Book review: Once Upon a Summer by Manjul Bajaj
Once Upon a Raj time
In her fourth book of fiction for adults, Manjul Bajaj has once again created a delicate spindrift of forbidden love, this time in the times of the British Raj.
The wonderfully descriptive story moves between New York, Rannpur, Jaunpur, Saharanpur, Nainital, flows gently over every pebble, every path, every emotion contained within it. The characters are drawn with compassion, and while a few of them behave in a heroic fashion, it is interesting that no real villains litter this landscape.
And so, we get a young English girl in Madeline Evans, sweet-natured but also willful . She has definite views of how the colonized Indians ought to be treated, and will fight quietly for that. We get Azeem, a young man once almost a prince, now a pauper and working as a syce for Madeline`s father. He keeps his emotions under tight control, refusing to let emotions sway him, walking the thin line between being carrying himself proudly without coming off as arrogant. We get a basically decent Norman Evans, Madeline`s father who is a Public Works Dept officer, and we also get an intriguing character in the form of Mariam Das, maid and companion to Madeline. Mariam is self-contained, cautious, having burnt by the fire of both love and discrimination and racism in life. She knows an ayah needs to find the correct balance between visibility and invisibility – within sight of the immediate family but not overly discernable to their circle of visitors and friends. She is quite ready to keep the young lovers in check, doing her utmost best to make them see sense and behave with sensibility, even though her sympathies secretly lie with the anguished couple. At one point, Azeem muses that the object of his affection Madeline is a babbling brook, its gurgle and swift current irresistible, while Mariam is still and serious like a lake.
And then, we sweep out West, to New York, to a stately house where we get the aged pioneer publisher Alfred A. Allye and his recently deceased wife Rose. Alfred spearheaded the notion of books as weapons in the war of ideas and published a series of Armed Services Editions, paperbacks distributed to the Allied troops between 1943-47. From there, it was but a step to publish fiction, philosophy, poetry, translations. Now in the twilight years of his life, Alfred sits back and takes stock, feeling satisfied with everything Rose and he have built from scratch. Alfred and his Rose hold a secret close to their hearts, one which slowly, startlingly unfolds itself to the reader.
The author evocatively shows how India leaches the personality of Norman Evan`s wife, the academically inclined Martha, who is shown to be a totally different woman on her home ground, the village of Middlesbrough. She is a nascent suffragette with a fierce conviction in the equality of women, and raises her young daughter along these independent lines. In India though, she lives in fear of cholera, typhoid, snakes. Since she has stoutly refused to learn housekeeping back in England, now she finds she just cannot run the vast household that Norman wants to hand over to her. At one point, Martha observes that she has become lead to her daughter`s mercury.
Bajaj writes Madeline and Azeem`s story with ease and facility, imbuing this Raj story with much rich detail and atmosphere . The tidbits of historical detail are all neatly woven into the story. There is a passage where the author relates, in Norman`s words, just why the officers of the Raj cobbled together such a strict rulebook for all posted in India to follow: these rules held the race, men women children, in the reassuring embrace of their own kind, their own food and customs, their own memories of home, their dreams of returning there one day.
We read of horses, Australian, Spanish, English thoroughbreds; we read of Amiran from Faizabad who goes onto become the famed courtesan Umrao Jaan, the story Azeem relates to his Madeline. We read of a Nainital of a time gone by, where the British went to escape the heat of the plains, to ride, roller skate, row, sail, amble along the many walking trails.
Bajaj writes that she was inspired to write this story when she came upon the account of a verboten romance between a real-life English girl Madeline and an Indian Muslim, Azeem, on the Nainital Nostalgia Facebook group. The story piqued her interest, and she decided to `finish` the tale, breathing life into the love story of Madeline and Azeem, studding it with descriptions of Indian cities during the Raj, thus creating an affecting Raj romance.
Once Upon a Summer by Manjul Bajaj. HarperCollins Books. Rs 499. 353 pages
https://www.newindianexpress.com/lifestyle/books/2025/Nov/23/once-upon-a-forbidden-raj-romance
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Sheila Kumar • November 23, 2025