amandeep Sandhu is the author of Sepia Leaves