A place of true fulfilment
THE HENNA ARTIST Alka Joshi
Mira
Review: Beryl Eichenberger
IT IS INDIA 1955, just after partition, a dusty sunny morning in the Pink City of Jaipur. The city is awakening: the streets filling with people; walking, riding on rickshaws, building roadside fires, erecting stalls, all with a singular purpose … to provide.
It is one woman’s goal that forms the core of Alka Joshi’s debut novel “The Henna Artist”: the provision of a better life; determination to use an education and to rise above the crippling poverty is attainable for a woman. The story had me spellbound from the first page. Evocative imagery conjures up the vibrancy of a city finding its place. Luscious, rich characters, lyrical prose draw the reader into an intricate saga that spins out into a rich and powerful story of one woman’s struggle for independence. To me, it was almost a parallel for the clash of India’s patriarchal culture and the pivot between tradition and modernism.
“Independence changed everything. Independence changed nothing. Eight years after the British left, we now had free government schools, running water and paved roads.
But Jaipur still felt the same to me as it had 10 years ago, the first time I stepped foot on its dusty soil.”
Lakshmi Shastri is a 30-year old woman with a remarkable talent. She is a henna artist of note with a clientele that includes the most rich and favoured Indian families in the city.
Her intricate and innovative designs are known to bring wayward husbands back into the fold, her skills encompass the spiritual symbols that embody the culture. But she is also a healer whose knowledge of plant properties extends way beyond the simple cures. Husbands seek her help when their mistresses fall prey to unwanted ills; wives seek help for barrenness and more. She is their confidante, privy to the secrets of the rich and able to provide solutions.
And, with match-making another of her skills, she is poised to improve her life even more.
Ambitious, perceptive, private and empathetic, her singular purpose is to own her own house and to live a life of her own choosing. She is a cautious woman who has sacrificed much. By leaving her abusive, arranged marriage in her village some 15 years before, she lost her parents to the shame she caused them, her reputation is intact and she distances herself from advances. Her benefactor, wealthy architect Samir Singh, respects her skills and in exchange effects introductions to pursue her dream.
But all this is about to change… When her husband Hari suddenly appears with her sister, 13-year old Radha, born after she left, Lakshmi’s ordered world becomes complicated. Taking on her familial responsibility, Lakshmi soon realises that Radha’s high spirited yet naïve personality will challenge her existence with unimagined consequences. As they say … the best laid plans…
Some truly memorable characters represent the sweeps of the artist’s brush as they link all the parts together. Malik, Lakshmi’s young servant, old and wise beyond his years, Kanta Agarwal, the best friend who inadvertently diverts Lakshmi’s journey, Dr Jay Kumar to whom healing can take many forms, these remain etched in one’s mind. But there are so many more, each with their unique facets and for this, Joshi has provided a helpful cast of characters as refernece.
She has written a beautiful story which snakes through India’s caste system, the entitlement of the rich, the lavish cultural heritage, the wanton desires of powerful men to the determination of educated but poor women. But in the end it reaches a place of peace and fulfilment leaving a profound satisfaction.