Sunday, May 12, 2002		Books

Entwined experiences of sisters
Review by Deepika Gurudev

The Vine of Desire by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Abacus. Pages 373. Rs 475.

THIS one picks up where the earlier one stopped. For all you Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni fans, you guessed it. The much-awaited The Vine of Desire continues the story of Divakaruni's earlier bestseller Sister of My Heart'

Here there are Anju and Sudha, the two young women who were at the centre of the earlier novel. Far removed from Calcutta, the city of their childhood, and after years of living separate lives, Anju and Sudha rekindle their friendship in America.

Anju is the daughter of an upper-caste Calcutta family of distinction. Sudha is not. But Sudha is bewitchingly beautiful, Anju is not. Despite these apparent differences, since the day on which the two girls were born—the same day their fathers died, mysteriously and violently—Sudha and Anju have been sisters of the heart. Bonded in ways even their mothers cannot comprehend, the two girls grow into womanhood with their fates intertwined.

The Vine of Desire takes the moving story of Sudha and Anju Chaterjee a step further. Together, these two sisters have experienced the joys, pains, mystical tales, and tiresome tasks that accompany growing up in a traditional Indian house in Calcutta. Their exceptional bond remains the core of the novel and throughout the work we are acutely aware of how strongly their affection for each other shapes their lives.

An intensely rich and complex novel, it is a virtual tapestry of plots. There is the underlying tension between the desires of the mothers. When the cousins fall in love and are physically separated by arranged marriages their uncommon bond faces its hardest test. As the novel evolves, we follow the women through their lives, experiencing their jealousy, loss, depression, surprise and prolonged separation and find that these battles and triumphs hold a universal thread with which women of many cultures can easily identify.

The deep-seated love they feel for each other provides the support each of them needs. It gives Anju the strength to pick up the pieces of her life after a miscarriage, and Sudha the confidence to make a life for herself and her baby daughter, Dayita—without her husband.

Relationships again take centre-stage. But the women's bond is shaken to the core when they have to confront the deeply passionate feelings that Anju's husband has for Sudha.

Meanwhile, the unlikely relationships they form with men and women in the world outside the immigrant Indian community as well as with their families in India profoundly transforms them, forcing them to question the central assumptions of their lives.

The lyrical and sensual language coupled with the ability to interweave many points of view with ease makes this an engrossing read. The narrative in The Vine of Desire is gracefully structured. Sample this for instance:

"Like invisible sound waves that ripple out and out, the changes reached all the way to India, to Ashok waiting on his balcony for the wind to turn. To their mothers in the neat squareness of their flat, upsetting the balance of their household, causing the mango pickles to turn too sour...the changes multiplied the way vines might in a magical tale, their tendrils reaching for people whose names Sudha and Anju did not even know yet."

Part of the beauty of Divakaruni's talent as an incomparable storyteller is her ability to capture the true complexity of the emotional landscape of her characters. She draws on Anju's inner reserves of strength as she comes to terms with her miscarriage that leaves her incomplete and depressed even at the best of times. And then there are unequalled measures of Anju's fortitude at play as she works doubly hard to pay for Sudha and her baby's airfare to America. That is followed by yet another hard spell of adjustments that call for sacrifices on everybody's parts.

Divakaruni has always written well about the immigrant experience, and here, through Sudha and Anju, she draws a compelling contrast between the selflessness required of women in India and the sometimes bewildering freedoms offered in their adopted land. Through their stories she also unravels the flip side of these freedoms, which end up being more like ties that bind for almost an eternity. In her deft hands, the lyrical descriptions of Anju's and Sudha's lives become more of an uplifting story of two women who learn to make peace with the difficult choices circumstances have forced upon them.

A potent, emotional book delivered by a writer who knows when to step back and take in the poetry. The plot twists, the characters are engaging, and Divakaruni's unmatched style makes this book quite like the Sister of my Heart, evocative and emotionally charged. It is charged with all the elements of passion, jealously and redemption culminating in an extraordinary relationship which can weather almost any storm.

Her writing invariably casts a spell. Be it in the form of a novel, short story, or a poem, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's words flow swiftly, sweeping readers along; at times they whisper softly, tempting, at others they thunder emphatically, daring.

In the end, it is the strength of relationships, in this case the strength of Anju and Sudha's friendship that prevails and the novel culminates in an emotional reunion.

What makes it easier for her to offer her readers a window into the multicultural world of her characters, is the fact that she when she writes she has "no particular reader in my mind but a passionate desire to tell a honest, moving story." Divakaruni believes, "If it is good literature, I know as all sensitive writers know, the reader and the writer will connect. It is inevitable."

And that's precisely what happens in The Vine of Desire, which undeniably falls in the realms of good literature.