The Crow Eaters
Bapsi Sidhwa

Faredoon (Freddy) Junglewalla is either the jewel of the Parsee community or a murdering scoundrel. Freddy’s mother-in-law, Jerbanoo, thinks he is planning to do away with her, but Freddy has always been a pragmatist: if the old woman were to die (be murdered?) the body would have to be placed on the open-roofed Towers of Silence, in keeping with custom, and that would never do. Insurance fraud and arson, however, are well within Freddy’s repertoire—in fact he thinks he has invented the idea, so advanced is it for India in 1901… As his ‘skills’ grow he becomes a man of consequence among the Parsees, with people travelling thousands of miles to see him in Lahore, especially if they wish to escape tight spots they have got themselves into.

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