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SITA Sinclair is in quest for friends, love and spirituality. She’s been dumped by a boyfriend and needs a new life, and what’s more, she goes and gets it. In the process, she finds new friends and has fresh, unexpected experiences that set her on a path of self-realisation. Does the story remind you of something? A novel you’ve read ... a film that you’ve seen? Allow me to jog your memory. Could it be Eat, Pray, Love you are thinking of? Bingo!
The plot is good, actually. The exploration of the metamorphosis of a person is always fascinating, if it is done with insight. Chai for Beginners`A0is the journey of Sita Sinclair, an Australian woman, who was named after the Indian deity, Sita because her mother wanted to cock a snook at her deeply Catholic mother-in-law (a motive many women will be able to identify with), but with no other aspirations to either India or Indian spirituality or religion. All of that changes when Sita finds a new job, and moves into a new neighbourhood. Her neighbour is a sweet, old woman from India, called Mrs Sharma, with whom she forms a solid friendship and over numerous cups of Indian masala chai and comfortable chats, learns about her namesake in The Ramayana. At her new job also, she finds positive affirmations towards a growing and changing self. She likes her job, meets her co-worker, Gerome, and the two become firm friends. At the same time, Callum, the handsome Scottish art director, walks into her life. And she’s ready for romance again. And now, enter India! Mrs Sharma wants to go to Varanasi and persuades Sita to go with her because her own children won’t go with her. But before the plan actualises, Mrs Sharma dies, entrusting Sita with the task of taking her ashes to India and putting them in the flowing Ganges. It’s a task that Sita considers her bounded duty and she flies off to India for a couple of weeks. Here she has varied experiences in New Delhi, Varanasi and Mt Abu. For a book that is meant
to be a "journey of discovery for the spirit and soul", it’s
speedily executed. It would have been more engaging if some more
detailing of the characters had been done. We don’t really get to form
an opinion even of the main protagonist, Sita. However, the novel does
have an easily readable style and if it does not leave a lasting
impression, is not a bad read. We hear that the author, Jane Ainslie has
been fascinated by India and in her twenties, travelled here to study
meditation, returning thrice later to India to advance her studies. The
one thing that she didn’t learn is that essential India moves at an
unhurried pace. What she did learn well, however, is the recipe of masala
chai!
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Chai
for Beginners has a wonderful
cover in sepia tints. Tea in two small glasses, very Indian you know,
and being both a chai drinker and Indian to the core, I reached
out for the book with eager anticipation. A few pages into it, and I
must confess, I was disappointed. The author attempts to make Sita, her
protagonist, do and achieve too much without really putting much effort
into either her motivation to do what she does or her evolution from a
miserable, ditched, jobless woman into a loved, cherished, whole person.
Neither, unfortunately, has she put enough flesh on the other characters
in the book, which thus comes across as a hastily written work, to be
read and put away equally quickly.