CANR
WORK TITLE: INDEPENDENCE
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/
CITY: Houston
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: Indian
LAST VOLUME: CANR 325
http://www.popmatters.com/review/171209-oleander-girl-by-chitra-banerjee-divakaruni/ http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/books/20130427-book-review-oleander-girl-by-chitra-banerjee-divakaruni.ece
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born Chitralekha Banerjee, July 29, 1956, in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India; immigrated to the United States, 1976; daughter of R.K. and Tatini Banerjee; married S. Murthy Divakaruni, June 29, 1979; children: Abhay, Anand (sons).
EDUCATION:Calcutta University, B.A., 1976; Wright State University, M.A., 1978; University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D., 1985.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Diablo Valley College, creative writing instructor, 1987-89; Foothill College, Los Altos, CA, creative writing instructor, starting 1989; University of Houston, Houston, TX, Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Creative Writing. Maitri (help line for South Asian women), cofounder, president, and board member, 1991—; Daya, Houston, TX, advisory board member; Pratham, board member. Judge for National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award.
MEMBER:Mid-Peninsula Support Network for Battered Women.
AWARDS:Hackney Literary Award, Birmingham-Southern College, Alabama, 1988; Memorial Award, Barbara Deming Foundation, 1989; Writing Award, Santa Clara County Arts Council, 1990; Writing Award, Gerbode Foundation, 1993; Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for Fiction; Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize and Pushcart Prize, both 1994, both for Leaving Yuba City: New and Selected Poems; American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation, 1996, PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for Fiction, all for Arranged Marriage; California Arts Council Award, 1998; best book of 1997 citation, Los Angeles Times, and best paperback of 1998 citation, Seattle Times, both for The Mistress of Spices; Pushcart Prize, 2003; Distinguished Author Award, South Asian Literary Association, 2007; International House Alumna of the Year Award, University of California, Berkeley, 2008; Cultural Jewel Award, Indian Culture Center, 2009; Light of India Jury’s Award for Journalism and Literature, 2011; Outstanding Alumna, Wright State University, 2012; 20 Most Influential Global Indian Women citation, Economic Times, 2015; Best Fiction Award, Times of India, and Best Book Award, International Association of Working Women, both 2022, both for The Last Queen; C.Y. Lee Creative Writing Award; PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards.
WRITINGS
Also author of the libretto to the opera River of Light, Houston Grand Opera, Houston, TX, 2014. Contributor to more than fifty anthologies, including Best American Short Stories 1999 and O. Henry Prize Stories 2003. Contributor to Cooked Up: Food Fiction from Around the World, 2015. Contributor to more than fifty periodicals, including the Atlantic, New Yorker, Ms., Beloit Poetry Journal, Chicago Review, Zyzzyva, and Chelsea.
The Mistress of Spices was adapted as a PG-13 film whose stars include Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Dylan McDermott in 2005. Her short story “The Word Love” was adapted as the short film Ammar Maa in 2010.
SIDELIGHTS
Poet, novelist, and short-story writer Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is known for her nuanced portrayals of Indian women, including immigrants to America as well as figures real and imagined from her home nation’s past. When Divakaruni, who was born in India, immigrated to the United States in 1976, she reevaluated the social roles of Indian women. She drew on her own experiences and those of other immigrant Indian women to write novels and verse, as with Black Candle: Poems about Women from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Arranged Marriage, a collection of short stories, portrays Indian immigrants who are caught between the Indian and American cultures. Her first novel, The Mistress of Spices, is a blend of poetry and prose and revolves around a female character who must choose between her own culture and that of her non-Indian love interest. [open new]In the words of Dean Nelson in the San Diego Union-Tribune, “Telling women’s stories—particularly those who are unseen or misunderstood—has been Divakaruni’s strength as a writer.”[suspend new]
Poems
The poems in Black Candle, which first appeared in various poetry magazines, are in free verse, “straightforward narrative poems,” stated Bloomsbury Review contributor Nina Mehta. The poems depict women at various levels of desperation and despair, including those who are killed because their dowry is too small, are driven into prostitution, or commit suicide. “After reading these poems, it’s clear that the collection’s title is an apt metaphor for the scorched lives of the women Divakaruni portrays,” added Mehta. She questioned why Divakaruni did not tell these tales as short stories but nevertheless gave “Sondra” and “All in My Head” special praise. Booklist reviewer Pat Monaghan remarked on the political nature of the work, yet considered it to be more than a tract because of Divakaruni’s “sensuous” language and deep feeling. It is an “exemplary” collection, Monaghan asserted.
Leaving Yuba City: New and Selected Poems won a Pushcart Prize and an Allen Ginsberg Prize. In it, Divakaruni joins “personal experience with cultural history in a soft but powerful voice,” noted Library Journal reviewer Ann van Buren. Her verse and prose poems address such subjects as an abusive father; Indian men who immigrated to Yuba City, California, in 1910; Indian movies; and the dreamscapes of the American painter Francesco Clemente. According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, Divakaruni’s treatment of women’s experiences “often deepens as it is arrayed against varying cultural grounds.” Likening the poems to meteors plunging into readers’ hearts, Seaman described the poems as “lyrical and haunting” and “shimmeringly detailed and emotionally acute.”
Short Stories
In the collection of short stories Arranged Marriage, Divakaruni depicts women living in India or the United States for whom marriages have been arranged, as is the custom in India. The women’s struggles, according to Ginny Ryder inSchool Library Journal, read like “tiny soap operas” with “appealing pathos.” Reviewers praised the work highly. New York Times Book Review contributor Rose Kernochan described the stories as “appealing” and “irresistible,” and Donna Seaman, writing in Booklist, called Divakaruni a “virtuoso,” lauding Arranged Marriage for its “ravishingly beautiful stories” in which the author gives glimpses of the soul in the everyday world.
In The Unknown Errors of Our Lives, according to Grace Talusan in AsianWeek Online, “Divakaruni’s characters discover [a] sense of belonging and safety through struggles faced negotiating relationships with family, friends, strangers and self. The protagonists must face the disparities between the lives they have and the realities of human existence. They face the limitations of love, the disappointment of dreams, and the consequences of errors that beg to be resolved.” Talusan went on to cite the title story and “Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter” as particularly praiseworthy. Frederick Luis Aldama, assessing The Unknown Errors of Our Lives in World Literature Today, praised the book as well: “Divakaruni’s keen eye for detail and poetic turns of phrase make for a collection of stories that fill out the lives of those who experience the brunt of today’s violence of racism and sexism.” However, he concluded, “she does not leave her readers only with a sense of tragedy. Perhaps discovering one’s creative possibilities will allow one to find happiness only to be experienced, as one character reflects, in ‘the long effort of exploration.’”
In 2013, Divakaruni published a folk tale for children titled Grandma and the Great Gourd: A Bengali Folk Tale. The tale, one Divakaruni was told in her childhood, centers on Grandma, who journeys through the forest to visit her daughter and grandchild and encounters a fox, a bear, and a Bengal tiger along the way. “Grandma’s witty resourcefulness and the opportunity to compare cross-cultural story traditions make this … a good readaloud,” remarked a Publishers Weekly critic. Booklist reviewer Connie Fletcher called the book “colorful in more than one sense of the word.”
Novels
Divakaruni’s first novel, The Mistress of Spices, revolves around Tilo, an Indian girl with magical powers. After Tilo survives a shipwreck and is trained by a mysterious figure, she is sent through transmigration to act as the Mistress of Spices in an Indian store in Oakland, California. There she serves the overt and hidden needs of her Indian immigrant clientele. When Tilo falls in love with an Indian American, she must choose between her magic and a more mundane life. The novel garnered glowing reviews for the author’s lyrical style, its combination of fantasy and realism, and its portrayal of the immigrant experience that goes beyond the stereotypical. “Divakaruni has written an unusual, clever and often exquisite first novel that stirs magical realism into the new conventions of culinary fiction and the still-simmering caldron of Indian immigrant life in America,” praised Shashi Tharoor in a contribution to the Los Angeles Times Book Review. In the Chicago Tribune Books, Tammie Bob noted Divakaruni’s “distinct storytelling, setting, and subject,” as well as the novel’s “opulence of language, graceful narratives that weave intense, poetic images” and “fascinating characters.” “If Tilo’s choice is rather predictable, the way … Divakaruni gets us there is anything but,” declared New York Times Book Review contributor David Guy. According to Tharoor, Divakaruni’s style is “distinctive. Her penchant for sentence fragments, once you get used to her cadences, often works to good effect. … She has an allergy to question marks that sometimes leads her interrogatories to fall flat. But her narrative is infused with poetry.” Likewise, Bob maintained that “due to Divakaruni’s lovely prose, the magic seems reliable and credible.” On the topic of magic, however, Tharoor remarked otherwise: “Although Divakaruni does the magic rather well, writing about the mystical spices in prose that raises light off the page like so many wisps of incense, she is best at the realism. She has a keen feel for immigrant life.”
