[In the following review, Craig compliments the elements of black comedy in The Crow Eaters.]

Indian society offers plenty of targets for the humorist, though it hasn't, at any rate in novels written in English, generated, too much straightforward comic fiction. It is more common to find an ironic perspective suddenly lightening a very serious undertaking, as in the novels of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Bapsi Sidhwa, however, in a sprightly first novel [The Crow Eaters] shows that black comedy is by no means alien to the spirit of Indian writing. Her Parsi hero Faredoon (Freddy) Junglewalla, is one of those beguiling rogues whose exploits make such entertaining reading—in the tradition, if not quite in the class, of Basil Seal.

Freddy's efforts to further his interests are related in detail, from his inauspicious entry into Lahore in a bullock-cart to the position of power and comfort he occupies at the end of his life. How did he get there? Briefly, by being “all things to all people in my time. There was that bumptious son-of-a-bitch in Peshawar called Colonel Williams. I cooed to him—salaamed so low I got crick in my balls—buttered and marmaladed him until he was eating out of my hand”. Freddy is nothing if not quick-witted and venturesome. His good fortune begins with an act of fraud: “Insurance in India was in its infancy. Its opportunities struck Freddy as brand new …”, the author tells us glibly.

Some time later, succumbing to curiosity about the future and having consulted a mystic, Freddy is startled when the man assures him that he has an intuitive understanding of the mysterious nature of fire. “Its divine energy will always benefit you.” Knowing exactly how a fire at his shop has benefited Freddy, the reader might wonder for a moment if Bapsi Sidhwa has created a character unique in fiction: a sardonic soothsayer. She hasn't in fact; the sardonic impulse is all her own, and no less effective for that. Though she's too easy going to make a satirist, she never resists an opportunity to poke fun at every revered belief and practice in Parsi culture. For example: Freddy's wife Putli, outraged at certain relaxations in modern life, asserts her right to uphold tradition by following her husband assiduously about the house—at the required three paces behind him. And the fact that Lahore is without a Parsi cemetery (an open-roofed enclosure on top of a hill) causes one character to deplore the consequent cruelty to vultures, which are thereby deprived of a natural item of diet.

Freddy's business affairs prosper, but there are other areas in which things can go comically awry. We soon learn that family life in Lahore is no less prone to discord than it is in the West. One of the Junglewallas sons first declares his intention to marry a schoolgirl and part-time prostitute named Rosy Watson, then renounces materialism with such fervour that he keeps coming home in his underpants, having handed out his clothes to the needy. Another son, in whom the instincts of parsimony and self-advancement are well developed, spends his evenings studying on the pavement beneath the light from a street lamp so as to save electricity.

“Crow eater”, the author explains in a note, is a slang expression for someone who talks too much. She is not so helpful elsewhere. It is not clear, for instance, exactly why a lust-ridden member of a house hold should advertise his state by repeatedly adding salt to the family's drinking water. In Parsi circles, for all I know, the custom may seem as ordinary and obvious as the habit of throwing confetti at a bride and bridegroom does to us; still a word of explanation would have been useful. But in spite of this and other trivial irritations, The Crow Eaters is a pleasing piece of fiction—buoyant and good-humoured.