Why do I write? Why did I write TOWER?
1. Because there is a certain kind of evening that demands it…
2. Because nobody else knows Chhotu the Cripple or Antun the Gardener.
3. Because of the demonic beauty of the English language.
4. Because I’m self-indulgent
5. Because Sara said the green matched her dress better and nobody ever thimbles a thumb.
6. For blue cheese and chocolate.
7. ‘Cause that’s the only time that I can really speak to you’ (thank you Mr. Waters.)
8. To hunt down the sublime sentence.
9. Because I listened to the dirge that hummed in the wood, the stone, the glass.
10. Because every story finds a teller.
Summary: An epic tale of loss and longing that captures the cultural, urban and sociological changes in urban Bombay though the ages from the 1920s to 1970s. Tower addresses the timeless themes of love and death, loss and return, and the validity of faith. It speaks of a house that a young man built in Bombay in the 1920s to accommodate his family and relatives, the years that saw its rooms fill up, the looming threat of their emptying, and eventual deliverance from that threat. Echoing with ghostly voices from the past, and watched over by the three Fate Sisters, Framji Building is at the heart of this epic tale of loss and longing, charged with gothic, supernatural and magical forces. Lyrical, allusive and inspired, marrying myth and matters of fact, Tower is a profound meditation on life, death and what lies beyond.