Divakaruni’s second novel, Sister of My Heart, is a realistic treatment of the relationship between two cousins, Sudha and Anju, who narrate alternating chapters of this modern drama that develops over decades. While critics were less enthusiastic about this novel than The Mistress of Spices, they commended Divakaruni’s efforts. Library Journal reviewer Wilda Williams stated that the novel has a “contrived” plot and stereotypical characters, but she found the novel to be an “engaging read” with many “tender, moving moments.” A Publishers Weekly critic also challenged the sometimes overwrought prose, but judged Sister of My Heart to be a “masterful allegory of unfulfilled desire and sacrificial love.”
Sudha and Anju return in the 2002 work The Vine of Desire. In this sequel, Sudha comes to live with Anju after leaving her abusive husband and must fight the love she has always inspired in Anju’s husband. After she loses this fight, Sudha takes her daughter and moves on to other adventures and experiences of her own. According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, the author’s “lyrical descriptions of the characters’ inner and outer worlds bring a rich emotional chiaroscuro to an uplifting story about two women who learn to make peace with the difficult choices circumstances have forced upon them.” Library Journal contributor Robert E. Brown remarked that “the plot twists, the characters are engaging, and Divakaruni’s vaunted style is evident.” Chris Barsanti, writing in Book magazine, concluded that The Vine of Desire “is a potent, emotional book delivered by a writer who knows how to step back and take in the poetry.”
In the same year that The Vine of Desire was published, Divakaruni also published a novel for middle-grade readers. Neela, Victory Song is set during the struggle for Indian independence and focuses on the adventures of a twelve-year-old girl whose father becomes involved in the struggle for independence. Sarah Stone reviewed the novel on the Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color Web site, stating that “ Neela, Victory Song not only educates young readers about India’s culture and past but also manages to entertain brilliantly with a likeable main character and a suspenseful plot that keep young readers interested.” Divakaruni penned another book for young readers the following year. The Conch Bearer is a fantasy story in which twelve-year-old Anand must return a magical conch shell to the faraway Himalayas from which it came.
The Palace of Illusions is a retelling of the long epic Indian poem Mahabharata, set during the historical period between 6000 B.C.E. and 5000 B.C.E. [resume new]As Divakaruni informed Nandita Chowdhury Bose of India Currents, part of her inspiration for this novel as well as The Forest of Enchantments—a retelling of India’s other major ancient epic, the Ramayana—came from hearing her grandfather tell those stories during summers in Bengal. Divakaruni related, “My grandfather had a huge influence on my writing. … The land, the customs, the folktales and fairytales, many of which make their way into my writing, all came from him.”[suspend new]
The Palace of Illusions, like the Mahabharata, addresses life-altering themes of love and politics and war from the point of view of Draupadi, the Princess of Panchaali. The character herself is said to bring bad luck historically and so has garnered a bad reputation over time to the point where her name is rarely given to newborn girls, for fear of what the act might bring down upon the family. Divakaruni approaches her story from the source of the original epic but with a feminist slant, setting all prejudices aside in the interest of sharing a stirring tale with her readers and illustrating Draupadi’s side of the story.
Over the course of the book, Divakaruni creates a context for the life and choices of Draupadi, illustrating her childhood and adolescence as one typical of many historical narratives, where she is neglected as a girl until catching the attention of a fortune teller, who predicts she will gain power and unhappiness in equal measures. The original story hints at hardship and misery but only introduces Draupadi as a young woman who has been promised to five brothers against her will, and who is made to stand in public as her sari is ripped from her. Divakaruni leaves Draupadi in the same situation, allowing fate to determine her course while her husbands make decisions. As with the original poem, the clan is soon at war as an illegitimate prince rises up against them. The prince is motivated both by his long-standing hatred of the clan and by his feelings for Draupadi, whom he would have for himself instead of seeing her divided between the five brothers. Draupadi has feelings for the prince as well but is divided in that she also feels something for one of the brothers she calls her husband. Both the original version of the tale and the novel address the strategy and politics behind this shift in power and the emotions that exist beneath the conflict.
Vidya Pradhan, writing on the Water, No Ice Web site, remarked in a comparison of Divakaruni’s novel and the original poem that “the moral ambiguity of this epic makes it a page turner and Divakaruni manages to weave in some of the lesser known anecdotes skillfully.” A Couch Papaya contributor stated that “Divakaruni’s handling of Draupadi’s thoughts, wishes and desires is masterful, making the woman who seems to be an enigma in the original version of the great epic come to life between her pages.” In a Booklist review, Seaman remarked that “Divakaruni’s historic and transporting variation adds new and truly revelatory psychological and social dimensions to the great epic’s indelible story.”
Nine people are trapped in the basement of the Indian consulate after an earthquake in One Amazing Thing. Set somewhere in the United States, the novel features Uma, an Americanized immigrant applying for a visa to visit her parents in India. A Muslim man is also there to return to India, hoping to discover his ancestral home. A well-to-do American couple plans to visit the Taj Mahal. Cameron, an army veteran, takes charge of the group after disaster strikes, but Uma inspires them, encouraging each to share a story of “one amazing thing.” Thus, the novel is similar in structure to Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. “The individual tales are engaging, but the mechanical setup and the lack of resolution in the primary narrative make it difficult to fully embrace all that follows,” a Kirkus Reviews contributor observed. Debbie Bogenschutz remarked in Library Journal: “Writing with great sensitivity, Divakaruni presents snapshots that speak volumes about the characters, so unexpectedly drawn together.” An online Linus’s Blanket reviewer was also impressed, stating: “I love the method that Divakaruni used for exposition. … One Amazing Thing is a beautiful book that illustrates perfectly that if we had any inkling of each other’s experiences, we would approach each other with more compassion and understanding, if not in friendship and love.”
In 2013, Divakaruni published Oleander Girl. The novel follows Korobi Roy, a Hindu woman from Kolkata who becomes engaged to Rajat Bose, the heir of a wealthy family. Discovering that her father, whom she believed dead, is actually living, Korobi embarks on a journey to the United States, during which she unravels much of what she thought she knew about the people in her life.
“Like an Indian Maeve Binchy, Divakaruni offers an entertaining if lightweight comfort read,” remarked a Kirkus Reviews critic. Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman had a higher opinion of Oleander Girl, writing: “From baneful secrets, poisonous misunderstandings and conflicts, and transcendent love, Divakaruni has forged another tender, wise, and resonant page-turner.” Andrea Kempf, writing in Library Journal, likewise called it “a beautiful, complex story in which caste, class, religion, and race [inform] people’s world views.”
Before We Visit the Goddess tells the story of three generations of women, touching on themes including independence, gender inequality, education, and immigration. In an interview with John Wilkens for the San Diego Union-Tribune Online, Divakaruni stated: “I think this story really goes back way, way into my childhood. My mother was a single parent bringing us up, and that’s very unusual in India in the traditional family context. It was very hard for her. I remember from the time I was very young she would always talk to me about how important it is for a woman to be successful.” Divakaruni continued: “That is one of the central questions for me in the book. Each of the three women has to ask herself: ‘What does it mean to be a successful woman?’ And it’s a question I’ve been asking myself all my life.”
