IndiaStar: A Literary-Art Magazine -bookreview-
Indira Ganesan continues her journey with her new novel Inheritance on the imaginary Island of Pi. The heroine ofInheritance is fifteen-year-old Sonil, who has "hardly two days apart when she is not sick." Sonil has come to the Island of Pi on a four-month leave from her pre-university to recover at her grandmother's house on the island away from the "infected cities." "The island air is so good---she'll recover well," her grandmother assures her aunts who have carefully watched over her for the last nine years.
Sonil's mother, Lakshmi, is mysterious, beautiful, colorful, strange, sexy and out of reach for Sonil. Lakshmi, who avoids Sonil, has had several affairs and has been widowed once. Two of her three children were illegitimate: one born of a liaison with a filmmaker's son, and Sonil born out of a liaison with an American photographer. Lakshmi is presented dramatically throughout the book, almost as a voyeur. Sonil, however, is a voyeur and understandably so. For the last nine years she has imagined her mother in various ways. She secretly invades the privacy of her mother's room. She sniffs her perfume. On another occasion she borrows her mother's personal poetry books because "I thought I might find out something about my mother by reading her friend's verse."
Sonil's closest relationship is with her cousin Jani, who, in order to avoid getting married and going through the "pain" of having babies, decides to devote herself to God and enter a convent . When Jani leaves Pi we meet Richard, who is twice Sonil's age, an American (of course!) who has come to India to be spiritually awakened. Sonil soon becomes engulfed in sexual escapades with Richard. When she returns to her grandmother's compound after having spent entire afternoons with Richard, even taking afternoon naps with him, the busy Indian household seems oblivious to her absence.
Sonil always sees her mother from faraway -- there's very little physical contact between mother and daughter. Very early in the novel, the author sets up a revealing moral dilemma between the mother and daughter that speaks of conflict. When Richard inevitably leaves Sonil because he is too old, Sonil, like her cousin Jani thinks of religion. The introduction of the temple scene where Sonil takes a bus to a temple she has never been to before is brilliant. Sonil visits the temple devoted to Sita, (a reincarnation of Lakshmi), who followed her husband into a forest for a fourteen-year exile.
Richard comes through as a wry character with almost no depth. The transition from the tropical world of warmth in her grandmother's house to the American way of life and expectations is somewhat shaky. Ganesan writes with a profound warmth and feeling about the Indian side of Sonil. The Western characters in the book however seem incomplete and lack warmth. The novel concludes with promises of happiness after Sonil meets with her father and has somewhat reconciled with her mother. In the end, however, Inheritance fails to hold an audience because the novel is filled with cliches and promises unfulfilled. |