Six Days in Bombay

• Author: Alka Joshi
• Genre: Historical Fiction
• Publication Date: April 15, 2025
• Publisher: MIRA

Thank you to NetGalley and MIRA for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

From the New York Times bestselling author of THE HENNA ARTIST, this sweeping novel follows a young Anglo-Indian nurse who embarks on a journey from her home in Bombay, through Prague, Florence, Paris, and London, to uncover a mystery and prove her innocence after a famous painter dies in her care.

When renouned painter Mira Novak arrives at Wadia hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, she’s expected to make a quick recovery, and Sona is excited to spend time with the worldly woman who shares her half-Indian identity, even if that’s where their similarities end. Sona is enraptured by Mira’s stories of her travels, and shocked by accounts of the many lovers she’s left scattered through Europe. Over the course of a week, Mira befriends Sona, seeing in her something bigger than the small life she’s living with her mother. Mira is released from the hospital just in time to attend a lavish engagement party where all of Bombay society. But the next day, Mira is readmitted to the hospital in worse condition than before, and when she dies under mysterious circumstances, Sona immediately falls under suspicion.

Before leaving the hospital in disgrace, Sona is given a note Mira left for her, along with her four favorite paintings. But how could she have known to leave a note if she didn’t know she was going to die? The note sends Sona on a mission to deliver three of the paintings—the first to Petra, Mira’s childhood friend and first love in Prague; the second to her art dealer Josephine in Paris; the third to her first painting tutor, Paolo, with whom both Mira and her mother had affairs. As Sona uncovers Mira’s history, she learns that the charming facade she’d come to know was only one part of a complicated and sometimes cruel woman. But can she discover what really happened to Mira and exonerate herself?

Along the way, Sona also comes to terms with her own complex history and the English father who deserted her and her mother in India so many years ago. In the end, she’ll discover that we are all made up of pieces, and only by seeing the world do we learn to see ourselves.

I discovered Alka Joshi’s writing with her debut book, The Henna Artist. It was a trilogy of books that kept me spellbound while imagining it was me in the vividly rendered areas of India where the series took place. Naturally I jumped at the chance to explore another place in India, this time under British occupation. 

One of my biggest fears with reading a new book by an author whose writing I love is that the story or characters aren’t going to be as captivating as previous books. With that, I shouldn’t have worried. Joshi tackles British occupation, the societal views on Anglo-Indians, and the very different personal experiences of two Anglo-Indian women. 

Sona has an Indian mother and an English father who had returned back to England after siring two children, leaving the three in poverty. Their mother is a talented seamstress, but it’s not enough to provide more than the bare minimum. Sona is trained as a nurse, and works in a hospital in Bombay. Their combined income doesn’t afford them any safety net, yet Sona has big dreams. She doesn’t want to stay confined to Bombay forever, and dreams of exploring the world, having new experiences, and meeting all kinds of interesting people. So far, the only interesting people that she had met are patients at the hospital.

We are quickly introduced to the different strata of society in Bombay under British occupation, where British people were at the top, and Indian people were at the bottom, leaving no clear place for people like Sona. In some cases, they were able to benefit from their mixed background, but for the most part, people like Sona were looked down on by both the British and the Indians. 

While working her usual night shift, we get to see who Sona really is in how she cares for her patients, and she’s a genuinely good, sweet, and smart woman who devotes her life to helping others and doing the right thing. She is always watching and trying to help, even outside of work, as demonstrated by her devotion to her mother and a friend who is in an abusive marriage with no way out. Yet her efforts backfire at times.

Despite being repeatedly told not to socialize with the patients, Sona finds herself drawn to Mira, another Anglo-Indian woman, but one who has lived a vastly different life than her own. Mira is a famous painter, who grew up in Europe and India, and makes it a habit to flaunt social customs. In today’s society, Mira wouldn’t stand out for her affairs with men and women, and a subsequent miscarriage, but in India in the 1930s, she was absolutely scandalous.

Sona and an Indian doctor both express concerns about Mira’s condition, but are scornfully dismissed by the British doctor. However, they were right, and Mira shows back up in the hospital in even worse condition. It shows a lot about how Indian people were treated as second-class citizens in their own country by the British, and how little value was assigned to their care. This wasn’t one of those situations where doctors care for all patients the same, and it ends up costing Mira her life, in a preventable tragedy. 

Readers get to hear Sona’s thoughts, and if you want to hear the story in a beautiful, soft Indian-accented English, I highly recommend the audiobook, which I listened to for part of this. The book is slow-moving; the first half of this character-based story moves at a glacial pace, but Mira’s death around the midpoint of the story really catapults Sona into the more adventurous part of her journey when she’s tasked with keeping four of Mira’s favorite paintings safe and delivering them to three people who meant a lot to her—her first love Petra, her art agent Josephine, and her art tutor Paolo. Each of them live in different places, and Sona takes her promise seriously, after she is fired from the hospital in disgrace. 

A fortunate coincidence finds Sona a friendship with someone who winds up serving as a sort of fatherly stand-in on her travels, and she is suddenly catapulted from thinking that she can’t possibly leave Bombay and her mother, to making plans to travel the world and leave home for the first time in her life. No matter how confining she finds Indian society, it’s a huge shock when she realizes that she will be leaving the comforting arms of her mother, who she has never been without before. 

Sona really grows a lot over the course of this story. She goes from being sheltered and naïve to seeing the world, and for the most part, doing so on her own. I can’t imagine the bravery it takes to leave everything you know behind, but Sona does it beautifully and with grace. I loved seeing how much she changes and grows as her world continues to expand. A huge part of her change is getting to know more about who Mira was, and her growing sense of disillusionment as she uncovers aspects of Mira’s life that leave her frustrated and confused. 

Even with the slower pace, this is a book that I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s kind of like how you can snarf down fast food, but want to savor a really nice meal. That’s how I look at it, and this was the same. I never found myself getting bored or feeling unmotivated to pick it up—rather, I was taking the time to see a version of Bombay, Prague, Paris, and Florence that I can never see in real life. There were good things and bad things that occurred over the course of the story, but we get to see how Joshi chooses to address the plight of both Anglo-Indians and Indian people colonized by the British, miscarriage, and how women who live outside the norm (and within the norms) dictated by society are viewed and treated. 

You might enjoy this one if you:

• Love historical fiction.
• Have the urge to vicariously see 1930s Bombay, Prague, Paris, and Florence.
• Can’t resist a well-crafted story full of realistically flawed characters.

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