A writer in Kirkus Reviews criticized the novel’s ending, stating: “Compelling plot threads are left abandoned and unexplored.” However, the same writer described the book as “a novel of quiet but deeply affecting moments.” Reviewing the book on the Hindu Web site, Radhika Santhanam remarked: “Divakaruni’s style of narrative—a pendulum swing across time—is laboured. Reading what seems like a deliberate attempt to go back and forth so that all the loose threads can be tied together deftly in the end can get quite confusing.” Nonetheless, Santhanam concluded: “ Before We Visit the Goddess is a highly recommended read for all those who are fans of Divakaruni, or for those who love beautiful prose and stories of identity and migration.” In Booklist, Seaman suggested: “Divakaruni’s gracefully insightful, dazzlingly descriptive, and covertly stinging tale illuminates the opposition women must confront, generation by generation.” India Times Online contributor John Cheeran highlighted a quote from the book and commented: “Such captivating prose makes Before We Visit the Goddess a sheer delight to dip in to, and get drenched all soon in the rush of life.” Chauncey Mabe, a reviewer on the Miami Herald Web site, remarked: “ Before We Visit the Goddess easily could be marketed as a short story collection. And yet Divakaruni generates a novelistic momentum that carries from story to story, chapter to chapter, as she rolls out the tale of Sabriti and her daughters like an heirloom tapestry.”
[re-resume new]The inspiration for Divakaruni’s first historical novel came when she attended an arts festival in Kolkata—while promoting Before We Visit the Goddess—and entered the auditorium just as the moving countenance of a nineteenth-century Indian queen was being shown on a screen. Struck by the woman’s evident courage and dignity, Divakaruni told Nelson of the San Diego Union-Tribune, “It hit me like a thunderbolt. … I couldn’t stop thinking about her. It was as if she was calling out to me.” The woman was Rani Jindan Kaur, who, in between the better-known reins of her husband and son, served as one of Punjab’s last monarchs before the aggressive intrusions of the British upended the subcontinent’s political systems. Divakaruni’s determination to tell Rani Jindan’s story resulted in her novel The Last Queen.
The Last Queen follows Rani Jindan throughout her life, beginning with her youth as the humble daughter of the royal kennel keeper. Courtship with Maharaja Ranjit Singh led to her crowning as queen and the birth of a son, Dalip—who was officially crowned the new king at six years old after the death of his father from illness. But Rani Jindan led the nation as queen regent, leading a fierce resistance to the British that ultimately resulted in her exile. An early feminist, Rani Jindan had a penchant for defying tradition, such as when she removed her veil to speak to audiences. A Times of India reviewer affirmed that Divakaruni’s “exceptional storytelling skills” are on display as she deftly conveys the monarch’s “indomitable spirit.” Writing for Feminism in India, Priyanka Chatterjee hailed how “Divakaruni’s blends in Jindan the attributes of a girl-next-door and a magnanimous queen who is rooted, intelligent, beautiful, feisty, who bows to no external force but her passionate love for her dear ones and her Punjab.” Neha Kirpal affirmed in Punch that in The Last Queen Divakaruni makes Rani Jindan “seem more real and human than any textbook ever has.”
Having whetted her appetite for historical explorations, Divakaruni shines a spolight on the echoing consequences of Partition in her novel Independence. In a Bengali village, sisters Deepa, Jamini, and Priya share in their parents’ optimism concerning India’s upcoming independence from British rule. But when the prospect of Partition—splitting the British-claimed colony into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan—sets religious communities at odds, the girls’ father gets killed during a riot outside his Calcutta medical center. In the wake of this tragedy, Deepa falls in love with Raza, a Muslim, putting her at odds with her bereft mother. Meanwhile Priya meets obstacles in trying to become a doctor like her father, while she and Jamini get caught in a love triangle with longtime family friend Amit. The sisters cherish their connections but just might end up oceans apart.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer proclaimed that in Independence, Divakaruni “seamlessly weaves the political upheaval into the characters’ lives … while also depicting the beauty, vitality, and vastness of India,” making the novel a “must” read. A Kirkus Reviews writer called the novel an “engaging family saga” that dramatically registers the “violent national upheaval” while also “capturing the rich interiority of each of the three daughters.” The reviewer hailed Independence as a “deeply felt” and “moving depiction of family life following great loss.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Bloomsbury Review, September, 1992, Nina Mehta, review of Black Candle: Poems about Women from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, p. 19.
Book, January-February, 2002, Chris Barsanti, review of The Vine of Desire, p. 76.
Booklist, December 15, 1991, Pat Monaghan, review of Black Candle, p. 745; July, 1995, Donna Seaman, review of Arranged Marriage, pp. 1860, 1869; August, 1997, Donna Seaman, review of Leaving Yuba City: New and Selected Poems, p. 1871; November 15, 2002, Gillian Engberg, review of Neela, Victory Song, p. 597; September 15, 2003, Ilene Cooper, review of The Conch Bearer, p. 236; January 1, 2008, Donna Seaman, review of The Palace of Illusions, p. 46; September 1, 2005, Jennifer Mattson, review of The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming, p. 132; April 15, 2009, Michael Cart, review of Shadowland, p. 38; February 1, 2013, Donna Seaman, review of Oleander Girl, p. 25; February 1, 2013, Connie Fletcher, review of Grandma and the Great Gourd: A Bengali Folk Tale, p. 49; March 1, 2016, Donna Seaman, review of Before We Visit the Goddess, p. 57.
Horn Book, January-February, 2004, Susan P. Bloom, review of The Conch Bearer, p. 81; November 1, 2005, Jennifer M. Barbander, review of The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming, p. 717; May-June, 2013, Kathleen T. Horning, review of Grandma and the Great Gourd, p. 103.
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2003, review of The Conch Bearer, p. 1071; July 15, 2005, review of The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming, p. 788; January 1, 2010, review of One Amazing Thing; January 15, 2013, review of Oleander Girl; February 1, 2013, review of Grandma and the Great Gourd; March 1, 2016, review of Before We Visit the Goddess; November 15, 2022, review of Independence.
Library Journal, October 1, 1997, Ann van Buren, review of Leaving Yuba City, p. 86; January, 1999, Wilda Williams, review of Sister of My Heart, p. 147; December, 2001, Robert E. Brown, review of The Vine of Desire, p. 170; February 15, 2010, Debbie Bogenschutz, review of One Amazing Thing, p. 86; February 15, 2013, Andrea Kempf, review of Oleander Girl, p. 91.
Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 14, 1997, Shashi Tharoor, review of The Mistress of Spices, p. 5.
New York Times Book Review, July 16, 1995, Rose Kernochan, review of Arranged Marriage, p. 53; April 13, 1997, David Guy, review of The Mistress of Spices, p. 20.
Publishers Weekly, June 5, 1995, review of Arranged Marriage, p. 53; April 29, 1996, review of Arranged Marriage, p. 69; January 13, 1997, review of The Mistress of Spices, pp. 51-52; August 25, 1997, review of Leaving Yuba City, p. 68; November 89, 1998, review of Sister of My Heart, p. 55; May 14, 2001, Roxane Farmanfarmaian, “Writing from a Different Place,” p. 46; November 26, 2001, review of The Vine of Desire, p. 38; August 18, 2003, review of The Conch Bearer, p. 80; October 24, 2005, review of The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming, p. 58; January 28, 2013, review of Grandma and the Great Gourd, p. 179; November 21, 2022, review of Independence, p. 62.
Reference & Research Book News, August, 2005, review of California Uncovered: Stories for the 21st Century, p. 272.
School Library Journal, December, 1995, Ginny Ryder, review of Arranged Marriage, p. 142; December, 2002, Alison Follos, review of Neela, Victory Song, p. 136; December, 2005, Patricia D. Lothrop, review of The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming, p. 144; July, 2009, Chris Shoemaker, review of Shadowland, p. 81; January, 2013, Carol Connor, review of Grandma and the Great Gourd, p. 91.
Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), May 25, 1997, Tammie Bob, review of The Mistress of Spices, pp. 1, 9.
World Literature Today, winter, 2002, Frederick Luis Aldama, review of The Unknown Errors of Our Lives, pp. 112-113.
ONLINE
About Women Writers, http://womanwriters.about.com/ (April 29, 2003), review of The Vine of Desire.
AsianWeek Online, http://www.asianweek.com/ (April 27, 2001), Grace Talusan, “Wherever You Go, There You Are,” review of Sister of My Heart.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni website, http://chitradivakaruni.com (December 19, 2022).
Couch Papaya, http://couchpapaya.blogspot.com/ (August 11, 2008), review of The Palace of Illusions.
Feminism in India, https://feminisminindia.com/ (February 23, 2021), Priyanka Chatterjee, review of The Last Queen.
Hindu Online, http://www.thehindu.com/ (April 30, 2016), Radhika Santhanam, review of Before We Visit the Goddess; (November 29, 2022), Mini Kapoor, review of Independence.
