{"id":5021,"date":"2023-05-30T06:27:17","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T13:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5021"},"modified":"2023-05-30T06:27:17","modified_gmt":"2023-05-30T13:27:17","slug":"nilima-rao-a-disappearance-in-fiji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/nilima-rao-a-disappearance-in-fiji\/","title":{"rendered":"Nilima Rao: A Disappearance in Fiji"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This book is such a fun read, which is odd as the subject matter is difficult.\u00a0 Set in 1914 Fiji, at the time a British colony, the rollback of slavery in Britain made it difficult for colonies to obtain workers for their sugar cane and other plantations.\u00a0 The solution (a fairly short lived one) was to import Indians as indentured servants.\u00a0 The workers signed up for a set time \u2013 five years \u2013 and then were free.\u00a0 Ultimately, about half returned to India; about half stayed in Fiji.\u00a0 That\u2019s the setting.<\/p>\n

The main character is disgraced police Sergeant Akal Singh, who has been demoted from a sweet post in Hong Kong to the remote isle of Fiji.\u00a0 He\u2019s on a no-win case \u2013 the \u201cnight prowler\u201d \u2013 a guy who looks in windows at night.\u00a0 He\u2019s only been seen by children, who all describe him differently.\u00a0 Singh is truly stuck in limbo, when a Catholic priest makes a stink about a missing \u201ccoolie\u201d woman at a plantation owned by a powerful British couple.<\/p>\n

\u201cCoolie\u201d was the derogatory term for an Indian worker.\u00a0 The plantation owner is insisting she\u2019s run off with the overseer; the priest is insisting she would never have left her daughter behind.\u00a0 Singh is assigned this thankless case as well, told by his boss to solve the problem without creating political waves.\u00a0 After some investigating in town, Akal heads out with to the plantation with Robert, a doctor who tends to the workers, to see what\u2019s actually going on.<\/p>\n

The plantation owner will barely look at Singh, and when Robert insists the two men bunk together, they end up in the abandoned overseer\u2019s house as the owner refuses to have an Indian in his home.\u00a0 While this book is set in a different time and place, the racism seems to be the same.\u00a0 Robert\u2019s genuine concern and care for the workers gives Singh an in to meet some of them.<\/p>\n

This sounds so grim, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 Somehow, it\u2019s not.\u00a0 The story is fast paced, and the unravelling of the missing woman\u2019s life is fascinating.\u00a0 The characters of both Akal and Robert are so charming and appealing that they carry the novel in their capable hands.\u00a0 You\u2019re rooting for Singh to overcome whatever disgrace expelled him from Hong Kong (a disgrace revealed in the course of the novel), and the setting is evocatively written.\u00a0 You can feel the warmth of the jungle.\u00a0 Most moving to me was Singh moving through the coolie \u201clines\u201d (or housing) at dinner time, with the cooking smells bringing him back home to the Punjab.<\/p>\n

The layers of Colonial society are well dissected by the author, and the light she brings to the living conditions of the workers (especially the women) is harsh.\u00a0 As you might expect, the life of an indentured servant on a plantation was not pleasant.\u00a0 Singh is fighting an uphill battle as he struggles to get a hearing for this missing woman, someone basically dismissed by the British colonials as unimportant.\u00a0 To her daughter, the missing woman is not unimportant.\u00a0 She\u2019s her mother.\u00a0 These elemental ties of emotional truth make this novel a powerful as well as an engaging read and a wonderful debut. — Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book is such a fun read, which is odd as the subject matter is difficult.\u00a0 Set in 1914 Fiji, at the time a British colony, the rollback of slavery in Britain made it difficult for colonies to obtain workers for their sugar cane and other plantations.\u00a0 The solution (a fairly short lived one) was … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1215,1216,1218,1217,10,1214,664,68],"class_list":["post-5021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-a-disappearance-in-fiji","tag-colonial-fiji","tag-debut","tag-disgraced-officer","tag-historical","tag-nilima-rao","tag-soho-crime","tag-traditional-mystery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5021"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5032,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5021\/revisions\/5032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}