It has been a little over three weeks since I finished this book, and honestly, I'm still struggling to find a firm stance on it. Some books can do that, you know, demanding you to immerse yourself in brooding contemplation of the many ways they have touched you. That is if at all. Essentially a love story, the book revolves around Phiroze, a Parsi corpse bearer and the son of a priest, who falls for Sepideh, the daughter of another khandia, eventually marrying her against his family's will. He works at the Towers of Silence in Bombay in the 1980's, and performs the last rites for Parsi corpses before they're finally fed to vultures, which renders him ostracized from the rest of society. 

This plight stretches itself furthermore when he's given the information that his Seppy, as he lovingly calls her, happens to be an estranged relative. Death and loss are just mundane eventualities of living that Phiroze witnesses day in and out, a mere means of his own livelihood, really, but they soon come to impact him most profoundly with the untimely passing of his own lover.

And so the ‘chronicles’ that the book's title clearly suggests are formed by the events from his life he doesn't realise will inevitably shape whatever remains of it. Given how loudly the Mistry brothers are lauded for their body of work, I was expecting to be completely riveted by this story about a consistently receding minority population, perhaps because I'm proud to have Parsi roots in my own family tree. But sadly, it just didn't do it for me. Though a few parts of the book prompted me to serve it my undivided attention - like when a corpse mistakenly tumbles down on a main road and the politics of this mishap that follow, or when a dying non-Parsi man wishes his life to end at the Towers of Silence - the book in retrospect and in its entirety left me a bit underwhelmed.

I feel like Phiroze and Seppy could have been given a more defined trajectory. But I don't regret reading it at all, for it allowed me to learn about real human lives I'd have otherwise stayed unaware of. // If you enjoyed watching Masaan (the movie), I think you might like this book. 

Thank you for reading. Do put your thoughts about this book in the comments. Have a nice day ahead!