Description
'Mine is the story of the fall from grace of a high-born crossbreed — me, Moraes Zogoiby, called 'Moor', for most of my life the only heir to the spice-trade-'n'-big-business millions of the da Gama-Zogoiby dynasty of Cochin — and of my banishment by my mother Aurora, née da Gama, most illustrious of our modern artists.'
It began with the watery disappearance of Great-Grandfather Francisco, swallowed by the bustling lagoon lapping his island mansion; and with the catastrophic family conflict that followed, an epic battle that led to torched cashew orchards, smoldering cardamom groves, and murders. Thus was a family divided, not just by greed and secrets, but by chalk lines drawn across floors, like frontiers, and spice-sacks piled up across courtyards, as though they were defences.
(Years later, Bombay would also go up in flames, victim of its own fatal divisions.)
Once a year, high above massed festival crowds, her white hair flying in long loose exclamations, her ankles a-jingle with silver bell-bracelets, Aurora would dance her rebellion against India's immense perversity. And, in magical charcoal and oils, she tried to heal what-could-not-be-kept-whole, laying bare, on gallery walls, the secrets of her family and times.
From the Paradise of Aurora's legendary salon to his omnipotent father's sky-garden atop a towering glass high-rise built by invisible men, the Moor's breathless story unfolds his family's often grotesque but compulsively moving fortunes, and the tragicomic transformations wrought by love.
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