Not-so-excellent ventures

Aditi Seshadri
When Janet Laird inherits a house in a Himalayan hill station, she also acquires a new set of oddball friends, a career change, a town bully and an impending crisis that she must save her home from.

Scottish by birth but Indian by choice, Jana moves to Hamara Nagar, a village in 1960s Uttar Pradesh, in search of adventure and new experiences. She finds both, and an assortment of characters — a bagpipe-playing Gurkha, a tailor-philosopher, a diplomat with a rebellious school-going daughter — as she settles into this small community.

In the idyllic world that Betsy Woodman has created for Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes, things like a talking parrot or a Futurologists’ convention or hidden treasures are a regular part of life, and explained without fuss. If some of the situations or events seem a bit far-fetched, well, that would be the point. In instances such as when the village’s existence is threatened by a dam and the plan is to make Hamara Nagar a tourist destination, Jana is chosen to act as the resident soothsayer to attract more visitors. This, of course, also places Jana as everyone’s confidant and sets up the story for a series of quirky anecdotes and events.

Indian readers, however, could possibly find this description of village India overly exotic and conveniently eccentric, with every kind of ‘Indianism’ packed into this tiny existence — a palace, a pack of monkeys, a corrupt police commissioner, a Bharatanatyam performance and even a street agitation.

The gentle tone and happy and simple cast of characters are reminiscent of No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, particularly as Woodman has planned Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes to be the first of a series. But, a book (or series) like this needs a strong plotline and well-developed anecdotes to engage readers.

And this is where Woodman struggles. While the proposed dam is initially meant to be the big crisis that sets Jana Bibi and the villagers off on their scheme, it barely figures later in the book, making their elaborate plan to stall it somewhat redundant. And while the residents of the village are introduced with all their quirks, their stories are too one-dimensional and the resolutions of these are too predictable.

The intent may have been to portray a charming simplicity but several key characters lack the depth that could make them lovable figures that will endure over several books. The only exception is Feroze, with his old-fashioned ideas, his young wife, his brooding countenance and his love of his craft. The most amusing and entertaining character, however, is Mr Ganguly, the multi-lingual, emotional, dramatic talking parrot, but even he isn’t enough to elevate this book from the sweet, indulgent but somewhat bland tale that it is.