Sister India

by Peggy Payne

Overview

The exotic and suspenseful New York Times Notable Book that tells the story of an eccentric guest-house keeper in Varanasi, India, and the passions evoked by her sacred city along the Ganges

The Lonely Planet recommends the Saraswati Guest House, and meeting Madame Natraja, "a one-woman blend of East and West," as well worth a side trip. Over the course of a weekend, several guests turn up, shocked to encounter a three-hundred-some-pound, surly white woman in a sari. Then a series of Hindu-Muslim murders leads to a citywide curfew, and they unwittingly become her captives. So begins a period of days blending into nights as Natraja and her Indian cook become entangled in a web of religious violence, and their guests fall under the spell of this ancient kingdom—at once enthralled and repelled by the begging children, the public funeral pyres, the holy men bathing in the Ganges at dawn.

This is a traveler's tale, a story about the strange chemistry that develops from unexpected intimacies on foreign ground. And Peggy Payne's extraordinary talent vividly conjures up the smells of the perfume market, the rhythms of holy men chanting at dawn, the claustrophobic feel of this ancient city's tiny lanes, and the magic of the setting sun over the holy Ganges. For anyone who has harbored a secret desire to go to India and be transformed, Sister India, called "mesmerizing" by Gail Harris and "a modern version of E. M. Forster's classic A Passage to India" by Dan Wakefield, takes you on this journey without ever leaving home.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781573229104
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/05/2002
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

Peggy Payne is a journalist and travel writer who has published articles on more than twenty-five countries. She has been the recipient of an NEA grant to study fiction at Berkeley, and an Indo-American Fellowship to research this novel in Varanasi. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including God: Stories and New Stories from the South. She lives near Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

What People are Saying About This

Tony Wheeler

: ...Peggy Payne has created a character as big as her territory, which is to say larger than life.
— (Tony Wheeler, editor, Lonely Planet guides)

Dan Wakefield

A poetic evocation of contemporary India as well as of the human spirit. With its insights into clashing cultures....
—(Dan Wakefield, author of How Do We Know When It's God?)

C. Michael Curtis

Peggy Payne's story is not a comfortable one, but neither is it easily resisted.
—(C. Michael Curtis, senior editor, The Atlantic Monthly)

From the Publisher

“Becoming an expatriate is like entering a witness protection program. You can flee into a new nationality, a new language, even take on a culturally correct new name, but you cannot completely pave over a life that came before. The protagonist of Sister India… is 400 pounds of enthralling proof. From the novel’s very first sentence, her ravaged voice grips the reader… Peggy Payne has created one of the more unsettling and mesmerizing characters in expatriate literature.” –The New York Times Book Review

“Payne captures an outsider’s sense of wonder.” –Boston Herald

“Like the city that inspired it, Sister India is complex, crowded, spiritual, blood-stained, and hypnotic.” –Wilmington Sunday Star-News

“A poetic invocation of contemporary India as well as of the human spirit. With its insights into clashing cultures, it deserves comparison as a modern version of E. M. Forster’s classic A Passage to India.” –Dan Wakefield, author of How Do We Know When It’s God?

“Sister India is that rarity, an utterly original novel. It is both profound and mesmerizing.” –Lee Smith, author of Saving Grace

Lee Smith

...its arresting imagery, Sister India is that rarity, an utterly original novel. It is both profound and mesmerizing.
—(Lee Smith, author of Saving Grace)

Gail Harris

...a mesmerizing, hypnotic story of discovery and redemption that illuminates a part of the world...Peggy Payne's rich tapestry of images....
— (Gail Harris, creator and host, PBS Body & Soul series)

Lucy McCauley

...a powerful work of fiction, a suspenseful story of murder...a compelling drama, vividly told...keep you turning the pages.
—(Lucy McCauley, editor, A Woman's Path: Women's Best Spiritual Travel Writing)

Reading Group Guide

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

Q: When the twenty year-old Estelle flees her American life to live in India, she selects a new Hindi name for herself: Natraja. What does this choice say about the way she sees herself and her future? Does having this name influence the course of the life she makes for herself? Can you think of a counterpart in Judeo-Christian culture to what the name Natraja signifies to a Hindu?

Q: What part does the river Ganges play in the transformations of the people in the guest house? How is the effect different for each character? How do other religions make use of water as a symbol or a sacred entity?

Q: What physical elements of the city of Varanasi make the spiritual transformations in this story possible? Are any of these seemingly negative or frightening, perhaps dangerous? Does the nature of the physical environment in the story seem to shift in any way as the novel progresses? How so?