India Currents, https://indiacurrents.com/ (May 23, 2022), Nandita Chowdhury Bose, “Feisty, Fragile, Fascinating: An Interview with Chitra Divakaruni.”
India Times Online, http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ (May 17, 2016), John Cheeran, review of Before We Visit the Goddess.
Linus’s Blanket, http://www.linussblanket.com/ (February 10, 2010), review of One Amazing Thing.
Miami Herald Online, http://www.miamiherald.com/ (May 20, 2016), Chauncey Mabe, review of Before We Visit the Goddess.
Poetry Foundation website, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ (March 1, 2017), author profile.
PopMatters, http://www.popmatters.com/ (June 3, 2013), Shyam K. Sriram, review of Oleander Girl.
Punch, https://thepunchmagazine.com/ (February 28, 2021), Neha Kirpal, review of The Last Queen.
San Diego Union-Tribune Online, http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/ (March 1, 2017), John Wilkens, author interview; (October 9, 2022), Dean Nelson, “In Her New Novel, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Rediscovers India’s Long Lost Queen.”
Times of India Online, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ (May 25, 2021), review of The Last Queen.
Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color, http://voices.cla.umn.edu/ (April 29, 2003), “Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni”; Sarah Stone, review of Neela, Victory Song.
Water, No Ice, http://waternoice.com/ (April 4, 2008), Vidya Pradhan, review of The Palace of Illusions.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning author, poet, activist and teacher. She is the author of 20 books including Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, Oleander Girl, Before We Visit the Goddess and Palace of Illusions. Her latest novels are The Forest of Enchantments, a feminist retelling of the epic The Ramayana in the voice of Sita, and The Last Queen, the story of Maharani Jindan, the indomitable queen regent of Punjab who fought the British in many ingenious ways. Divakaruni often writes about contemporary life in America and India, women’s experiences, immigration, history, magical realism and mythology.
Her work has been published in over 100 magazines and anthologies, including the Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Vogue, Verve, Elle, Oprah’s O magazine, Best American Short Stories, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and O Henry Prize Stories. Her books have been translated into 29 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Bengali, Hungarian, Turkish, Hindi and Japanese, and have been bestsellers nationally and internationally.
Her awards include, among others, an American Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles award, a Premio Scanno (also known as the Italian Nobel) award, a Light of India award, a SALA award, 2 Pushcart prizes, an Allen Ginsberg poetry award, a Rona Jaffe Award, a Barbara Deming Memorial Award, and a Houston Literary Award. In 2022, The Last Queen received the Times of India Best Fiction Award and the Best Book Award from The International Association of Working Women.
DIVAKARUNI READS FROM OLEANDER GIRL, WHICH WAS CHOSEN AS THE CITYWIDE READ FOR MANSFIELD, TEXAS.
DIVAKARUNI READS FROM OLEANDER GIRL, WHICH WAS CHOSEN AS THE CITYWIDE READ FOR MANSFIELD, TEXAS.
In 2015 Divakaruni was included in the Economic Times’ List of 20 Most Influential Global Indian Women. She has judged several prestigious awards such as the National Book Award and the PEN Faulkner Award.
Two books, The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart, have been made into movies. Several others are under option in Hollywood and in India. Her short story “The Word Love,” was made into an award-winning short film, Amaar Ma. Arranged Marriage has been made into a play and performed in both USA and Canada. Palace of Illusions has been performed on the stage in USA and India. Mistress of Spices is in the process of being made into an opera.
AT A BANQUET AT U.C. BERKELEY’S INTERNATIONAL HOUSE, WHERE SHE RECEIVED THE ALUMNA OF THE YEAR AWARD
AT A BANQUET AT U.C. BERKELEY’S INTERNATIONAL HOUSE, WHERE SHE RECEIVED THE ALUMNA OF THE YEAR AWARD
Her novel One Amazing Thing has been chosen as a city-wide or campus-wide read in over 35 cities and institutions across the U.S.
She wrote the libretto for the opera River of Light, which has been performed by the Houston Grand Opera and Festival Opera in the San Francisco area.
Divakaruni teaches in the nationally ranked Creative Writing program at the University of Houston, where she is the McDavid Professor of Creative Writing. Several of her students have gone on to publish acclaimed books and have won awards. She is regularly asked to be an outside reviewer for the tenure/promotion of professors in Creative Writing programs in universities across the US.
She serves on the Advisory Board of Maitri in the San Francisco Bay Area and of Daya in Houston, both organizations that help survivors of domestic abuse and trafficking. (She was a co-founder of Maitri). She also serves on the Emeritus Board of Pratham, a literacy organization that works with underprivileged children and provides job-training and small business start-up seed money for women in India. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Murthy.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
ChitraBanerjeeDivakaruni.JPG
Born Chitralekha Banerjee
1956 (age 65–66)[1]
Kolkata, India
Occupation Writer
Nationality Indian-American
Alma mater University of Calcutta
Wright State University
University of California, Berkeley
Genre Poetry, short stories, novels; fantasy, young adult, magical realism, historical fiction
Notable works Arranged Marriage: Stories
Mistress of Spices
Sister of My Heart
The Palace of Illusions
One Amazing Thing
The Conch Bearer
The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming
Independence
Notable awards American Book Award
PEN Josephine Miles Literary Award
Spouse Murthy
Children 2
Website
www.chitradivakaruni.com
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (born Chitralekha Banerjee, 1956[2]) is an Indian-American author, poet, and the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Writing at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Her short story collection, Arranged Marriage, won an American Book Award in 1996. Two of her novels (The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart), as well as a short story (The Word Love) were adapted into films.
Divakaruni's works are largely set in India and the United States, and often focus on the experiences of South Asian immigrants. She writes for children as well as adults, and has published novels in multiple genres, including realistic fiction, historical fiction, magical realism, myth and fantasy.[3]
Contents
1 Life
2 Career
3 Works
3.1 Fiction and poetry
3.2 Film, television, theatre and opera
4 Awards
5 Publications
5.1 Fiction
5.2 Young adult and children's
5.2.1 Brotherhood of the Conch series
5.3 Poetry
5.4 Anthologies
6 See also
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
Life
Divakaruni was born in Kolkata, India. She received her B.A. from the University of Calcutta in 1976.[citation needed] In the same year, she went to the United States to attend Wright State University, where she received a master's degree.[4] She received a PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985 (Christopher Marlowe was the subject of her doctoral dissertation).[5]
Divakaruni lives in Houston with her husband, Murthy. She has two sons, Anand and Abhay (whose names she has used in her children's novels).[6]
Career
Divakaruni put herself through graduate school by taking on odd jobs, working as a babysitter, a store clerk, a bread slicer in a bakery, a laboratory assistant at Wright State University, and a dining hall attendant at International House, Berkeley. She was a graduate teaching assistant at U.C. Berkeley. She taught in California at Foothill College and Diablo Valley College. She now lives and teaches in Texas, where she is the McDavid Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.[7]
Divakaruni is the co-founder and former president of Maitri, a helpline founded in 1991 in San Francisco for South Asian women dealing with domestic abuse.[8] Divakaruni is on its advisory board and on the advisory board of Daya, a similar service in Houston. She has served on the board of Pratham Houston, an organisation working to bring literacy to disadvantaged Indian children[when?], and is on their emeritus board.[9]
Works
Fiction and poetry
Divakaruni began her writing career as a poet.[10] Her volumes of poetry include Black Candle and Leaving Yuba City.[11]
Her first collection of stories Arranged Marriage won an American Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles Award, and a Bay Area Book Reviewers Award.[12] Her major novels include The Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, Queen of Dreams, One Amazing Thing, Palace of Illusions, Oleander Girl and Before We Visit the Goddess. She has also written a young adult fantasy series called The Brotherhood of the Conch which is located in India and draws on the culture and folklore of that region. The first book of the series, The Conch Bearer was nominated for the 2003 Bluebonnet Award.[citation needed] The second book of the series, The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming came out in 2005 and the third and final book of the series, Shadowland, was published in 2009.
