MOTHER’S MIGHTY MESSAGE
ALKA JOSHI’S MOTHER INSTILLED IN HER A BELIEF THAT EVERY WOMAN DESERVES TO MAKE THE CHOICES THAT DETERMINE HER DESTINY. IT WAS A MANTRA THAT FORMED THE BEATING HEART OF HER DEBUT NOVEL
ALKA JOSHI’s debut novel, The Henna Artist, is a New York Times bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Bookclub pick and is being developed into a TV series starring and produced by Freida Pinto. With its sequel on release now, Joshi reveals the woman behind it all.
Iwas my mother’s rebellion. Raised in a traditional Indian family, Sudha had been told whom and when to marry. Without access to birth control, she’d been overwhelmed by three babies and as many bouts of post-partum depressions in the first four years of marriage. She walked several paces behind my father, never addressing him by his first name (which would have been disrespectful). She made fresh chapattis for him whether he arrived from work at five or nine at night and ate dinner only after he ate.
How courageous of her, then, to have purposefully raised her only daughter so differently. Although she wore saris long after we’d immigrated to the US, she encouraged me to dress as freely as American girls did; halter tops, bikinis, jeans, the whole works!
At 18, she took me to the doctor to get birth control pills and gently advised that I wasn’t obligated to marry the first man I slept with. After I left home, she periodically sent me little homemade cards – dried flowers carefully pasted inside – telling me how smart, brave and kind I was – something no one had ever done for her.
So when it came time to write, the idea of an alternate life for my mother, where she determined the course of her life, was my way of expressing gratitude for the independence she granted me.
At 51, I enrolled in a Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) program in Creative Writing. At the same time, Mom and I were making frequent trips to Jaipur where she shared memories of her girlhood, her early marriage and motherhood – a life I’d only seen glimpses of. Most of what she recounted made it into the stories of one or another character in The Henna Artist.
Above all, the novel’s mantra was her singular message to me: every woman deserves to make the choices that determine her destiny. Lakshmi, a woman who deserted her marriage and forged her own path as a henna artist and herbalist, came to life as the protagonist of The Henna Artist. Did she wrestle with the choices she made in her life? Of course. Did she learn from those choices? Absolutely. Was she imperfect? Brilliantly so. In the 10 years and 30 drafts it took me to
bring my debut novel to readers, the characters took on a life of their own. When my publisher sent the manuscript to the printer, I felt Malik, Lakshmi’s helper, insisting that I write his story. My readers agreed.
So, The Secret Keeper of Jaipur began with a scene. Nimmi, a young tribal woman, is arranging flora she has plucked from the upper elevations of the Himalayas at her stall on the Shimla pedestrian mall. Two young children play at her feet in a basket woven by her hand. In the distance, Malik, now 20 years old, is leading Lakshmi to the stall because he knows Lakshmi is always eager to add to her knowledge of herbal remedies. Lakshmi senses chemistry between Malik and Nimmi and doesn’t approve of the alliance.
This is how I write: scenes come to me as mini-movies where characters are saying and doing things. So I began asking myself questions: Why does Lakshmi disapprove of Malik’s beloved? Will she try to separate them? How has Malik’s posh boarding school education changed him? Why is this tribal woman not travelling with her nomadic tribe?
Answering those questions led me to Himalayan nomadic tribes, India’s obsession with gold, contraband trade, and methods of construction. I knew then that in The Secret Keeper of Jaipur Lakshmi would arrange for Malik to apprentice at the Jaipur Palace. There, he would become party to an underworld scheme that would lead him right back to the mountains of Shimla, to his beloved and to Lakshmi.
What joy there is in building the complex worlds of these novels! And as I research India’s history, politics, and culture, I delight in highlighting noteworthy details of my heritage: how India’s ancient crafts and traditions have shaped Western civilisations and what South Asia has contributed to global development.
At 63, storytelling is such a joy. I can imbue my narrative with my thoughts on life, thoughts based on my experiences, my loves, my losses. My characters are allowed to be imperfect – as I am. But unlike my mother, they are allowed to be masters of their own universe. And for that, they – and I – have my mother to thank.
The Secret Keeper of Jaipur – book two of Alka Joshi’s Jaipur trilogy – is out now, published by HQ
Fiction.