Read an excerpt from AND I AM THE ARROW by Pia Ghosh-Roy!

'Oh, these eyes, Mishu-moni!' Thima lamented. 'Once upon a time, they could make poets out of plain men. When I was your age, there'd be a queue of boys outside our house waiting for me to come out. "Who'll she look at today, who'll she look at today?" They knew, the sneaky buggers, ten o'clock and I'd be on the balcony drying my hair. They knew and I knew and they knew that I knew,' Thima giggled like a girl. 'They threw up crumpled balls of love letters like flowers to a god. Ah, those days!'

Then she'd look at me. She'd take in my face, my forehead, nose, eyes, chin; untuck my hair from behind my ears, cover the sides of my face. You're a good girl, Mishu-moni, but no great beauty, what to do? It's from your mother's side. An amra tree can only bear sour amra, not sweet mangoes.

She'd stroke my hair in consolation, her expression sad and cruel. Her lips curving in a soothing smile, her eyes encouraging me to share her regret - 'How I wish I'd inherited your great beauty, Thima,' was what I needed to say. But I did not say it. And after a second her smile would drop, her nose crease as if a whiff of bad smell had been carried in by the breeze. Smile more, at least! she'd say. When I was your age, a smile was enough, no one could hold the boys back. Does a single boy come round for you?

Ticktock ticktock. Quarter to seven. Thima rings her bell. Bani walks in with a tray, on it a glass of Scotch with soda and ice, a plate of prawn fritters or paneer pakoras or bhetki fry.

Bani, grumbling: Shotti baba, other women are ringing their ghonta for the gods, and in this house? For fish fingers! And that (jerking her chin at the whisky), why not straightaway ask for poison? All'd be over then!

Thima: Mishu, please inform her that she's forgotten the napkins. Don't know about other women, but I should prefer not to die with crumbs of her delicious fish fingers sticking to my lipstick.

Bani (pulling the curtains shut): Ha. Mishu, tell her - she won't die so easy.

Thima: What's the madwoman doing with the curtains?

The conversation that followed took place every day as if for the first time.

Bani: Can't you see? Closing them.

Thima, to me: Mishu, dear, do look up the Calcutta Lunatic Asylum in the telephone directory. Then to Bani: Pray why, in this heat?

Bani: You know very well why. Mr Mitra's sitting in his balcony, can't you see? What'll he think? You with that? (Again, chin-jerk at whisky.)

Oh lord. What am I to do with this backward buffoon? Yes-yes, call me whatnot, I'm nothing but a servant.

Now she remembers! Mishu-moni, open the blooming curtains, and tell this silly woman that I don't care two hoots about what Mr Mitra or anyone else thinks of me. Not two hoots, you hear?

Ei Mishu, hear that terrible hoot-hooting? Must be a poor owl stuck in the house, again! And with a wink at me Bani would make her exit.

Bani was my hub of all abdaar, that untranslatable mishmash of affection and demand, cuddles and complaints, tantrum and rebellion. Though any tantrum I unleashed on Bani was brought to a halt by Thima's low and ominous Mishhhhhu! (no 'moni' when angry), you will not talk to Bani in that tone!

That was Thima and Bani. Guarding and fighting each other. One moment bristling on the other's behalf, the next having a stand-off. Their short, intense bouts of feral fencing, in fluent sarcasm, seemed to bring them both enormous pleasure and leave no scars in its wake.

Once Bani had left the room and the curtains were open and the world back in view, Thima patted the pouffe - Come-come, Mishu-moni, piece of my heart, come sit with your Thima - and proceeded into her evening, which usually started with nostalgia and ended with rancour.

Aa-ha, Mishu-moniii, what this house was, once upon a time! My glorious garden in front, a row of palms on the side, bright pink bougainvillea by the gate, ahh. All gone. Look at it now, pssht! Car-infested concrete. Absolute travesty. No gate or garden, traffic up to my neck. Passers-by staring at us, beady-eyed buggers. Where's the gracious living? The teas in the garden? The good things the British brought with them.

During this daily and vociferous time-travelling, Thima made frequent stops to wave a genial hello to a neighbour, flash a charming smile, toss handfuls of greetings and small talk to assorted subjects on the street below, or, occasionally and without warning, draw public attention to my teenage shyness - Mrs Bose, meet Mishika, my granddaughter recently turned into a stuffed doll, can't speak, I'm afraid.

All this while keeping a keen, investigative eye on the neighbourhood, providing me with a steady stream of acerbic commentary on world affairs, and taking delicate sips of single malt. These were my evenings, upstairs with Thima - entertained, adored, scolded and slighted, alternately and in equal measure while Ma gave singing lessons downstairs.

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A compulsive saga of three generations of women and the ghost of a man cut in two on a train track, spanning Calcutta, London and New York.

Chatterjee Mansion is a 1940s art-deco house in Calcutta with floors of polished marble and rooms filled with lies and omissions. In this house, late on a rainsoaked night, the turn of a single key unlocks a story that throws its women on a journey across the worlds of the living and the dead, and shatters all they know to be true.

Trying to make sense of this world is Mishu, a young woman recently returned to India, just as Niyoti, her grandmother and the family matriarch, falls into a coma. As Mishu, her mother Ira, and their servant Bani wait to see if Niyoti wakes or leaves them forever, long-buried truths come to the surface, revealing a kaleidoscopic tale of survival, forbidden love and wasted ambition.

Narrated by the women and the ghost who haunts them all, And I Am the Arrow is an exploration of death and grief, of memory and reality, and of the ways we love and bruise each other.

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