PERVEZ By Meher Pestonji HarperCollins Price: Rs 295 Pages: 318

The ultimate test of a novel is whether it makes you want to keep reading, whether the author is able to keep your curiosity alive till the end. Meher Pestonji's first novel Pervez is about a woman who is, above all, incredibly honest with herself and, because of this, is capable of being generous to others. This is what makes her an unusual heroine and makes you want to read about what happens to her.

At the age of 29, Pervez, a young Parsi woman, decides to leave her Goan musician husband and return to the city of her birth, Mumbai. To the conservative Parsi community obsessed with success, Pervez is a failure, neither educated nor rich nor married. But Pervez is determined to live life on her terms. Unable to fit into the social whirligig of Marine Drive, she prefers to move to Kalina and start an M.A. in Psychology. There she becomes part of a politically active, bohemian group of friends and through them, is drawn into the turbulent events of the 1990s-the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Bombay riots.

In a way, Pervez's political awakening is the least interesting part of the book. This may be because the autobiographical element becomes more overt and swamps the voice of the heroine. Yet the book is saved by the heroine herself whose honesty and slightly naive curiosity about what she sees gives her account freshness and vitality. Equally interesting are the heroine's observations about the other characters and their relationships. Naina, Pervez's schoolfriend, who lives a spartan life during the week with her Marxist boyfriend and returns to her parents home on Marine Drive for the weekends. Naina's boyfriend Siddarth, rigid in his ideas of a Marxist class struggle, and yet incredibly clever at finding simple and practical solutions to problems, dogmatic with his friends and yet tolerant and willing to dialogue with Shiv Sainiks in order to bring about peace. Munawwar, an 18-year-old Muslim, in love with a Hindu girl, whose contact with Pervez and her friends only increases his confusion about his identity. Or his brother Saeed, who refuses to take blood from Vishal, a Dalit poet-friend, when his own brother is hurt and in need of it.

Through this bohemian, supposedly classless group of idealists, the author brings alive the insidiousness of caste and how caste intermingles with class in the city so that, far from going away, it becomes stronger.

There are many fascinating things one learns in the novel-about Dharavi, about Parsis, about Muslims, about common sense reasserting itself after terrible horrors, about Godhra and what really must have happened. The only blemish is the author's use of pidgin Hinglish, unnecessary and often irritating. And yet, the reader will read on because ultimately Pervez herself holds one's interest. She has great curiosity about life and has no self-pity. She is tremendously sensitive to her environment and to those around her. She is a woman with a big heart, a heart where there is no place for bitterness or dogmatism: a heart where there is always place for hope.

TOP 10 BESTSELLERS
HOUSE FULL
A monthly national list of bestselling books compiled for India Today by ORG-MARG based on data from 16 retail outlets in six cities
FICTION
NO.	TITLE	AUTHOR	PUBLISHER
1. (-)	Life of Pi	Yann Martel	Penguin
2. (1)	The Family	Mario Puzo, Completed by Carol Gino	Harper-Collins
3. (5)	Family Matters	Rhonton Mistry	Faber
4. (-)	The Nanny Diaries	Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughilin	Penguin
5. (7)	The Inscrutable Americans	Anurag Mathur	Rupa
NON-FICTION
NO.	TITLE	AUTHOR	PUBLISHER
1. (1)	Who Moved My Cheese ?	Spencer Johnson	Vermilion
2. (4)	Fish : A Remarkable way to Boost Morale	S.C. Lundin, H. Paul and J. Christensen	Hodder and Stoughton
3. (3)	You can Win	Shiv Khera	Macmillan
4. (6)	The Shade of Swords	M.J. Akbar	Roli
5. (2)	Wings of Fire	A.P.J. Abdul Kalam	Universities
OTHER INDIAN BOOKS IN THE TOP 20 : FICTOIN
NO.	TITLE	AUTHOR	PUBLISHER
6. (17)	Fury	Salman Rushdie	Rupa
7. (2)	Devdas	Sarat Chandra Chatterjee	Penguin
12.(6)	Making the Minister Smile	Anurag Mathur	Penguin
17. (-)	The House of Blue Mangoes	David Davidar	Viking
NON-FICTION
NO.	TITLE	AUTHOR	PUBLISHER
7. (7)	India Unbound	Gurcharan Das	Penguin
8. (11)	Truth, Love and A Little Malice	Khushwant Singh	Viking
12. (13)	India-Pakistan in War and Peace	J.N. Dixit	Books Today
* Last month's rating in brackets
Participating bookshops: Delhi: Crossword, Om Book Shop, Faqir Chand, The Bookshop, Times Book Gallery; Mumbai: Crossword, Shah Book Stall, Danai Book Shop; Bangalore: Gangarams, Fountainhead; Hyderabad: Walden Book Links, The Book Point; Kolkata: Oxford Books, Modern Book Depot, Family Book Shop; Chennai: Fountainhead