History is inundated with examples of men who were never what they seemed. That's why pastor Pius Philipose, whose death sets the plot in motion in Cyrus Mistry's latest novel The Prospect of Miracles (Aleph Book Company), sounds all too familiar. The charismatic pastor is remembered for his fine sermons by the parishioners of Idukki in southwest Kerala. His wife and protagonist Mary Agnes, however, remembers him for a lot more — mostly terrible things — elevating the story to examine the heights of love, hate and madness.

Plot twist

"Mary is a two-sided person. Initially, she seems entirely normal and sensible until her obsessions get in the way. In the end, you can question if she is totally sane. That is how the character develops and it wasn't completely pre-planned," Mistry says, on a phone call from Kodaikanal, where he currently lives. The author chuckles when I remark that the halfway through, the book reminds one of George Cukor's Gaslight (1944). "I like that film quite a lot. It probably crept into my book, unintendedly," he admits, while giving a brief comparative analysis between his work and the movie before adding, "... but let's not give away too much about the plot." This isn't the first time Mistry is asking questions about love and death — his previous novel Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer that bagged the $50,000 DSC Prize in 2014 about the son of a priest who falls in love with the daughter of a corpse bearer, only to become one himself after marrying her. But does the 63-year-old author regard such an antithesis as central to his work? "I think most good writing or art is concerned with tragedy and love. So, although I think these things will be present in my writing, I hope other aspects of life come through, too."