Sister of My Heart

praise for Sister of My Heart

“Divakaruni’s 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 another’s heart.”

—
San Jose Mercury News

“Beguiling and cleverly plotted.”

—
Los Angeles Times Book Review

“[A] magical mix of art and feminism.”

—
Houston Chronicle

“Divakaruni’s gift asserts itself in her moving portraits of Gouri, Nalini, and Pishi, the three acrimonious women—sharp-tongued one minute, compassionate the next—who bring the girls up.”

—
The New Yorker

“Wonderfully unpredictable… One of the book’s 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 Divakaruni’s 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
Sister of My Heart

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.

“That’s 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 world’s 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 baby’s 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
Children’s Ramayan Picture Book
, but I have a feeling they exist.
Haven’t 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, “That’s 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 mothers—perhaps to make up for the fact that we have no fathers.

There’s Pishi, our widow aunt who threw herself heart-first into her younger brother’s 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, she’s 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 Pishi’s 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.