A mother, a friend, a confidante and a crime-fighter

Think of women detectives in fiction and the name that comes to mind is Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s elderly spinster who relied on her sharp intellect to solve crimes. Now noted Tamil author Ambai has come up with a similar figure, Sudha Gupta, a woman detective who goes about solving various crimes in contemporary Mumbai. 

Ambai’s stories as well as Sudha Gupta are cast in a different mould from Christie’s and Miss Marple. Where Jane Marple lives a sedate life among a social strata that can be termed genteel, Sudha is an active and spunky woman. She revels in the hustle and bustle of Mumbai, travels by local trains and taxis, and is constantly bullying her policeman friend Govind Shelke for his chauvinistic attitude. 

Sudha’s investigative skills are the foil to uncovering deeper social issues that are particularly relevant to women. This hardly comes as a surprise as Ambai is the psuedonym for CS Lakshmi, a feminist scholar — a fact reflected in the acute awareness of gender relationships and societal attitudes in all the three stories in A Meeting on the Andheri Overbridge, the first of more Sudha Gupta stories in the future, confirms Ambai.

Like most private detectives, Sudha’s pet grouse is that most of the work that comes to her involves suspicious husbands and wives demanding surveillance on their spouses. But police inspector Govind Shelke values her keen intuition and ability to forge a trusty bond with people. Shelke turns to her for assistance when he is in need of a breakthrough and Sudha rarely disappoints. The book comprises three long stories or rather novellas: As the Day Darkens, The Paperboat Maker, and A Meeting on the Andheri Overbridge. 

In As the Day Darkens, three sisters, aged 14, 12 and 10, go missing on a beach, the father is in hospital, and the mother is clueless about their whereabouts. The police are also clueless, till Sudha uncovers a vital clue that leads to uncovering a dark chapter in the family’s history. In The Paperboat Maker, Sudha has an unsual request from her cook, Chellammal, who wants her to uncover the antecedents of prospective grooms for her daughter.

As Sudha probes, she uncovers a heartwarming story of a single mother’s struggle to bring up her children. A Meeting on the Andheri Overbridge is about how Sudha helps an elderly woman who owns considerable wealth to assert her right to property against unsympathetic family members. 

Among the three stories, it is As The Day Darkens that stands out because of its suspense.  

As a woman, Sudha is able to juggle multiple roles — working woman, wife, mother, employer, friend and confidante — with elan and humour. “We see such women every day in Mumbai,” says Ambai in an e-mail interview. “Women have to run and catch a train, hop into a bus or auto, bargain with vendors in the train but they also have the time and patience to extend a helping hand for a pregnant or old lady or time to read and think on women’s rights. They are also very savvy where technology is concerned.”