Before We Visit The Goddess

A beautiful and powerful novel by Chitra Banarjee Divakaruni. I've loved her books ever since I read 'Mistress of Spices' way back in 1997. There's something about her writing that seems to directly touch the soul.

                                  

I read just four pages, and I found myself literally enthralled. 

It's a story that interweaves the lives of three generations of mothers and daughters, each in their own way, strong, independent thinking women, who seek their strength from within, and in each other. Their stories and lives are torn apart by their own ambitions and journeys, yet there is this thread that connects. 

It starts in rural Bengal, and unfolds through Kolkata, and then Texas, America.

Sabitri, the daughter of a sweet maker in a rich household yearns to get an education, and what at one point seems an impossible dream, turns to reality when Leelamoyi, the mistress of the house agrees to take her to Kolkata and educate her. Her stay there is so sensitively dealt with, a layer even below the servants, as neither the servants nor the rest of family understands her presence there.

And then the generosity turns vicious when Sabitri takes the unforgivable step of finding companionship with Rajiv, Leelamoyi's son, and her dreams of an education crumble.

Years later, her daughter Bela, elopes to America with a political refugee lover, against her mothers pleas. All the way to America, and she finds that neither the country, nor her lover are what she had imagined they would be.

And through the ensuing misery and difficulty, she finds her transformation coming through a friend, a man who is half her age and gay. She is also confronted with a difficult relationship with her daughter, one that is as rocky as the one she had with her mother.

And we have Tara, as strong willed as her mother and grandmother, totally American, a stereotypical rebel, with drugs, eyebrow piercings and spiked hair. She is in one sense quite the opposite of her grandmother; while her grandmother yearned for education, Tara throws away her education to find alternate means of living.

And later we realize that it's not that Tara's dreams are regressive, they are just different.

The men in their lives have a presence, fairly strong too, yet they seem to drift in and out, and none of the women crumble despite let downs and betrayals, be it father, husband or lover. In fact it is interesting how each of the women have a transformative influence from a man who has no labeled relationship with them.

What stays is the complex threads that bind across generations and continents, bind with an understanding and love that's beyond judgement and expectations, told in a symphony of voices.

Her prose at times reads like poetry: “She lifts her eyes, and there is death in the corner, but not like a king with iron crown, as the epics claimed. Why, it is a giant brush loaded with white paint. It descends upon her with gentle suddenness, obliterating the shape of the world.”. You almost find the lilt in your voice as you read.

Some deep questions that run through the novel .... 'what does it mean to be a successful woman?' 'what is a family?', and she seems to say, despite influence and conditioning, these answers lie within.