Joshi novel stirs memories of mother
My mother in a winter coat over her sari.
That’s one of the pervasive mental snapshots I carry around of my childhood, when my family made the shift from refugees to settling into Canada, as cold-adjusting citizens.
It was also one that came rushing back when talking to Alka Joshi about her mother. The mind behind one of the season’s most buzzed-over works of fiction — tapped as a selection for the Reese Witherspoon Book Club, climbing bestseller lists everywhere — “The Henna Artist” jets us to the pink city of Jaipur during the 1950s, set in the throes of a newly independent India.
A keen kaleidoscope overcircuiting in the senses department: how the book’s been widely received. See: the fall of rose petals, and the patter of parrots. Hear: the kiss of ghee, and the hiss of cardamom.
Just the thing for travel in the age of social distancing.
But all roads lead to Mom, as Joshi started to tell me on the phone this week from California. A reimagining of her mother’s life, who had an arranged marriage — a match reinforced by the astrological charts — the book plays the game of what-if via a character named Lakshmi, a woman running from her past (and marriage) who, yup, reinvents herself as a henna pro (and sometime-apothecarist) to the Rajasthani society set.
“I wanted to give my mother power in fiction that she didn’t have in her actual life,” Joshi said.
Moving with her whole family from the hot, dusty climes of the subcontinent to brisk Iowa, of all places, during the 1960s, the author had many of the experiences you’d expect. Made fun of for everything from smelling like curry to arriving in the U.S.A. speaking in a style you might call the Queen’s English, she did everything to disassociate herself from India. To fit in. Likewise: when she went later to Stanford to study art history.
Her mother, meanwhile, a feminist in her own way, taught Joshi to be self-sufficient and to speak up for herself. Years later, she also led her daughter to reconcile with the very homeland that Joshi’d put on a shelf.
“We started going back to India, stay for a month at a time — my brother had bought a place in Jaipur — and it was during that time I started to see India through her eyes. Spending time there, my senses were on fire … I started asking both my parents about their lives in India.”
At which point, the idea for a book was born. A mission that would actually take 10 years for the one-time advertising copyeditor to complete. It would involve much stop-and-go, a winding creative road, and an enforced hiatus, in particular, when her mom died in its midst, so bereft was she.
While the finished product swirls around so very much — matters of caste and identity, love and subterfuge, all written in a prose that is direct but elegiac — it was always the plan to plant the novel in the 1950s.
Why? Partly because Lakshmi’s arc of self-preservation mirrors the growing pains that India itself is undergoing during that decade, following its knot-cut with the British in 1947 after almost a century of Raj rule. But, as Joshi writes intriguingly, in the novel: “Independence changed everything. Independence changed nothing.”
Rich ladies, duplicitous husbands, sister acts, mistresses, abortions, herbal remedies and royalty. So fly the pages of this novel, too. (Complete with helpful Hindi glossary, for words sprinkled through the book, as well as, some recipes for Indian delicacies, should inspiration strike ). And henna. Let’s not forget the henna: the novel’s main protagonist using her skill with the body art to enter the boudoirs of the wealthy and sift through their gossip.
Asked what she found out about the art form through her research, Joshi shared: “A 5,000-year tradition. Henna comes from the leaves of the henna plant, is ground to fine pulp … pulverized and then mixed in with essential oils and water … (and) whatever else a henna artist likes to use. The paste is applied to the hand in design (sometimes feet, too). And when the paste flakes off, you are left with a dark cinnamon imprint that will last up to two weeks.”
Found in many places, including Afghanistan and northern parts of Africa (Cleopatra famously used henna to paint herself, and even used it on her hair), “Rajasthani henna paste is considered supreme,” Joshi added. Used especially on brides — when she will be regaled by the ladies of her acquaintance days before the wedding — the purpose of henna was meant as a coolant for the body (in hot climates), but, like many things, has taken on a social status signifier in its various manifestations.
Not to mention, mythic properties. “Over time, my clients had come to believe that my henna could bring wayward husbands back to their bed or coax a baby from their wombs,” as Lakshmi brags in “The Henna Artist.”
Like the winding lines of henna design, a book flows in different ways and for Joshi one particular literary source gave it oomph: “Jane Eyre,” to be precise. It actually figures into her own novel through some unsubtle allusions. Regarding her love for the eponymous character in the famed Charlotte Bronte novel, Joshi has said: “She may be an orphan with no money, charm or looks, but Jane manifests something far more important: integrity, intelligence and self-worth …”
Lakshmi, who has pluck and plans, is clearly her stand-in. And Joshi is not done with her yet. Oh, no. She has already written a sequel, in fact: “The Henna Artist,” she confirmed, its story fast-forwarding 12 years. “These characters keep talking to me,” she said.
Rich ladies, duplicitous husbands, sister acts, mistresses, abortions, herbal remedies and royalty