Divakaruni's novel The Palace of Illusions, was a national best-seller for over a year in India and[13] is a re-telling of the Indian epic The Mahabharata from Draupadi's perspective.[14]
Divakaruni's work has been published in The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and her writing has been included in anthologies including the Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize Stories, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. Her fiction has been translated into 29 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Indonesian, Bengali, Turkish and Japanese.[citation needed]
Film, television, theatre and opera
Divakaruni's novel The Mistress of Spices was released as a film of the same name in 2005. It was directed by Paul Mayeda Berges, with a script by Berges and his wife, Gurinder Chadha.[citation needed] Her novel Sister of my Heart was made into a television series by Suhasini Maniratnam in Tamil and aired in India, as Anbulla Snegithiye (Loving Friend). In 2018 the producers NR Pachisia und Dipankar Jojo Chaki secured the rights to a film adaption of The Palace of Illusions.[15]
Divakaruni's story Clothes from the collection Arranged Marriage was adapted into play under the title Arranged Marriage by Peggy Shannon in 2004, 2010, and 2016.[16][17]
In 2013, Divakaruni wrote the libretto to a chamber opera for Houston Grand Opera, River of Light, about the life of an Indian woman in Houston. It premiered in 2014[18] with original compositions by Jack Perla[19] and was shown again in 2015 by the opera company Festival Opera, directed by Tanya Kane-Parry at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center.[20]
The Palace of Illusions was adapted into a play named Fire and Ice: Draupadi's Story by Joe DiSabatino and performed in India under his direction. A Bollywood movie with the title Mahabharat, starring Deepika Padukone as Draupadi, is bring prepared in India based on The Palace of Illusions. The premiere was scheduled for 2021.[21]
As of 2021, her novel One Amazing Thing has been optioned to become a Bollywood film.[12]
Awards
1996 American Book Award (Arranged Marriage)[22]
1996 PEN Josephine Miles Literary Award (Arranged Marriage)[12]
Bay Area Book Reviewers' Award (Arranged Marriage)[12]
Publications
Fiction
Arranged Marriage: Stories (1995)[23]
The Mistress of Spices (1997)
Sister of My Heart (1999)
The Unknown Errors of our Lives (2001)[24]
The Vine of Desire (2002)[25]
Queen of Dreams (2004)[26]
The Lives of Strangers (2007)
The Palace of Illusions: A Novel (2008)[27]
One Amazing Thing (2010)
Oleander Girl (2013)
Before We Visit the Goddess (2016)
The Forest of Enchantments (2019)[28]
The Last Queen (2021)
Independence (2023)[29]
Young adult and children's
Neela: Victory Song (2002)
Grandma and the Great Gourd (2013) (children's picture book)
Brotherhood of the Conch series
The Conch Bearer (2003)
The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming (2005)
Shadowland (2009)
Poetry
The Reason for Nasturtiums, Berkeley (Berkeley Poets Workshop) 1990. ISBN 978-0-917658-28-0
Black Candle. Poems About Women from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, Corvallis (Calyx Books) 1991. ISBN 978-0-934971-74-4
Leaving Yuba City, St. Louis (Turtleback Books) 1997. ISBN 978-1-4177-1097-3[30]
Anthologies
Multitude: Cross Cultural Readings for Writers (1993)
We Too Sing America (1997)
California Uncovered: Stories for the 21st Century (2004)
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
India (b.1956)
Born in India, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni lives near San Francisco with her husband and two children. She teaches creative writing at a local college, and is the coordinator for a helpline for South Asian women. She is the author of several award-winning volumes of poetry, as well as Arranged Marriage, her acclaimed collection of short stories, a bestseller in America and winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Prize for fiction, an American Book Award, and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for fiction.
Genres: Children's Fiction
New Books
January 2023
thumb
Independence
Series
Brotherhood of the Conch
1. The Conch Bearer (2003)
2. The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming (2005)
3. Shadowland (2009)
thumbthumbthumb
Novels
The Mistress of Spices (1997)
Sister of My Heart (1999)
The Vine of Desire (2002)
Neela: Victory Song (2002)
Queen of Dreams (2004)
The Palace of Illusions (2008)
One Amazing Thing (2010)
Oleander Girl (2013)
Before We Visit the Goddess (2016)
The Forest of Enchantments (2019)
The Last Queen (2021)
Independence (2023)
thumbthumbthumbthumb
thumbthumbthumbthumb
thumbthumbthumbthumb
Omnibus
The Women's Library (2019) (with K R Meera and Anita Nair)
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Collections
Reason for Nasturiums (poems) (1990)
Black Candle (poems) (1991)
Arranged Marriage (1995)
Leaving Yuba City (poems) (1997)
The Unknown Errors of Our Lives (2001)
Full-Blooded Fantasy (2005) (with Jodi Lynn Anderson, Hilari Bell, Holly Black, Will Davis, Tony DiTerlizzi, Nancy Farmer, D J MacHale, Kai Meyer and J T Petty)
thumbthumbthumbthumb
thumbthumb
Picture Books
Grandma and the Great Gourd (2013)
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Anthologies edited
California Uncovered (2004) (with William E Justice and James Quay)
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning and bestselling author, activist, and professor. Her work has been published in over fifty magazines, including The Atlantic and The New Yorker, and included in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Her books have been translated into twenty-nine languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Bengali, Russian, and Japanese. Several have been used for campus-wide reads and made into films and plays. She teaches at the University of Houston.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the award-winning author of 18 books. Her themes include the Indian experience, contemporary America, women, immigration, history, myth, and the joys and challenges of living in a multicultural world. Her work has been published in over 100 magazines and anthologies and translated into 29 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Hindi and Japanese. She has won numerous awards, including an American
Book Award and the internation Premio Scanno Prize. Divakaruni also writes for children and young adults.
Her latest novel is Oleander Girl (Simon and Schuster, 2013). Her upcoming novel is Before We Visit the Goddess (about 3 generations of women-- grandmother, mother and daughter-- who each examine the question "what does it mean to be a successful woman." April 2016, Simon & Schuster.)
Two of her books, The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart, have been made into movies. Her novels One Amazing Thing and Palace of Illusions have been optioned. Her collection of stories, Arranged Marriage has been made into a play.
She was born in India and came to the United States to continue her education, receiving a Master’s degree from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
She currently teaches in the nationally ranked Creative Writing program at the Univ. of Houston. She serves on the Advisory board of Maitri in the San Francisco Bay Area and Daya in Houston, organizations that help South Asian or South Asian American women in abusive situations. She is also closely involved with Pratham, an organization that helps educate children (especially those living in urban slums) in India.
She has judged several prestigious awards, such as the National Book Award and the PEN Faulkner Award.
She lives in Houston with her husband Murthy and has two sons, Anand and Abhay (whose names she has used in her children’s novels).
Feisty, Fragile, Fascinating: An Interview With Chitra Divakaruni
The writer paints her protagonists not as the meek and mild queens of traditional mythology, but as intelligent, firebrand women, who protested the wrongs heaped upon them, and took up cudgels on behalf of women around them.
Avatar photo
by Nandita Chowdhury Bose
May 23, 2022
Author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Image Credit: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni)
As a child, Dr. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni spent her summer holidays with her maternal grandfather in Bengal, where he regaled her with stories from the epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, along with tales from Bengal.
“My grandfather had a huge influence on my writing,” she says. “The land, the customs, the folktales and fairytales, many of which make their way into my writing, all came from him.”
As did the epics. Though in the narratives of Divakaruni, they came with a twist. The Palace of Illusions (2008) and The Forest of Enchantments (2019), two of the most ambitious novels she embarked on, were retellings of the epics where Divakaruni gave voice to the innermost thoughts of Draupadi and Sita.
Growing up in Kolkata, the sense of Sita she got was of a “very meek and mild, obedient wife and daughter-in-law, who did not create any trouble. Elders would bless me and say, may you be like Sita, the epitome of all those qualities. That used to really annoy me! I thought there has to be more to Sita than that.”
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That’s the kind of fallacious thinking that Divakaruni hopes to address through her portrayals of strong heroines. In her books, she paints them not as the meek and mild queens of traditional mythology, but intelligent, firebrand women, who protested the wrongs heaped upon them, and took up cudgels on behalf of women around them.
Author Chitra Divakaruni at a book club event
Author Chitra Divakaruni at a book club event Credit: Author Chitra Divakaruni
In her latest book, The Last Queen, which was just released in the United States, Divakaruni continues to delve into the minds of powerful queens, this time with the story of Maharani Jind Kaur, the youngest and most beloved wife of the Lion of Punjab, Ranjit Singh, Maharaja of the Sikh empire.
