| We Lahoris have forgotten how many times we have welcomed Thalassa Ali home. And yet Lahore is as much her home, even though she does not reside here permanently, as it is ours. |
| Lahore must be her home, for only a person in love with the city could care so much for it as she so obviously does. Today’s Lahore is the city she visits and lives in. Yesterday’s Lahore is the city that dwells in her mind and her fertile subconscious. Specifically, it is 19th century Lahore that appeals to her most, which is why perhaps she has used it as the backdrop of her two very readable novels. |
| Thalassa’s first novel – A Singular Hostage – was set in the closing months of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s reign. In an age when monarchs were hard on themselves and even harder on their subjects, Maharaja Ranjit Singh led a very hyper-active life. Known for his compassion and one-eyed secularism, he carved a kingdom for himself and like Napoleon declared himself emperor, in his case of the Punjab. Thalassa ended her first novel on a date - 31 December 1838 – just six months short of the death of the worn-out Maharaja. |
| However, the lives of the main characters who populated that story – Mariana Givens, the gifted child Saboor, her spiritual mentor Shah Waliullah Karakoyia and his brave son Hassan (who chivalrously marries Mariana but rather unchivalrously leaves her chaste after their wedding night) – are given life again, this time in A Beggar at the Gate. |
| All of them reappear in its pages where they continue the tortuous threads of their tense lives. The second instalment of their story begins fifteen months later, on 21 March 1840. During the tempestuous intervening period, Ranjit Singh’s imbecile successor Maharaja Kharak Singh – ruler in name only – is being slowly poisoned by his ambitious son Kunwar Nau Nehal Singh. (Incidentally Nau Nehal Singh’s fancily decorated house in the old city still stands and is now the Victoria Girls’ High School.) Kharak Singh dies in November 1840, and his son Nau Nehal – maharaja for less than a day – also dies, either by accident or deliberately murdered on his way back to the Lahore Fort. The throne of the Punjab falls suddenly and dangerously vacant. |
| The war of succession between Kharak Singh’s widow Rani Chand Kaur and Ranjit Singh’s putative son – Sher Singh – forms the theme of Thalassa’s second story, with her original cast repeating their roles, but this time in another equally absorbing scenario. |
| I do not want to divulge the plot to you. Novels are better read than described. |
| All I can say is that those of us who are familiar with the history of that period will recognise tones of authenticity that provide credibility to her imaginary narrative. She has caught, as Emily Eden did, the vivid image of Faqir Azizuddin – Ranjit Singh’s foreign minister – who disguised his expensive gown embroidered with seed pearls under a coarse outer faqir’s cloak. |
| The denouement of Thalassa’s story is perhaps inevitable. It ends, as it began, with the Sura Nur, and a comparison of the heroine with an olive tree, neither of the East nor of the West. |
| Thalassa, in many ways you are yourself a living personification of Mariana, both of the East and of the West. Both parts of the hemispheres you choose to live in are proud of your latest achievement and success. |
| I could not help wondering though whether your latest book was not at another level an analogy, about another olive tree, neither of the east nor of the west. Could it be about a political olive, who has just won an unexpected election and made a Sikh an all powerful prime minister? |
