Sweet & engaging

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Set in the New York of 1990s, Sohaila Abdulali's Year of the Tiger is a story of characters in search of their identity, their passions, striving to achieve a resolution of the "what do I really want in my life" issues, battling in their heads. The book traces the lives of The "Black Twins of India", Kabir and Zara, and their fair older sister Salma in lively New York. Abdulali draws on her own years spent in New York to etch a compelling, hearttugging profile of the city—"Is it possible to have a passionate encounter with a city? If the city is New York, it's almost impossible not to. The twins gave themselves up to its embrace on a blue May day, fresh leaves twinkling, starlings chackchacking, taxis yellow as a Cornwall hillside." And then, "Kabir... cast his eyes up to the heavens, and saw, in the space between two tall buildings, a perfect crescent moon — a fragile eyelash floating in the far sky. This was one of his favourite things about the city—the moon in unexpected places."Curly-headed Kabir and Zara have "differences as significant as their similarities"—while Zara has her goals clear before her, Kabir floats around. Zara wants to be one of the boys in the adrenaline-high world of Wall Street. She cusses better than any of the boys while in office, smilingly participates in their scatological jokes, she is one of them, a successful Fx exotics trader. Now, she only needs to make it really big on the Street! Kabir, a development consultant, loves his music and his women, almost equally, passionately, though he could never dream of making music his career "for if music became work, it would cease to be play and then what would be the point".Kabir, with his wild, curly hair, his dark lips and bony frame, coupled with the edgy lyrics of songs, is a big hit with women—from a silky, auburn-haired nun to the in-your-face Mildred, they all end up, entwined, with him in The Jungle, the siblings' hidden lair. The Jungle, a character in itself, hides an indoor garden, nurtured by Kabir, and so lush that visitors found themselves "insensibly listening to the squawk of parrots, the crying of crickets and the modest cough of a tiger". Salma works in a scientific lab, and is the calmer, more sensible older sister, with an almost too sedate life compared to the twins.She is also routinely subjected to a string of 'suitable' boys.Then there is Sam, their best friend, who works with the mentally ill when he is not chasing his consuming passion for tigers and helping the siblings "chase their extraordinary dreams". There's Benny in the psychiatric ward waiting for the Phalaepnosis, a metaphor for his desperate search for beauty, sweetMildred, one of "Kabir's many lovers, Rick the Hussain's neighbour, who wants to sail the seven seas, and the moon as it makes sudden appearances."The book reads a little stilted in the first few pages as it tries to create the atmosphere of the Indian siblings in New York, bestows on them their cha- racteristic traits and their Indian-ness, the arre babas, immigration hassles, an effort to give an exotic Indian touch to the Black Twins of India. Salma is not as fleshed out in the first half of the book and exists primarily in her Indian English "come on, pack up your books and all", in her gentle exasperation at Kabir's wild ways, and elder-sister admonitions to the twins and her meetings with prospective suitors. She comes alive only towards the end of the book when she is wildly, sexually attracted to a Hindu boy, Ganapathi, and is tortured by images of her tongue pressing against and trying to dislodge his wicked, crooked tooth. Being a Muslim, she is torn between her all-consuming love for him and the fear of offending her parents. Those are the pages when Salma kicks alive.Read through the 40-odd first pages of the book and you will find yourself carried along on a sweet, engaging story, told in vivid imagery, with scenes so written that they will linger in your mind for long. The Jungle will ensnare you with its overblown beauty. And a great Road Song will travel along.

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