Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni - Sister of My Heart

Divakarunis talent and originality lie in her ability to discern [the] basic emotional motifs beneath the flashy exotica of Indian, and American, lifestyles. She finds the real points of departure between the two cultures and, in putting her finger exactly there, activates the universal.

LA Weekly

An extraordinary tale A serious tragedy in which the protagonists requisite fatal flaw lies in thinking that one can know what is in anothers heart.

San Jose Mercury News

Beguiling and cleverly plotted.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

[A] magical mix of art and feminism.

Houston Chronicle

Divakarunis gift asserts itself in her moving portraits of Gouri, Nalini, and Pishi, the three acrimonious womensharp-tongued one minute, compassionate the nextwho bring the girls up.

The New Yorker

Wonderfully unpredictable One of the books many pleasures is anticipating where the two women will end up.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Hard to put down.

Detroit Free Press

A wonderfully satisfying novel, full of surprises and emotional truths.

Hartford Courant

What an irresistibly absorbing immersion in the pleasure and anguish of growing up passionate in a world of duty, where each comfort is hedged with a constraint and love unsettles every plan. Sister of My Heart may be alive with exotic detail but its emotions are very recognizable.

Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After and Tender Mercies

Chitra Banerjee Divakarunis account of family life in Bengal is warm and richly detailed. Hers is one of the most strikingly lyrical voices writing about the lives of Indian women today.

Amitav Ghosh, author of In an Antique Land and The Calcutta Chromosome

Shimmers with radiant energy. Unfolds with hypnotic rhythm. A book sparkling with invention, a complex tapestry of worlds ancient and new.

Toronto Star

Thoroughly engages the reader. A unique and instructive mix of unflinching social criticism and old-fashioned romance.

National Post (Toronto)

An absorbing tale, underlined by Indian myth and fable. A lush display of the Indian romantic imagination, in which the twin narratives encompass both fantasy and fatalism.

Toronto Globe and Mail

Strikes a delicate balance between realism and fantasy. A touching celebration of enduring love between two women.

Sunday Times (London)

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the bestselling author of the novels The Mistress of Spices and The Vine of Desire; the story collections Arranged Marriage, which received several awards, including the American Book Award, and The Unknown Errors of Our Lives; and four collections of prize-winning poetry. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Ms., The Best American Short Stories 1999, and other publications. Born in India, she lives in the San Francisco area. The dedicated Web site for the author is www.chitradivakaruni.com.

ALSO BY CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI

Black Candle

Arranged Marriage

Leaving Yuba City

The Mistress of Spices

The Unknown Errors of Our Lives

The Vine of Desire

For those who told me stories
and those to whom
I tell them now:
my grandfather, Nibaran Chandra Ghosh
my mother, Tatini Banerjee,
and
my three men, Murthy, Anand, and Abhay

My deepest thanks to:
My agent Sandra Dijkstra for her continuing belief and support
My editors Martha Levin, Peternelle van Arsdale, and Marianne
Velmans for guiding me through the labyrinth
Deepika Petraglia Bahri, Amitav Ghosh, Martin Nouvelle,
and Susanne Pari for their vision
The California Arts Council for financial support
Foothill College for the gift of time
My family, especially my mother and mother-in-law, Tatini Banerjee
and Sita Divakaruni, for encouragement and blessings
My three men, Murthy, Anand, and Abhay, for all the microwave
dinners they ate uncomplainingly
and
Baba Muktananda and Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
for opening my heart

It is only the story that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence.

CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah

THEY SAY in the old tales that the first night after a child is born, the Bidhata Purush comes down to earth himself to decide what its fortune is to be. That is why they bathe babies in sandalwood water and wrap them in soft red malmal, color of luck. That is why they leave sweetmeats by the cradle. Silver-leafed sandesh, dark pantuas floating in golden syrup, jilipis orange as the heart of a fire, glazed with honey-sugar. If the child is especially lucky, in the morning it will all be gone.

Thats because the servants sneak in during the night and eat them, says Anju, giving her head an impatient shake as Abha Pishi oils her hair. This is how she is, my cousin, always scoffing, refusing to believe. But she knows, as I do, that no servant in all of Calcutta would dare eat sweets meant for a god.

The old tales say this also: In the wake of the Bidhata Purush come the demons, for that is the worlds nature, good and evil mingled. That is why they leave an oil lamp burning. That is why they place the sacred tulsi leaf under the babys pillow for protection. In richer households, like the one my mother grew up in, she has told us, they hire a brahmin to sit in the corridor and recite auspicious prayers all night.

What nonsense, Anju says. There are no demons.

I am not so sure. Perhaps they do not have the huge teeth, the curved blood-dripping claws and bulging red eyes of our Childrens Ramayan Picture Book, but I have a feeling they exist. Havent I sensed their breath, like slime-black fingers brushing my spine? Later, when we are alone, I will tell Anju this.

But in front of others I am always loyal to her. So I say, bravely, Thats right. Those are just old stories.

It is early evening on our terrace, its bricks overgrown with moss. A time when the sun hangs low on the horizon, half hidden by the pipal trees which line our compound walls all the way down the long driveway to the bolted wrought-iron gates. Our great-grandfather had them planted one hundred years ago to keep the women of his house safe from the gaze of strangers. Abha Pishi, one of our three mothers, has told us this.

Yes, we have three mothersperhaps to make up for the fact that we have no fathers.

Theres Pishi, our widow aunt who threw herself heart-first into her younger brothers household when she lost her husband at the age of eighteen. Dressed in austere white, her graying hair cut close to her scalp in the orthodox style so that the bristly ends tickle my palms when I run my hands over them, shes the one who makes sure we are suitably dressed for school in the one-inch-below-the-knee uniforms the nuns insist on. She finds for us, miraculously, stray pens and inkpots and missing pages of homework. She makes us our favorite dishes: luchis rolled out and fried a puffy golden-brown, potato and cauliflower curry cooked without chilies, thick sweet payesh made from the milk of Budhi-cow, whose owner brings her to our house each morning to be milked under Pishis stern, miss-nothing stare. On holidays she plaits jasmine into our hair. But most of all Pishi is our fount of information, the one who tells us the stories our mothers will not, the secret, delicious, forbidden tales of our past.