Why Rani Jindan?
“She is an amazingly strong woman who was just pushed aside in the annals of our history,” says Divakaruni.
History books teach about the Sher-e-Punjab, and his son, Dalip Singh, who was deposed by the British, exiled to England in his childhood, and ultimately made a puppet of the British crown. But in between the father and son ruled Maharani Jind Kaur, as the Queen Regent, an astute young widow fighting to protect Punjab, the legacy of her beloved husband, and the birthright of her son Dalip, from mercenary courtiers and the avaricious British.
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“I thought Rani Jindan had a fascinating life and deserved to be in the limelight. She was very inspiring to me because of the difficulties she went through in a world that was pretty hostile to women who stepped out of their roles; I really wanted to tell her story,” says Divakaruni.
Readers and critics have called her books, especially the epic retellings, “unputdownable.”
“I love that word!” Divakaruni exclaims in delight. “I want it to be unputdownable.”
In this regard, The Last Queen doesn’t disappoint. The story has everything a fast-paced novel can be expected to have: royalty, romance, conspiracy, murder and mayhem. Divakaruni’s narrative style is fluid and accessible, with a sprinkling of wit and humor.
Divakaruni herself is a disarmingly charming conversationalist; her humor belies her towering persona as a multiple award-winning author. Her work has been included in the Best American Short Stories, The O’Henry Prize Stories, and two Pushcart Prize Anthologies, among others. She is also Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Houston, a program that is rated among the top creative writing programs in the US.
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A strong advocate for women’s rights, she co-founded the San Francisco Bay Area-based Maitri, a nonprofit that provides support services to South Asian survivors of domestic violence. She is also an Emeritus board member of Pratham, a nonprofit dedicated to eradicating illiteracy in India.
Both Draupadi and Sita were relegated to a corner in the traditional epic narrative, not given much of a say in terms of what they were thinking, feeling or their motives
As in the Palace of Illusions and The Forest of Enchantments, Divakaruni continues to write The Last Queen in the first-person narrative. Why?
“The first person allowed me direct interiority into the minds of these women, and in these three books, that was important. These are all strong women; their world is important, and therefore their voice.”
Both Draupadi and Sita, she felt, were relegated to a corner in the traditional epic narrative, not given much of a say in terms of what they were thinking, feeling or their motives, and so Divakaruni addressed them with first-person female perspectives.
At the same time, she also made both gods and kings disarmingly human with a generous dose of humor. In the Forest of Enchantments, readers are treated to a delightful scene where Lord Ram is teased about his dark skin color by Sita’s friends, and he gives back naughtily in jest by saying that when they unite in love, some of Sita’s fairness might rub off onto him.
“Normally, our popular concept of Ram is not of someone who jokes,” says Divakaruni, “but I found this in the Krittibasi Ramayan [a popular Bengali retelling] and had to put it in.”
In the Last Queen too, readers also get a sense of Maharaja Ranjit Singh as a person, in all his glory and his failings (with a fondness for both women and drink), who finally found true love in the twilight of his years with an extraordinary woman of very ordinary birth.
Divakaruni’s feminist message, while strong, is also delicately nuanced, and therein lies her appeal to readers across genders. This has earned her a fan following among male readers.
Retelling of epics and historicals can be literary landmines for any author. So, how does Divakaruni tread through those?
“I feel huge amounts of trepidation, and oh, there are a lot of landmines, but what helps is my mission, which is to tell the truth as best as I can see it. I really don’t have any agenda except to bring women to the center of the story.”
Divakaruni’s feminist message, while strong, is also delicately nuanced, and therein lies her appeal to readers across genders. This has earned her a fan following among male readers, many of whom write to her and engage with her on social media, all of which she finds very gratifying. “Reading across the genders is a very healthy thing, mentally and psychologically, healthy for our communities and ultimately for our societies,” she says.
Divakaruni also feels keenly about the current world situation, where ideas and opinions are polarized to the extreme, and different interpretations are unwelcome. “I think we are going through a period, all over the world, and also in India, where it seems like there is only one possible interpretation of things, and if you veer from that, then hey, you are a problem. I really feel that that was not in our Indian spirit. Our Indian spirit is very embracive of many different ways of interpreting, of living, of worshiping.”
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Currently, she is working on her next book, about a family in Bengal caught in the calamity of the Partition, which echoes those very sentiments. “It is at once hugely inspirational and a warning story as well of what happens when people don’t come together. Bengal too felt the violence of partition very keenly, but those events are less documented than the western borders,” she says.
Divakaruni’s other enduring love is teaching creative writing. “Every time I critique a student’s work, I learn something new. My students read a lot of contemporary books and they are always recommending things to me to read.”
Her message for aspiring writers out there: I want you to know that when I started writing, I was a very bad writer. I had to learn how to become a good writer. Sometimes, writers have to be prepared to do that.
In her new novel, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni rediscovers India’s long lost queen
Chitra Divakaruni and her latest book, "The Last Queen."
Chitra Divakaruni and her latest book, “The Last Queen.”(Courtesy photo by Murthy Divarakuni)
In her new historical novel ‘The Last Queen,’ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni writes about the life of Rani Jindan, the last queen of the Punjab region of India in the 1800s
BY DEAN NELSON
OCT. 9, 2022 5:30 AM PT
There was something about the face on the screen that made her do it.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, the celebrated Indian novelist who will be in San Diego Oct. 13 and 14, saw the regal face, the dignity, the courage, and immediately knew that this woman had a story, and that she was the one who needed to tell it.
“It hit me like a thunderbolt,” she said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about her. It was as if she was calling out to me.”
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The face was that of Rani Jindan Kaur — she was popularly known as Rani Jindan, the last queen of the Punjab region of India in the 1800s. Divakaruni was in Kolkata at an arts festival to promote her book “Before We Visit the Goddess,” and walked into the auditorium as a presenter was describing a famous diamond worn by this queen.
“The topic at the moment was the jewel, but I was struck by who was wearing the jewel,” Divakaruni said. “I set aside the book I was working on and immediately began working on telling this woman’s story.”
Telling women’s stories — particularly those who are unseen or misunderstood — has been Divakaruni’s strength as a writer. She wrote short stories, then novels, then novels that explored Indian mythology and retold that country’s ancient epics, and now has written her first historical novel, “The Last Queen.”
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Huma Ahmed-Ghosh, a professor emeritus from San Diego State University’s Department of Women’s Studies, said that Divakaruni’s emphasis on women as main characters sets her apart from many novelists.
“She writes about love and desire and sexuality and rights — all with women protagonists looking for agency,” Ahmed-Ghosh said. “Her writing resonates with immigrants especially, but she also tells the stories of strong women who aren’t stereotypes.”
“The Last Queen” is in a genre that is a departure for Divakaruni.
“I never saw myself as a historical novelist,” she said. “But her story captivated me.”
Rani Jindan was the royal kennel keeper, who caught the attention of the king, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, a powerful Sikh ruler trying to keep the British from taking over the region. They married and had a son who was 5 when the king died, which elevated her into a place of power.
“We know about the father and the son, but she is largely absent in the historical accounts,” Divakaruni said. “She’s the invisible space between them, and I wanted to do something about that. I wanted to paint in this space.”
The British viewed Rani Jindan as a threat to their colonization plans, Divakaruni said, so they tried to push her to the corners. They published lies about her, put her in prison, and took her young son away so that he could be raised in England.
The book tells of the son returning to India, reuniting with his mother, and the common people of Punjab rallying around her.
“She was fallible, as all heroes are,” Divakaruni said, “and I don’t shy away from those flaws, but it was her authenticity and strength that drew people to her. She never gave up.”
The cover of the Indian edition of "The Last Queen," by Chitra Divarakaruni.
The cover of the Indian edition of “The Last Queen,” by Chitra Divarakaruni.(Courtesy photo)
And while her other novels set in India have received positive reviews and been made into movies, reviews in India for “The Last Queen” are the best she has ever received. The Times of India, which usually reserves its top honors for books by writers who live in India, gave it their highest award.
“I think the people of India recognize that there was more to her story than they were told,” Divakaruni said. “She was lost and now she was found.”
Researching Rani Jindan’s story during the pandemic was both a blessing and a curse. It was a curse because Divakaruni could not travel to the specific places from the queen’s history to experience and touch and smell and observe. It was a blessing because the talented librarians at the University of Houston, where she teaches, were able to produce paintings and photos from the queen’s era that made Divakaruni see as they really were.
