Ahistorical craftwork

This well-intentioned novel is set in 1950s India. Independence is in the air, not just for the recently independent country, but for the protagonist Lakshmi Shastri, who escapes an early marriage and domestic violence in a village to make a life for herself in Jaipur.

As a child, Lakshmi learned from the village artist to paint on peepal leaves. Now she is a henna artist, painting distinctive designs on the bodies of her well-to-do clients.

This is where the first hint of a dubious storyline appears. Lakshmi doesn’t just henna hands and feet for special occasions, as per the centuries-old traditions in India. She uses her henna designs to solve all the clients’ problems, especially those of a sexual or procreative nature. Woman with wandering husbands? Lakshmi’s designs will drive their husbands into a state of immediate lust. Woman unable to bear children? Lakshmi draws pictures of babies on their stomachs.

Lakshmi also uses her skills with herbs to make snacks:

Like all my ladies, she never suspected that the ingredients in my treats, combined with what I drew on her hands and feet, fueled her desire and her husband’s lust.

But wait! There’s more. Lakshmi is a skilled healer, and through the book, every single client, whatever their illness or injury, is healed by her herbs and potions.

And lastly, Lakshmi’s “sachets” can terminate pregnancies: a skill that she used initially to help sex workers with unwanted pregnancies , but now also uses to help any of her upscale clients with the same problem. One of her clients, for example, is a married British woman who is having an affair with an Indian man, who fears that her baby might be brown-skinned.

Lakshmi is making good money, and (given her multifarious talents!) her future is looking promising when a metaphorical spanner appears in the works. Unbeknownst, she has a much younger sister called Radha, now thirteen, who turns up after an arduous journey from their village when their parents die.

The conflicts and bonding between the sisters provides a reasonable beginning for a novel, if the reader is willing to occasionally suspend disbelief, but unfortunately neither the plot nor the writing live up to its possibilities.

Jaipur is described as if to a foreign tourist:

The Pink City of Jaipur was a beehive this morning. Our carriage trotted past a basket weaver braiding flattened grass. A turbaned cobbler, who was shaping crude iron into a hammer, looked up as we passed. I watched a woman on the side of the road as she expertly threaded marigolds into cheerful malas.

The attitudes and conversations of the characters are a random pastiche of modern Americanisms, Indianisms, and Englishisms.

[Radha, the village girl] She never spends time with me. All she does is work!

[Lakshmi] Whatever your boyfriend said to you, it isn’t true. And if you think he’ll claim it —

[Sameer the Eton-educated Indian] Parvati is very much looking forward to meeting you!

Shortly after Radha starts school, her vocabulary increases dramatically:

The other day she used a word — what was it? antediluvian?

When overly worried, Lakshmi thinks

I was being far too Victorian.

It is really hard to imagine a working Indian woman in 1955 thinking of herself as “Victorian”. Even if her father was an English teacher.

The characters tend to have rather inconsistent personalities . Lakshmi is very capable, and has monetized her abilities very effectively. Yet she is also fiscally imprudent, insisting on ridiculously expensive features on her own house while paying rent for a small room with a nasty landlady. Her brutal ex-husband Hari suddenly becomes a charitable person with a heart of gold. Radha is ridiculously naive for a village girl who has seen birth and death, but a few American movies turn her into a sexually aware, rebellious teenager. The liveliest and most consistent character was Malik, the street kid who helps Lakshmi.

Radha, all of 13 years old, gets pregnant. Far from being scared or anxious, she says:

I want children. I want to be tired at the end of the day because I’ve had to boil milk for their kheer and play hopscotch with them and put turmeric on their hurts and listen to the stories they make up and teach them how to read Ramayana and catch fireflies.

Does that sound like a 1950s Indian 13-year-old?

A mere two pages later when the plot requires it, she happily agrees to give the baby to a childless couple, saying:

You’ll treat him as your own. I can’t take care of him — not in Jaipur, not in Ajar, not in Shimla.

The historical data is shaky. Lakshmi, the herbal healer from a village and now Jaipur, says:

we need a blood test to prove paternity and bloodline

Of course, a blood test can only disprove paternity, that too not always, and blood tests were rarely used in the 1950s even in England and America.

The characters write ponderous letters to each other whose style is more akin to Jane Austen than anything Indian. This is perhaps possible for the Oxford-educated Dr Kapoor, but a very odd style for Lakshmi and her clients.

Would it surprise you to learn that I’d rather keep your patterned floor than sell it? (Lakshmi’s client Parvati to Lakshmi)

Had circumstances been different, our association might have continued. (Lakshmi to Parvati)

Her personality is generally cheerful and she has a restless and curious mind. She loves to read, a habit that has both developed her imagination and given her some (very) worldly ideas. (Lakshmi to Dr Kapoor)

Glossaries of Indian terms used to be common in older Indian writing, but in the last decade Indian authors have happily moved beyond those, and include Indian words just the way English and American terms are included in English and American books — without explanation. Perhaps it is suggestive of the desired audience for this book that it includes phrases like ‘samosa pastry’ as well as a glossary. With just a quick scan, I picked out three oddities in the glossary:

Bheti: daughter (this spelling is used throughout the book)

Jaroor: of course!

Zaroor: absolutely, certainly (why two versions of the same word?)

and one error:

Bush-shirt: white T-shirt worn under a man’s half-sleeve or full-sleeve shirt. (No, a bush shirt is a loose shirt with a straight bottom that is worn untucked. They are still popular in India).

Nothing about the novel gives a sense of the social, cultural or political changes of the 1950s. It is occasionally mentioned that Lakshmi and Radha’s father was a freedom fighter.

Perhaps the one plot point that I appreciated was Lakshmi’s unqualified support for women’s choice regarding pregnancy.

The author has said that her own mother was married young and had three children by 22, and that the spark for this book came from imagining her life with more agency and independence. A worthwhile ambition, but both the historical details and the character development in this novel leave something to be desired.