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Review: The Witch in the Peepul Tree by Arefa Tehsin

ByLamat R Hasan
Aug 31, 2023 01:56 PM IST

Set in Udaipur in the 1950s, this nuanced murder mystery touches on privilege, power, control and caste

It’s January of 1950. The one-day kite festival that marks the end of the winter solstice, Makar Sankranti, is being celebrated and the sky is a battlefield. In Dada Bhai’s palatial home in Bohrawadi, Udaipur, his three young sons – Sa’ad, Zain, and Asad – are on the terrace trying to conquer the skies.

The spreading branches of a peepul tree (Shutterstock)
The spreading branches of a peepul tree (Shutterstock)

The youngest, Asad, is sent off to get a new manjha – the kite-string coated in glass and flour – from the room of their oldest sibling, 16-year-old Sanaz Apa. Asad dashes down the floors of the building, which is the second highest in Udaipur after the Maharana’s palace, to get the manjha.

326pp, ₹399; HarperCollins
326pp, ₹399; HarperCollins

When Sanaz Apa doesn’t respond to the knocks on her third-floor room, he pushes it open, and finds her sitting on a chair facing the door – looking like “wilted cabbage”. It was clear even to the nine-year-old Asad that Sanaz Apa had been taken by the resident witch of the peepul tree.

Sanaz Apa was the oldest and the most good-looking of Dada Bhai and Mena’s children. She was also the most precious, as she was born after they had lost four children.

When Sanaz Apa is discovered dead – ironically on a day when the skies were “a scattering of colourful flower petals thrown on a baraat” –  the family believes it is the handiwork of the living witch referred to as “jeevti dakkan”. However, in the real world there are a few human suspects that the police zero in on. The chain of events that follows over the next 24 hours makes this novel a compulsive read.

Dada Bhai’s friend, the visiting Rao Sahab, the zamindar from Singhgarh, who secretly admired Sanaz’s good looks, is a key suspect; as are Badi Bi, the widowed housekeeper; Parijat, the attractive night soil worker, Nathu, the Bhil, and Ismail, the house-help, who loved greeting visitors in his trademark “namaste, as-salam-alaikum…” Dada Bhai’s widowed mother Sugra, who spends her time rolling her rosary, imagining herself to be jeevti dakkan’s secret ally, is not above suspicion either – a rather broad-shouldered woman in a burqa had visited her in the morning when the kids were flying kites on the terrace.

Dada Bhai is a respected aristocrat from the Bohra community. He believes in egalitarianism, and even though he has lost sizable wealth after the princely Mewar state merged with India, he has no regrets. Social engagements keep his beautiful wife Mena busy, who endorses her husband’s ideologies. She isn’t exactly popular in Mewar and is seen as the second witch of Bohrawadi. At one point, Rao Sahib’s aide warns him, “Dada Bhai’s house is under the influence of two witches… one that hangs on the tree outside and the other that hangs around the women of Mewar. His wife! Teaching letters to women! After some time, the only ones obeying our commands will be our horses…”

The poise with which Dada Bhai and Mena deal with the death of their  daughter is heartbreaking. Even in this moment of extreme sadness, Dada Bhai remembers to organise a dignified burial for a low caste man, who was found drowned, with a heavy hammer tied to his waist. His crime: The family had defecated in the open agricultural fields of the upper castes. Dada Bhai even covers the tracks of his mother, Sugra Bai, and his house help Ismail, whom the cops view suspiciously.

Tehsin’s work can be labelled a murder mystery, but her unhurried examination of the socio-economic schisms in 1950s India throws up intriguing sub-plots related to privilege and power, control and caste, making this novel a wonderfully nuanced read.

The description of the exploitation of Parijat, the untouchable sanitation worker, who visits the home every day – it’s the only house in the Bohra enclave with a private toilet – is particularly searing. “Till the time you were not made to eat the shit you collected, till the time your brother was alive and breathing, life had a rosy side,” Parijat muses. Her acceptance of her fate make the contemporary reader cringe.

Then, there’s Valmiki, her brother, who had joined MK Gandhi in the independence struggle. He encourages Parijat’s disabled husband to call people from their community Dalits, as Dr BR Ambedkar had taught them to. He makes speeches exhorting people to practice equality, even as his sister secretly wishes he could come to her rescue.

Author Arefa Tehsin (Courtesy the publisher)
Author Arefa Tehsin (Courtesy the publisher)

Despite a murder in the house, there’s comic relief in Tehsin’s writing. Here’s Rai Sahab, who never misses an occasion to pass wind: “Only two kinds of people have ruled Hindustan, Dada Bhai.’ He lifted one of his buttocks and farted with force. He would have liked to claim it was a 12-bore he had fired…”

Or when Tehsin recounts how Sugra’s husband’s death was caused by a sneeze. “He went tumbling down the stairs from the topmost floor and split his head. The four-and-a-half long months of iddat – in which a widow is confined to an isolated cell – had not helped her figure out the purpose of his random life. Or the cosmic plan behind his comic death.”

Tehsin is a phenomenally talented writer. The daughter of naturalist Dr Raza H Tehsin, she grew up in southern Rajasthan and spent her childhood treading jungles with her father, exploring caves and handling snakes. A former honorary Wildlife Warden of Udaipur, she has also written on nature and conservation. This novel was born when she was “happily” locked up in Sri Lanka with her partner during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Witch in the Peepul Tree is a recommended read.

Lamat R Hasan is an independent journalist. She lives in New Delhi.

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