“The photos and art preserved the original atmosphere,” she said. “In-person would have been re-created and maybe even touristy.”
But this book is not just for those interested in history, she insists.
“Her story can teach us a lot today,” she said. “The British could finally defeat her because no one came to her aid. Much like in the U.S., we only protect our factions, and not our country. It’s a sad but timely lesson.”
Given England’s history with colonizing India, Divakaruni said she had mixed feelings when she heard about Queen Elizabeth’s death last month.
“I had nothing against her personally, but she was in a position of cultural power and she could have addressed England’s history with India,” Divakaruni said. “If she had said something about the system she inherited, that would have made a difference.”
Writing “The Last Queen” changed Divakaruni as a writer. It forced her into learning more about colonization and de-colonization, which is the topic of her next historical novel, “Independence,” about the partition of India and Pakistan. It explores what independence means for women and for a country. Her evolution has made her more attentive to what it means for her to be a writer.
“I want to be an instrument for whatever story comes through me,” she said. “This particular story came to me as if a force told me to write it, and I could not dishonor that voice.”
Did Rani Jindan encourage Divakaruni during the writing process?
“No,” she said with her characteristic laugh. “She gave me the first push and then said, ‘You’re on your own, baby.’”
Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee INDEPENDENCE Morrow/HarperCollins (Fiction None) $28.99 1, 17 ISBN: 978-0-06-314238-1
The members of a Hindu family torn apart during the chaos of Partition in India try to rebuild their lives and community in this deeply felt novel.
Nabakumar, a Bengali village doctor, and Bina, his quiltmaker wife, are looking forward to India's independence from British rule and the possibilities they hope it will bring for their three daughters: Deepa, Jamini, and Priya, whether in terms of marriages or educational pursuits. Instead, despite his optimism for the future, Nabakumar is killed during a riot that follows a Muslim political party meeting outside of his medical clinic in Calcutta, a loss which upends the family and renders them even more dependent on their neighbors. In the aftermath, mother and daughters struggle to earn money and to ensure their own safety. Deepa must hide her relationship with a Muslim man and is disowned by her mother when it is discovered. Their secret cross-religion marriage becomes even more dangerous as her husband becomes politically powerful in the Muslim League, and the two must relocate to the newly created Pakistan. Priya is at a loss for how to follow in her father's footsteps to become a doctor, especially after she is denied entry to a local college due to ongoing discrimination against women. When she is accepted into medical school in the United States after an offer to finance her education, the decision of whether to pursue her dreams strains her relationship with Amit, a longtime family friend and her fiance, whom Jamini is also in love with. As the threats mount, the sisters are forced to rely on each other once again in a culminating rush of events. The author's latest novel is an engaging family saga that explores resilience against a backdrop of violent national upheaval. The story is well paced as it follows its cast of characters through a chaotic world while still capturing the rich interiority of each of the three daughters.
A moving depiction of family life following great loss.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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Source Citation
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"Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee: INDEPENDENCE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A726309407/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2e40607c. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
Independence
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Morrow, $28.99 (384p) ISBN 978-0-06-314238-1
Divakaruni (The Last Queen) captures the upheaval and devastation of the partition of British India in this dazzling tale of three Hindu sisters caught up in the violent events. In 1947, Deepa, Priya, and Jamini Ganguly live with their father, Baba, and mother, Bina. Their once-peaceful Bengal village of Ranipur becomes a site of violence between Hindus and Muslims as independence looms. After Baba dies in the carnage, Bina takes to her bed, unable to work. Deepa, whose beauty is expected to bring a prestigious marriage, falls in love with Raza, a Muslim leader, and Bina banishes her as a result. Priya, who dreams of becoming a doctor, believes her fiance, Amit, will wait for her to finish medical school, but he breaks their engagement. Amit, who still loves Priya, marries Jamini, the result of a misunderstood deathbed promise from Baba to Amit. Deepa s situation becomes dire when Raza dies in the sectarian violence; in a hair-raising rescue into the new Pakistan, where Deepa has concealed her Hindu identity, family and friends save her from an army captain who's trying to force her into marriage. Divakaruni seamlessly weaves the political upheaval into the characters' lives, including the nation's bereavement after Gandhi's assassination and Priya's meeting with the female resistance leader Sarojini Naidu, while also depicting the beauty, vitality, and vastness of India. This is a must. Agent: Simon Lipskar. Writers House. (Jan.)
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"Independence." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 48, 21 Nov. 2022, p. 62. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A728493537/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f8a6bb34. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
Book review | Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Partition tale, ‘Independence’
Though it echoes the narrative frame of ‘Little Women’, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s ‘Independence’ introduces enough twists to make the storyline her own
November 29, 2022 04:25 pm | Updated November 30, 2022 12:30 pm IST
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni writes in the present tense to convey the interior dialogue of the three sisters in Independence
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni writes in the present tense to convey the interior dialogue of the three sisters in Independence | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
In her monumental novel, Tomb of Sand, Geetanjali Shree asked, “Is every story really a Partition tale?” This English translation from the Hindi original Ret Samadhi was published early in 2022, in the 75th anniversary year of that event, and in its most nobly audacious passages, it took the story of an 80-year-old woman to borders carved in 1947.
Now, at year’s end, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of around 20 books, with many bestsellers among them, visits the events of the year leading up to August 15, 1947, and the months after that, and narrates how the lives of three sisters and their intimate circle are transformed. If the life story of Ma in Tomb of Sand was located in the northwestern part of the subcontinent, the formative experiences of the Ganguly sisters in Independence take place in Bengal, on both sides of the border ultimately drawn by Cyril Radcliffe.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s new book on Partition, Independence
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s new book on Partition, Independence
Of the three sisters, 18-year-old Priya, the youngest, is most fiercely determined to break out of prescribed gender roles and make a career for herself. The eldest, the beautiful and least prone to pettiness, Deepa, and the more flawed Jamini — self-conscious and given to assuming a martyr-like air and using substantial guile to draw attention away from her more vivacious sisters — complete the circle, in just one of Divakaruni’s obviously deliberate parallels to the narrative frame of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.
When fear divides
Their father Nabakumar is a doctor with his practice in their native village Ranipur, where the family resides, and Calcutta. He is highly regarded, but earns little as he refuses to charge patients without sufficient means. Their mother Bina complains about this, but supplements the family income by making exquisite quilts for sale and gifting them to those in need. Priya wants to be a doctor.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has authored around 20 books
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has authored around 20 books | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
Nabakumar’s best friend, and benefactor, is Somnath Chowdhury, inhabitant of a fancy mansion in Ranipur and owner of vast estates and a shipping business. He is Priya’s chess partner, and through the course of the novel her biggest supporter as she embarks on entrance exams and ultimately the study of medicine. His son is the handsome Amit, Priya’s best friend, and if you know your Little Women, her potential fiancé.
This idyllic setting changes rapidly, as the violence of Direct Action Day in August 1946 takes Nabakumar’s life, and introduces fear and a communal bitterness in the once largehearted Bina’s veins. Deepa is soon estranged from her mother and eventually isolated on the other side of the border in what becomes East Pakistan, when she falls in love with a member of the Muslim League. Priya’s attempts to get into medical school in India are thwarted by a gender bias, and she finds herself at a college in New England. If this is another echo of Little Women, Divakaruni introduces enough twists to make the narrative chords of the storyline her very own.
Independence
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
HarperCollins India
₹699
What underlines independence?
Divakaruni is an insistent writer; there is a spareness in her descriptions of place and the historical timeline as she writes in the present tense to convey the interior dialogue of the three sisters.
Feminism, communal amity, empathy and self-growth are among the requisite qualities she identifies for both a country and a human being to be truly independent. Attainment of these may still be works in progress for the country — indeed, there has been too much slip-sliding — but in the closed circle of the Ganguly and Chowdhury households set in turmoil more than 70 years ago, there is hope. And so it is that they speak of their present and to their country’s fraught future.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Last Queen: The Captivating Story of Rani Jindan Kaur
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Last Queen: The Captivating Story of Rani Jindan Kaur
Rani Jindan Kaur. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Neha Kirpal
Feb 28, 2021
The novel brings to life the youngest queen of the greatest Sikh ruler, Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Daughter of a kennel keeper, Jindan Kaur became a member of the royalty, gave birth to the King’s heir, found love again after she was widowed at 21, and valiantly fought the British
Not many people know the heroic, awe-inspiring story of Rani Jindan Kaur, the youngest queen of the greatest Sikh ruler, Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Bestselling author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's latest book The Last Queen (HarperCollins India, 2021) is the subject of Jindan’s captivating story. The novel, which has already been optioned for film rights, is told in Jindan’s first person, and is divided into four sections that chronicle the most important phases of her life in detail: Girl (1826–1834), Bride (1835–1839) , Queen (1840–1849) and Rebel (1860–1863).
