Updated:
May 07, 2021 12:16 IST
With an insider’s familiarity, Lindsay Pereira presents brutally honest vignettes of Mumbai’s Roman Catholic community
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With an insider’s familiarity, Lindsay Pereira presents brutally honest vignettes of Mumbai’s Roman Catholic community
Reminiscent of Sartre’s existential play
No Exit, the characters in Lindsay Pereira’s debut novel,
Gods and Ends, are trapped in a shared living space they cannot leave a chawl named Obrigado Mansion.
Set in the Catholic neighbourhood of Orlem in suburban Bombay of the 70s, the book is a scathing commentary on the local Roman Catholic community, its idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies, and religion. Disillusionment runs deep among the working-class alcoholic men, embittered women, and desperate young girls dreaming of escape from the confines of their oppressive matchbox-sized homes in Obrigado Mansion. The irony of the chawl’s name is not lost on the reader: