coloredgirls

Sister of My Heart is the story of Anju and Sudha. The two are not sisters by blood but rather are equal halves of a friendship that began to form even as they emerged from the womb. They are in fact cousins, but while growing up in Calcutta they were inseparable as twins. Together they live in a household of widowed women overshadowed by the vestiges of a prosperous time blackened by the dual deaths of their fathers. They boast three mothers; Anju and Sudha’s own respective mothers and a propitious Aunt. Their childhood is not meaningfully affected by differences in caste until they come of marriageable age, at which point their lives take decidedly different terms and the bonds of their love and friendship and threatened by adulthood rights and practices.

I love falling in love with a new writer. Divakaruni’s words flow sweet and fluid like poetry. Her prose is ruled with metaphor and simile:

Lastly (I use this word with some guilt), there’s my own mother, Nalini. Her skin is still golden, for though she’s a widow my mother is careful to apply turmeric paste to her face each day. Her perfect-shape lips glisten red from paan, which she loves to chew- mostly for the color it leaves on her mouth, I think. She laughs often, my mother, especially when her friends come for tea and talk. It is a glittery, tinkling sound, like jeweled ankle bells, people say, though I myself feel it is more like a thin glass struck with a spoon. Her cheek feels as soft as the lotus flower she’s named after on those rare occasions when she presses her face to mine. But more often when she looks at me a frown ridges her forehead between eyebrows beautiful as wings. Is it from worry or displeasure? I can never tell. Then she remembers that frowns cause age lines and smoothes it away with a finger.

Each chapter is told alternately in the voice of either Anju or Sudha. I had been reading it on the subway back and forth to work, but this particular night was the first time the television did not compete for my attention. A few weeks ago, I had unplugged the idiot box and put it in my closet determined to get writing done in what previously had consisted of hours long sitcom marathons. As the eleven o’clock hour approached I told myself I would read one more chapter only. This "one more chapter only " delusion lasted until three o’clock in the morning when I turned to the last page of a deeply satisfying book, seven chapters later.

Divakaruni’s storytelling is never predictable. And her careful attention to detail allows the reader casual but intimate insight into the lives of contemporary women in India and America. In her work, I have found a favorite new writer.