Serious Business: Alice makes a huge deal over the fact that Truman refuses to eat ice cream, even referring to his preconceived notion as "prejudice". The immediate answer is that either mangos or mangoes can be correct, and you are the final judge of which to use. You might have days when you use mangos and others when you opt for mangoes. You can however consider a couple of things before you use them interchangeably. David Davidar’s “The House of Blue Mangoes” is a sweeping saga chronicling three generations of the indomitable Dorai family hailing from a village on the banks of India’s southernmost river. Though written in the epic mould reminiscent of Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children”, it replicates neither the magical prose of the former nor the powerful intensity of the latter. He was exhilarated by the traveling . . . Aaron could now understand at least a part of it: the excitement of new places opening up his mind, the sense of freedom that anonymity provided . . . "

Set in a village in the erstwhile Madras Presidency, this is a story of three generations of a family. Despite the flaws in character development, Davidar's prose, for the most part, flows at a rapid, fluid clip. At times, however, his usually lyrical writing plods along at a most cumbersome pace --- a tiresomely detailed description of how to brew tea immediately comes to mind. But the author eloquently conveys the raw beauty and power of the Indian landscape, and the cycle of the seasons and day turning into night provide a sense of the wheel turning and the steady progression of time. What I really liked about the writing was that there was little exposition and explanation. For example, Davidar does not explicitly the reader things like the fact that a wedding thaali comes from Hindu practices but is used by Tamil Christians as well. He also does not point out to the way people are named from both the Bible and Hindu scripture: Apart from Solomon, Daniel and Aaron, there is Ramadoss (meaning one who serves Ram) or Kannan (the diminutive associated with Krishna). Davidar doesn't try to explain how India functions and that is the best thing about the book. If the reader is as clueless as the beleaguered British - portrayed with both sympathy and simmering anger in the book - the author doesn't seem to mind. Thematically, the story is more about events than ideas, and more about a specific set of characters than about the meaning of these events and characters. Ultimately there is no resolution. We know the outcome of the history in which the story is set – a true history, but what is right and what is wrong, or whether Aaron’s engagement or Daniel’s sense of family and the personal is right or not is left open. Kannan finds a kind of sense of purpose in home – almost a Panglossian tilling of his garden: “I’m here, it is the place of my heart”, and perhaps that is the ultimate theme of the book – to stay home, and become yourself, and till your own garden/grow your mangoes. In any case, Kannan’ return home is reasonably satisfying as an ending, even if the ultimate struggles of his country are to continue beyond the setting of this story.The House of Blue Mangoes is an attempt at writing an epic multi-generational saga, but like most of these stories, it flounders at the end and the family becomes gradually more and more boring. Solomon Dorai is a non-Brahmin Christian, belonging to a caste that appears to be somewhat high on the scale. He is also rich and is the head of the village. Succeeding him are his two sons, Daniel and Aaron, and succeeding them is Kannan. The House of Blue Mangoes is the story of these three generations of men. Make no mistake, this is a book about men. Downplayed in T.D.'s imagination, where Alice and Truman are old, and he's mostly wearing the same clothes but with a tie and a dress shirt instead of a T-shirt, and she's still wearing green and brown, but with long pants instead of shorts and a sweater instead of a t-shirt. The title of this book is what drew my attention.. it is derived from a particular type of mango that thrives in the soil of the place this story is set in and is called Neelam meaning blue.. At the cafe, Helen and T.D. tell Alice to let the situation go, but she refuses. Truman approaches, but Alice refuses to let him sit at the table, saying that it's only for people who've tried something before deciding they dislike it. Then, she growls and walks off, then Truman walks off too. If you ever find yourself confused in writing the plural of mango, you aren’t alone. The spelling issue can cause pause because conflicting guidelines are at play.

As the struggle for Indian independence intensifies, the third generation of the Dorai family begin their life journey. Daniel's son, Kannan, moves away from the family home to marry the woman he loves and make a life for himself. And this is where the story rambles a lot as it tries to incorporate too many things that do not seem relevant to what came before. I read this because I read comparisons to Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy, which I loved, but Davidar's book is not in the same league. The House of Blue Mangoes starts out strong and contains some beautiful passages, but overall it is a mess, disjointed, poorly edited, and a little bit pointless. The characters are very one-dimensional and never make any sense. Points of view occasionally change mid-paragraph; new plots come out of nowhere even at the very end. Strange Minds Think Alike: Despite having opposing views, both Alice and Truman manage to end up saying, "It's not the ice cream; it's the principle of the thing." In a world irrevocably shaken by historical events, most of his characters remain curiously unscathed. Too entangled in their own familial disputes to notice the world around them changing, the characters come across as superfluous, ignorant and entirely self-centered. For example, while Gandhi is busy becoming a household name, Daniel embarks on a ridiculous expedition to taste every mango in India for the sole purpose of confirming his opinion that Chevathar's fabled blue variety are indeed, as he suspects, the best in the land. Only Aaron, Daniel's brother, is swept up in the tide of history. He joins the struggle for freedom with catastrophic results.The planter isn't expected to be a man of culture shall we say?; 'Yes, I know, Major Stevenson asked me whether I read a lot, when he interviewed me. I said no, and he said, good, very good, planters are expected to get their boots dirty, not lounge around reading books."