Q: Do you think Natraja would have changed if the terrorist violence had not broken out around her? What similarities do you see between the psychological effects of terrorism in the story and those in the real world?

Q: Do Ramesh's feelings for Natraja evolve during the course of the story? What drives him? What are his passions? Is he a happy man?

Q: Did the young Natraja's love affair with the princely Bhushan turn out as it should have? Do you think their romance was based mainly on the temptation of forbidden fruit? Or were they true soul mates, kept apart only by their cultural differences?

Q: How are Hindu rituals and images pivotal in the characters' lives? By what method do these outward signs of Hindu belief lead to inner change?

Q: What are the stages in Natraja's emotional decline? What triggers the changes in her state of mind and how do these show themselves to people around her? How does Natraja inadvertently alter the emotional lives of the other characters?

Q: What makes a city or a place holy? Is a pilgrimage site essentially different from other places? How?

Q: This story takes place in India with flashbacks to the American rural South. Do you sense some kinship between these two very different parts of the world? What would you identify as the source of any similarities between the two regions?

Q: Do you think there's a way to end the cycle of retaliation in this story, or will both groups attack each other until one or both fall from exhaustion and depletion?

Q: What part does love, romantic or otherwise, play in the outcome of this story? If Dr. Rai were to vanish, could T.J. and Mrs. Rai live together happily ever after? How do you think the tie between Natraja and Ramesh will evolve? Will Jill and Marie ultimately find happiness in a romantic partnership?

Q: Jill appears at times to be tightly wound and at other times to be crazy. Does her obsessive-compulsiveness have a solution? Do you believe she would seek help, or content herself with an emotionally constricted life?

Q: What might Marie realistically accomplish in the years she has left? Do you think she has made a good choice at the story's end? What might her children have to say about her decision to stay? What would be the wisest stance for them to take toward their elderly mother's behavior?

Q: What is the place of hunger in this story? Will Natraja remain obese? What do each of the characters hunger for? Must a profound longing be satisfied for a person to lead a happy life?

Q: Why do you think the novel is called Sister India? Is there more than one way to understand the title? Does it fit the book?

Editorial Reviews

When writers set their novels in exotic places, there is always the risk that the background will outshine the characters and plot. Such is the case with travel writer Payne's debut. At first, the novel's setting--the violence-ridden holy city of Varanasi, India--seems well matched by its formidable protagonist--400-pound, middle-aged hostess of the Saraswati Guest House, Natraja, formerly Estelle Wilson of Neavis, N.C. One by one, her guests arrive--shy businesswoman Jill Thornton; environmentalist T.J. Clayton, who's having marital problems back home; and adventurous, elderly widow Marie Jasper, who has come in search of healing and enlightenment--and Natraja goes out of her way to intimidate all of them. Her behavior is so contrary to what one would expect of an innkeeper that one is curious about the tragic past that has made her so bitter. Natraja lets her guard down only with Ramesh, the guest house's elderly cook and her sole friend. When her long-time astrologer predicts that a guest will disrupt the peace of the inn, Natraja has yet another reason to be sour. Tensions rise as outbreaks of violence lead to the imposition of a curfew upon Varanasi. Flashbacks of the ill-fated, adolescent love affair in North Carolina, which was the source of Natraja's unhappiness, intersperse with scenes of the city of Varanasi, which steals and retains the spotlight. Sensuous descriptions of its people, urban wildlife and landmarks--especially its legendary holy river, the Ganges--testify to the author's love for this sacred locale. Her sensitive depiction of the friction between the Hindu and Muslim populations, as experienced by both residents and outsiders, lends the age-old battle an urgency that far outshines the somewhat tedious subplots involving Natraja's lackluster guests. Travelers interested in absorbing India's cultural background and atmospheric ambience will enjoy this novel. (Jan.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

What makes the novel work are the piquancy of Ms. Payne's Varanasi and the strength of her main character, the manager of the guest house, an American once called Estelle who goes by the Indian name Natraja...Meanwhile, Ms. Payne's unblinkered, unsentimental but nonetheless affectionate portrait of India gives her book atmospheric power. Sister India, despite its weaknesses, is an accomplished work by a writer with a keen sense of the precariousness of our lives and the distances we are prepared to go to escape them.
—New York Times

Richard Bernstein

In Natraja, Payne has created one of the more unsettling and mesmerizing characters in expatriate literature, a fierce, lumbering woman with the look of a shape-shifting Hindu demon and a psyche torn to bits, a woman who resists release for as long as she can.
—New York Times Book Review

Deborah Mason