A family story
both bitter and sweet
What does it mean to become a successful woman — and does it mean something different for our mothers and daughters? Across oceans and decades, amid stubborn silence and aching separation, three generations of women find their own answers in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel “Before We Visit the Goddess.”
The novel opens with Sabitri, an old woman in India, who sits down to write a letter to her granddaughter, urging her to reconsider dropping out of college. Sabitri reaches back into her memory, recalling the day she perfected the recipe that made her Kolkata sweet shop — the business that provided her livelihood — famous: “The smooth, creamy flavor of fruit and milk, sugar and saffron mingled and melted on my tongue,” she writes. “Satisfaction overwhelmed me. This was something I had achieved by myself, without having to depend on anyone. No one could take it away. That’s what I want for you… .”
For Sabitri, that sweetshop independence was hard-won and a long time coming. She grew up in rural Bengal, desperate for an education. She was given the chance to attend college in Kolkata, but a single mistake soon put an end to her opportunity. She married, dropped out of school and never finished her degree; instead, she had a daughter, who eventually had a daughter of her own.
When her husband died, Sabitri came into her own, supporting her daughter with her business savvy and sugary confections. But she is the last generation of her family to live her entire life in India. Sabitri’s daughter, Bela, emigrates to the United States, never to return. And in turn, Bela’s daughter, Tara, grows up in a Houston suburb, all “Indian features and Texan boots,” never being told much about her grandmother. The three generations of women fight themselves and each other, often diving helplessly back into “the past, that vessel in which all emotions curdle to regret.”
Divakaruni was born in India and teaches creative writing at the University of Houston. A novelist, poet and short-story writer, she’s the author of 16 other books, including “Oleander Girl” and “One Amazing Thing.” This novel, like some of her previous work, bridges the gap between India and America, moving between a land of tradition and a land of opportunity.
In some ways, Divakaruni has lived this story. She, like Bela, came to the United States as a young woman. She was 19, far from her family and living on her own for the first time.
“It was at once a thrilling adventure and terribly, terribly scary,” Divakaruni said in a phone interview. She worked a series of odd jobs, scrambling to earn the money to stay in college. But even as she struggled, she said, “I could see that as a woman, so much more had opened up for me.”
Growing up in India, “the idea of a successful woman was very clearly delineated for me,” she said. “You went to college, you got married, you made a good marriage, you had kids, and you brought them up well. That’s what society was saying to me.”
Her mother, meanwhile, struggled as a single parent to make ends meet and impressed on Divakaruni the importance of being independent.
“I was getting, even in India, mixed messages,” Divakaruni said. “And then I came to America, and all those rules changed.”
But coming to the United States presented plenty of challenges.
“America, for most immigrants, it’s the golden land,” she said. “That’s the lasting myth of our time: You come to America, all your problems will be solved. As immigrants find out, this is a wonderful country, but it will not solve all your problems.”
Divakaruni’s characters discover that; they struggle to survive financially, strive to be independent, fall in love and into relationships that ensnare them. Each generation of this family is given more freedom, but each woman ends up being trapped until she finds a way to claim that freedom.
The novel moves from rural India to the highways of Houston and back, shifting as the characters speak up in turn, explaining themselves. Each chapter begins in a different time and place, a slightly disorienting experience that plops the reader into a new world, listening a new voice, again and again.
“Before We Visit the Goddess” is “a novel in stories,” Divakaruni said, a form that gave her the freedom to offer the voices of multiple characters, all telling stories that overlap until, finally, the truth is seen. “It really becomes a chorus, a symphony of sorts,” she said. “That’s how I think of this novel.”
The book has been an instant best-seller in India, but much of the story is based in Houston. Local readers may find familiar experiences: a day trip to Galveston; a visit to the Sri Meenakshi Temple in Pearland; a dangerous ride on Texas 288, where people drive “with Friday frenzy, like the world’s going to end if they don’t make it on time to wherever they’re rushing.”
Divakaruni, who moved to Houston 14 years ago when her husband got a job at Shell, said she feels as though she finally understands Texas well enough to use it as a setting for her fiction.
“For readers who are Texan, I hope they will recognize and enjoy Texas in this book,” she said. “But for the readers who are not, I wanted them to know a Texas they don’t often think about: a Texas that is very multicultural, that is diverse.”
Food — so important in this story — is described in rich detail: the taste of mango, sweet malpua pancakes dipped in rose syrup, the warm comfort of cauliflower-stuffed singaras. Those sweets and spices become a thread that connects these women over the years and across the miles.
“That’s a theme I was really concerned with in this novel: What do we pass on to our next generation?” Divakaruni said. “I think it’s important in all families, but in immigrant families it takes on a particular poignancy.”
Ultimately, though, “Before We Visit the Goddess” is universal — a story of mothers and daughters, misunderstanding and sacrifice, success and independence.
Near the end of her life, Sabitri recalls being a girl and watching her own mother serve sweets to a group of wealthy partygoers. “Sabitri felt a churning inside her as she watched her mother, a mix of sadness and anger and love.” It’s that sweet, piercing blend that — like sugar, fruit and saffron — forms a dazzling, memorable novel.