How Twain was lost and found in Bombay

Years ago while on a reporting assignment this writer recalls treading precariously inside Kala Ghodarsquos Watsonrsquos Hotel a dilapidated heritage site that was once the toast of Bombayrsquos rich and famous including Sir Richard Burton and Muhammad Ali Jinnah It was tough to imagine its past glory including how its once celebrity guest Mark Twain would have reacted to its decayAuthor Anuradha Kumar didnrsquot struggle though to reimagine Twainrsquos thoughts in fact she went as far as to accurately recreate the streetscape of 1890s Bombay as the bustling backdrop for the American literary greatrsquos disappearance within days of his arrival from the same hotelAn illustrated impression of Watsonrsquos Hotel todayrsquos Esplanade MansionWhat ensues in her new mystery fiction title The Kidnapping of Mark Twain Speaking Tiger is a thrillapage adventure with quirky characters who stir up sufficient excitement to make you secretly wish this was really part of our historyFor Kumar choosing Twain as the centrepoint for her whodunit was serendipitous ldquoI had read Following the Equator and more of Twainrsquos work After I wrote Coming Back to the City the idea of a novel involving Twain emerged out of the blue I live in the US now so it was a happy accident of thinkingrdquo she tells midday in an email interviewAn artistrsquos impression of a view from a top floor of Watsonrsquos Hotel in its heyday Twain and his family would have most likely been treated to such vistas of 1890s Bombay PicWikimedia CommonsEarly in the book Kumarrsquos skills as an imaginative chronicler come to play The plotrsquos ambitious scale with a smorgasbord of characters crisscrosses its way through the original city Think Shantaram meets Slumdog Millionaire in a vintage plot Kumar credits Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano Literature 2014 who maps Paris with meticulousness and detail as her influence ldquoWith the landmarks now gone his protagonists remember them vividlyrdquo she reveals In this book she hopes that readers will see Bombay as did Twain and everyone around him mdashtrade consul Henry Baker his female companion Maya Barton and his trusted aide Abdul ldquoThat they would walk along the same streets see the things smell the same everyday smells and hear the vendors and musicians calling outrdquo In Following the Equator Twain had visited parts of old Bombay where the cosmopolitan classes lived But the book also throws up a murder case that must be solved This expanded the cityrsquos horizons bringing in Parel and MazagaonThe storyline is a delightful joyride for a reader familiar with the cityrsquos19th century history However firsttimers too will jump on to the thrilling ride Its thriving opium trade potpourri of cultures a labour leaderrsquos murder a mysterious stiltwalking magician a thief and a preacher mentions of The Bombay Gazette lend the plot sufficient theatre suspense and relatabilityKumar sourced old Bombay maps including one from Constablersquos Hand Atlas of 1893 in pic and others provided by Ian Poyntz at Indianwaterportalorg She had them enlarged printed and framed on the wall above where she worked and would find herself frequently looking up to check and confirm if her characters were moving and walking about in the right places which of these were likely to be crowded how the character of a street too changed as one moved from the cityrsquos south to parts northward PicWikimedia CommonsKumarrsquos attention to detail is Conan Doylelike ldquoI worked hard to recreate Watsonrsquos Hotel now Esplanade Mansion and how it might have seemed to Twain his wife and daughter Besides the illustrations in his book there were details I researched how its frame structure especially the glass atrium was shipped from England and reassembled the view from the verandah as Twain and later Baker looked out the people who worked in itrdquo She also tracked down stories that remained apocryphal including this bring a whiteonly hotel ldquoit had a certain elitismrdquo ldquoBut for every small detail I had to factcheck For example the telephone Baker used the stick provided in the hotel to beat snakes with the smell of opium the use of fingerprinting as a detection technique that emerged around then Twain had presciently alluded to in an earlier workmdashit all needed exhaustive research so I was always rework my own storyrdquo While the plot is a compelling one Kumarrsquos characters propel it forward American trade counsel Henry Baker despite being an outsider ends up as the reticent hero ldquoI thought I should have someone who had easy access to Twain since there were societal constraints and polite conventions Bakerrsquos presence also helped give a certain authenticityndashOlivia Twainrsquos wife would feel reassured by his presence As a fellowAmerican she felt he understood her readily in a new placerdquo For Twainrsquos character plenty of reading was necessary ldquoHe was extremely curious and always open to new experiencesmdashthis is evident in his writing His aphorisms several of which open his chapters in Following the Equator are witty and havenrsquot datedrdquoAnuradha KumarInterestingly characters like Freddie Bancroft existed during Twainrsquos visit ldquoThere are references in old newspapers of his stay in India to learn magic He was in insurance he got into trouble for arson once but I made up the rest as I went along He died young which made me feel sympathetic towards his character laterrdquo For Kumar Maya the sharp mysterious AngloIndian educatorrsquos character was a difficult one to draw up ldquoOften her lsquooutsiderrsquo position enabled her to unconventionally move among different settings There were other women like hermdashPandita Ramabai doctors who worked in Bombay Edith Pechey Charlotte Ellaby It was challenging but they were ahead of their timesrdquoAfter the heady pulsating chase our last question for Kumar has to be about straddling history and fiction ldquoIt was a challenge but most of it was fun At almost every sentence I had to stop to figure out the historical certainties of a particular detailrdquo We smile when she admits that unveiling some of the complexities of how far the Henry BakerMaya Barton romance one of our favourite trajectories in the story would go was a challenge ldquoIt was tricky to ensure it did not get in the way of the detective story While working out the mystery I was wondering if it was all right to let them kiss or would that make things difficult to solve the mystery Maybe another day another storyrdquo she teases