“Prologue. Malik. May 1969. Jaipur. It’s opening night of the Royal Jewel Cinema, which shines as brilliantly as a gemstone. Inside the theater: every one of the eleven hundred mohair seats is occupied. Still more people stand, lining the walls of the theater for the premiere. This is Ravi Singh’s big moment....I follow the rest of the group inside the lobby. Before we make it through the doors, we hear a yawning creak, then a complaining groan, and then suddenly the roar of a thousand pounds of cement, brick, rebar and drywall crashing down.”
I’m Betty Martin with "Martin’s Must Reads" and those are some lines from the Prologue of Alka Joshi’s novel The Secret Keeper of Jaipur, the sequel to The Henna Artist. Malik is twenty and a former ward of Lakshmi, the henna artist. He is temporarily in Jaipur as an apprentice to the construction firm that built the Royal Jewel Cinema. Lakshmi now lives in Shimla where she is director of a healing garden and married to the physician for the hospital that owns the garden.
While Malik is in Jaipur, Lakshmi is watching over Malik’s sweetheart Nimmi and her two young children. Nimmi is a twenty-three year old tribal woman of the Himalayan hills who moved to Shimla to sell flowers as a means of providing for her children. Malik notices discrepancies in the quality of building materials and is driven to discover what caused the building collapse.
Meanwhile back in Shimla, Lakshmi helps Nimmi with her murdered brother’s sheep that were being used to smuggle gold into the country. This book is great experienced as an audiobook, as I did.
If you’re looking for a story that will immerse you in Indian culture with drama and a mystery to solve, then you must read The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi.
