These authors truly represent Indian mobility. The first was born in the UK, and then worked for a decade on the subcontinent. The second was born in Singapore, has roots in Punjab, and has lived in Japan, Russia, Australia, and the US. The third was born in Kolkata, grew up in India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, and studied in another couple of countries.

Their works are just as varied. They range from the mildly amusing to the culturally psychological to the genuinely epic.

1.
Vaseem Khan, 2015, The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra



Critics use terms like "entertaining", "feel-good", and "utterly charming" to describe this, the first of a projected series, and if you enjoyed Alexander McCall Smith or Shamini Flint, you will probably enjoy this. It's cosy crime par excellence. The dastardly deeds are still nasty, but there's a comedic softening, and the brutality is muted.

For me, the baby elephant's contribution was somewhat beyond the realms of plausibility, but hey...

2.
Balli Kaur Jaswal, 2016, Sugarbread



This is a warm, perceptive, touching story of a series of interconnected tragedies that have left their mark on succeeding generations of a Punjabi Singaporean family. Only by bringing things fearlessly into the open can wounds be healed and reputations restored, and the lovably subversive 10-year-old narrator, Pin, plays a conspicuous part in making that happen.

The rapidly modernizing Singapore of the 1990s vigorously protects its ethnic harmony, but sometimes sweeps difference under the carpet, and still has not managed to stamp out stereotyping and racial taunts. The effects are dispiriting for young Pin. But she's nothing if not resilient, and continues to plough her own furrow, putting taunts "under her foot", as my grandmother would have said.

The Singaporean locales -- the markets, the temples, the little shops -- are very evocatively depicted, and the family relationships ring terribly true.

3.
Amitav Ghosh, 2015, Flood of Fire



This is the third of the Ibis trilogy, whose three stages magisterially chronicle the multi-faceted colonial experiences of China and India during the rise of the opium trade. According to Ghosh, it is definitely the last.

It's a while since I read the first two volumes (impressions of the second are recorded here). So it took a little while to get back into the characters, and remember who had known whom, and in what circumstances.

But the breadth of the narrative is bewitching, swinging effortlessly from Mumbai and Kolkata to Guangzhou and Macau.





And, as Ghosh's books always are, Flood of Fire was both an enjoyable and an informative read. This author researches meticulously, and the reader instinctively feels confident about the historical details (the sepoys' uniforms, for example, or the 19th-century obsession with "onanism", or the tangled relationships between Nepal, Tibet, and China).

The arrogant, self-righteous, hypocritical paternalism of the colonial mindset is, again, on full display. "China has no better friend than us!" trumpets one free trader, as he and his confreres set about creating a species of havoc that is still reverberating today.

And the portentous quality of the conflicts is consistently made clear. One character reflects on the "distillation of time" that a battle represents. "Only now did it occur to him that it was on battlefields ... that his own place in the world had been decided... How was it possible that a small number of men, in the span of a few hours or minutes, could decide the fate of millions yet unborn?" One Parsee opium dealer, with a family in India and a family in China, "knew that his actions in Canton ... would haunt both his families, for generations".

Zachary, the novice capitalist, is probably the most disturbing of the book's characters. He has learned frighteningly easily that the passion for free trade easily displaces qualities like mercy or kindness or respect. Reproached by his erstwhile lover and mentor, he replies, "You wanted me to be a man of the times, did you not? And that is what I am now; I am a man who wants more and more and more; a man who does not know the meaning of 'enough'. Anyone who tries to thwart my desires is the enemy of my liberty and must expect to be treated as such."

Truly, the voice of a terrible empire on the march.