Book: Independence
Author: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Publisher: Harper Collins India
Pages: 350
How Long it Took Me To Read: 2 days
Plot Summary: THREE SISTERS. THEIR UNBREAKABLE BOND. AND A NATION ABOUT TO BE BORN.
Here is a river…
Here is a village…
Here is a grand old mansion…
Here is the country that contains them all…
India. August, 1946. Everything is about to change.
Priya, Jamini and Deepa, Dr Nabakumar Ganguly’s daughters, live in Ranipur, Bengal, safe from the rising turbulence in the country. When their father is killed on Direct Action Day, their world turns upside-down.
Priya, the youngest, intelligent and idealistic, is determined to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a doctor, no matter how difficult. She is fortunate to have the support of zamindar Somnath Chowdhury, her father’s best friend. Jamini, devout, dutiful and talented, helps her mother stitch kanthas to make ends meet. Hungering for affection even as she is resentful of her sisters, she nurses a secret desire. Beautiful Deepa, the eldest, all set to marry well, falls in love with Raza, Youth Leader at the Muslim League, and must face the consequences.
When India is partitioned, the sisters find themselves separated from one another, afraid of what will happen to not only themselves, but also each other. It is only then that they understand what it means to be independent, and the price one has to pay for it.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s powerful new novel is a moving story of loyalty and love, nationhood and sisterhood, set against India’s independence movement, at once exhilarating and devastating
Review:
1. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (CBD) is one of my auto-buy authors. I will always buy and read everything she writes and I am a fan. Ever since I read Sister of my Heart, some 15 years or so ago, I have been a huge fan of the stories she tells and the characters she brings to life. There is something very familiar and comforting and nostalgic about the families, places and people she writes about. Being Bengali she stories speak to me (and I am sure other Bengalis) a little louder. It always feels a little like coming back home. This book with three sisters at the heart of it, felt like vintage CBD. It was just what I wanted and hoped for when I picked it up.
2. I love reading about Bengali families and homes, it's always easy to slip into these stories, because the people seem like members of my extended family. Someone reminds me of an uncle and someone is bound to remind me of a feisty aunt or two. So I am always, always interested in reading about Bengali families and little complexities and bonds.
3. This book ticked off so many boxes for me, CBD, Bengali, pre-partition/pre-independence India, sisters, rural setting and parts set in Calcutta and 1940s. All of these individually would make me buy a book at once and all of them together are just almost too perfect for words. Also, needless to say, I adored the writing and as always CBD writes like a dream.
4. I went into this book pretty blind, as in I did know it's basic premise but I didn't know the nitty-gritties of the plot. I knew it was about three sisters but I was very, very pleasantly surprised to see and hear and walk with each of them in pretty much equal measure. See, I thought there are three sisters but surely one of them will take center stage and the others will be side characters. Wrong. All three women take up equal room and I really, really liked this.
5. The women themselves:
Deepa- Our eldest sister. The pretty one. Her mother's favourite. Slightly spoilt, maybe a little selfish and flighty. She, at first comes across a little superficial and vacuous but as the book goes on we see her grow up, face hardships and change herself for love. Her character growth and her convictions really made me grow to like her more than I thought I would.
Jamini- God, she might just be my favourite written character in the book. As in she's not my favourite, no. She isn't particularly likable and is fairly conniving and graspy and calculative and manipulative. But she's soooooo freaking well written. She makes sense. Why she is the way she is, just makes sense. And twisted as though some of her actions maybe, at some point your heart sort of breaks for her. Very nicely done, her character and her arc.
Priya- she is your quintessential heroine. Good, kind and has these big dreams and the brains and determination to make those dreams come true. Yet..she isn't perfect. Her single minded pursuit of her dreams might seem a little extreme but you absolutely root for her and can't help but cheer her on.
6. The book does a great job of showing what went on in the year leading up to our independence, how fraught it was with tensions running high, communal riots and hate and uncertainty. The pulse of the times was captured perfectly well. Especially how Bengal was during those times, still reeling from the after-effects of the famine and on the brink of bloodshed and violence. You could really feel the danger in the air.
7. I think it's important to talk about and remember how things were in 1946 and 1947, that our freedom, precious as it was and is, wasn't without it's unforgivable price. It's important to remember the lives and losses and the butchery that went on. These bits in the book just broke my heart, like books about Partition usually do. So TWs for Violence & Sexual Assault. It's nothing too graphic but still be warned.
8. The three sisters all end up in such different environments and how their choices make them go down these paths and so far from each other, all of this and their individual lives made for very interesting reading. We go from a small village in West Bengal, to the metropolis of Calcutta to Dhaka and then the US. There are adventures big and small and seeing these women step into the world was a joy to read.
9. Apart from our main characters, the book is full of incredible side characters that are wonderful and wholesome and add so much to the narrative and are examples of good and kind human beings. The girl's father, the kind zamindar and the people in Dhaka, so many wonderful people to get to know.
10. Not that you should ever judge a book by it's cover...but God..this book is a beautiful thing be.
Just look at how utterly gorgeous this book is.
The book design is kantha inspired and ties in perfectly with the story, the girl's mother is a gifted embroidery artist. So the kantha motif is present all over the cover and I just could not stop staring at it.
This is what each new section of the book looked like. I love when there these little illustrations in books.
~ ~ ~
Overall this was a book I loved and wholeheartedly recommend.
My only grouse is that I wish it was longer. This could have easily been a 500 page book, easily. And with three sisters and their lives and their choices, we really could have had more. At 350 pages this just felt a little too short and a little rushed to me. But then that's possibly me just being greedy.
:)
Rating: 4.5/5
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