The House of Blue Mangoes [ 400 pages] is a truly enjoyable book. It portrays a family saga through the history of south India and its culture as well as the horrors of the caste system. The British rule, its final decline and Gandhi’s ‘Quit India’ non-violent agitation also form the backdrop of this family drama. In between, the reader discovers the details of the wonder of Mangoes especially the blue mango variety grown specifically in the fictitious town of Chevathar .

The novel starts in the Spring of 1899, tracing the lives of 3 generations of the Dorai family. Solomon Dorai is the Christian [ non-Brahmin] village headman [ thalaivar ], and owner of the famous Chevathar Blue [Chevatar Neelam] Mango orchard. A mango so sweet that one cannot taste sugar for three days after eating one. The book starts of by narrating how the conversions to Christianity began in this area after the Brahmins insisted that the lower caste women not cover their breasts so that they could ogle at them. The newly metalled road that passes through the village is a further source of conflict that is resolved when the Brahmins agree that a walking lower caste may not cast a shadow on a Brahmin.

Later, one of Solomon’s sons develops a local herbal cream "moonwhite thylam" that turns the skin from a dark color to a white color. This particular obsession is still true of the entire sub-continent and may explain the ease with which the British ruled over India with about 5000 men.

From the fortune made from this cream, the son makes a family mansion called "the House of Blue Mangoes". Davidar gave the book manuscript to Vikram Seth [author of "A suitable boy"] for review .

In a letter to a reader, author Davidar notes that he gets inspiration from Garcia Marquez, Rushdie, and several contemporary Indian-born writers, including Rohinton Mistry and Arundhati Roy. All the same, Davidar’s House of Blue Mangoes does not have the depth of writers such as Qurat-ul-ain Haider’s "Aag Ka Darya" [ River of Fire].

There is a chapter [ 56] on the journey that Daniel Dorai , Solomon’s son and Daniel’s brother-in-law Ramdoss go on a journey [ yatra ] all over India trying to settle the sweetness and the overall flavor of which variety of Indian mangoes is the king among mangoes . So the reader is given a guide tour of the places where all the famous varieties originate. The reader will learn mango names such as Jehangiri, [ named after the Mughal emperor Jehangir ], Bangaapalli, Himayuddin, Rumanis, Mulgoas, Alfonso, the lakha bagh [ 100,00 mango tree orchard] planted by the mughal emperor Akbar , Malda [ Bombay Green] , Gulabkhas, the Malihabadi Dussehri, the Langda [ the lame mango grown by a lame fakir in Benares ] , the late fruiting "Chaunsa". In the end these guys have to abandon their plans for Lahore and Rangoon…….

Chapter 77 is devoted to the nuances of an English Tree Plantation Manager’s English wife "memsahib" and her afternoon teas bedecked with her "Spode" tea set and her cucumber sandwiches.

All in all it is a book written with the detail and care of an Indo-phile. Davidar’s book nevertheless does not achieve the mark of a Garcia Marquez or Tolstoy. It becomes a bit didactic in many places such as the memsahib’s tea making details. Chapter 95, on the man-eating Tigers of the Tea estates is again a bit didactic, as many have read Jim Corbett’s stories of the Man Eaters of Kumaon. The book ends rather abruptly.

*****