Jindan believes that she wants something badly enough, she can make it happen. “How else could she, a girl from a no-name family on the outskirts of a small town, end up in Lahore, city of emperors? How else could she possess a haveli in the heart of this fortress textured by centuries of history? How else could she, the daughter of a dog-trainer, become the Sarkar’s favorite queen? How else could she give him what many of his wives, though they were married to him in his prime, failed to produce: a son to delight his old age?”
Jindan’s childhood is spent in a village hut on the muddy edge of Gujranwala. As a feisty nine-year-old, Jindan joins her older brother, Jawahar, in his exploits of stealing fruit from nearby orchards and fights with boys. Her mother allows her to study, unlike other girls, and she is a great student. However, after an abrupt end of her education, her father, Manna Singh Aulakh, who works and lives in the Badshahi Qila, takes Jindan and her brother to Lahore, “a magical city filled with riches”.
With its vivid imagery and detailed descriptions, the book recreates a timeless era gone by, making it truly come alive in the reader's mind. From her father, young Jindan has grown up hearing several stories of the king and the palace: “The fair-skinned dancing girls from the hills of Kashmir who perform all night for him in the Red Pavillion; his ghorcharhas, a cavalry made up of the bravest young men in all of Punjab, unbeaten in battle; kennels full of the fiercest hunting dogs; enclosures for the royal elephants; and stable upon stable of pedigreed horses, culled from several countries.” She longs to experience all these magical things herself.
At the palace, she encounters the charismatic Maharaja Ranjit Singh while her father is tending to his horses. Ranjit Singh, known popularly as the Lion of Punjab, takes her riding on his special horse, Laila, and to a banquet afterwards. He tells her fascinating stories of war and other adventures, and finds Jindan not just beautiful but also brave, curious and intelligent. Even though all his other queens are of royal birth, he finds that the spirited Jindan understands him and loves Punjab as fiercely as he does. In no time, they are in love and get married. Soon, Jindan becomes the king’s dearest queen and is showered with gifts. When her son, Dalip, is born, the king gifts the queen a haveli named after her.
The Last Queen, By Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, HarperCollins India, pp. 372, Rs 599
After the king’s death, however, Lahore has several kings and sees many battles. Jindan and her son are exiled in a fortress in Jammu. When the king's heirs are all killed and murdered one by one, fate pushes Dalip close to the throne. When young Dalip is finally summoned to become the king, Jindan is made the queen regent until he reaches adulthood. In her new role, she fights hard against the British as well as her own treacherous courtiers. Along the way, the prose is sprinkled with much politics, plots, spying games, tricks and endless battles for power that are a part of royal life.
In her signature style, Divakaruni manages to breathe life into the character of this enigmatic historical figure, making her seem more real and human than any textbook ever has. Widowed at the age of twenty-one, a lonely Jindan also gives into her desires and miraculously finds love again in Lal Singh, a nobleman in the Lahore court. Wise beyond her years, she finds reasons for her actions: “Many of the nobles have several wives — and mistresses, too. Their liaisons are accepted. Am I sinner, just because I’m a woman?”
Later, Jindan is separated from both her son and loyal maid, Mangla, when she is imprisoned in Sheikapura Zila and then banished to Chunur Fort in Benaras. When the British snatch away the kingdom of Punjab, she manages to escape to Patna and then undertakes a dangerous journey all by herself to Kathmandu, where she seeks refuge. The British, meanwhile, spread many lies about her and even name her the 'Messalina of the Punjab.’ “In her way, wasn’t she braver than Ranjit Singh?” Didn’t she fight greater obstacles?” Jindan’s courageous life proves that she was no less than a lioness herself.
After being estranged from her son for a period of fourteen years, she is reunited with him once again in Calcutta, and they live the last few years of her life together in London. Known as the “Black Prince”, Dalip had neither the strength of character nor the stubborn focus that his father possessed. Filled with fantastical plans and extravagant ideas, he was fickle and confused between his loyalty to India and the British. Before she died, Jindan reminded Dalip of his heritage, asking him to conduct her last rites in India and place her ashes next to her husband’s. Unfortunately, it took the British a whole year to give Dalip permission to bring her body back to India from England.
Book Review: The Last Queen By Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
The tale of a woman told by a woman enlivens the vastly unknown story of Jindan by intriguingly blending fact and fiction into novel, The Last Queen.
By Priyanka Chatterjee Feb 23, 2021 5 min read
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A historical novel is bound to begin with preconceptions based on known and circulated history. However, what is known can never be absolute because, like every story, history is a perspective, a story told by a story-teller. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni uses Chinua Achebe to hint at this understanding of perspective when she begins the story of Rani Jindan Kaur in The Last Queen.
The Last Queen
Author: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India, 20 January 2020
Genre: Historical fiction
The tale of a woman told by a woman enlivens the vastly unknown story of Jindan by intriguingly blending fact and fiction into an unputdownable novel, The Last Queen, which narrates the journey of a simple village girl to becoming the last queen of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
The tale of a woman told by a woman enlivens the vastly unknown story of Jindan by intriguingly blending fact and fiction into an unputdownable novel, The Last Queen.
Stopping by the contents, the reader can notice a spread of four broad sections – ‘Girl’, ‘Bride’, ‘Queen’, ‘Rebel’ – in a bildungsroman style, narrating a tale of growth. The story is intricately woven around moments – ‘Guava’, ‘Horse’, ‘Wedding’, ‘Deception’, spaces – ‘Hovel’, ‘Shalimar’, ‘Zenana’, places- ‘Jammu’, ‘Kathmandu’, ’Calcutta’, ‘England’ – which consequently bear traces of mounting complications in the life of the girl who becomes a rebel.
It intrigues the reading mind- what took Jindan halfway across the world? The simple but arresting narrative builds up at a comfortable pace, picturesquely describing Jindan’s life – her girly adventures in the village, her entry into the charismatic city of Lahore, her meeting with the Sarkar, her desperation in love, her exploits of the queenly life, her son, her powerful hatred for the colonisers.
The narrative allows the reader to sink into its simplicity, without ever distancing her with dazzling glamour of a regal life. As the narrative steps in its earthly smell, it allows its characters to be realistically grounded, who consequently become convincing and identifiable.
Also read: Book Review: Dewaji—Making Of An Ambedkarite Family By Dipankar Kamble
The story begins at the death bed of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, where Jindan, the young Queen mother, is haplessly witnessing the future of her life slipping away. The daughter of the royal dog keeper, her lowly birth was not a match to the high status of the Sarkar; however, she was his ‘last’ queen, a favourite by dint of a strong sense of individuality mixed with an acute sense of independence, fearlessness, comingling of the emotional with the pragmatic.
The strength of her bond with the Maharaja emanated from a shared love for simplicity. Her story is not the usual rags to riches story, because, while the rags never brought discomfort in a life that wanted little joys, like reading books, reaching for the riches was never her ambition. She was in love with a man, and the man was coincidentally the king of Punjab.
Image source: Amazon India
Her sense of freedom is most palpable in the first section of the novel – ‘Girl’, which opens in her small disheveled hut at Gunjranwala. She wants to be a ‘provider rather than being a mouth to feed’. The first person narrative from now on allows the reader to navigate the alleys and sidewalks of a stronger, intelligent, brave, impudent woman, almost other-ing her from convenient womanhood of the period. In fact the entire novel stands as an alibi to her strangeness, her defiance which makes her both human and phenomenal, carving her name in history.
The simple, but racing love story of the first section paces down significantly in the second – ‘Bride’, where the politics of the country finds a crude ally in the politics within the zenana – the women’s sphere of the royal household that teems with wives and concubines of Ranjit Singh. While a formidable sense of danger lurks at every corner of the zenana, the charm of romance between the Sarkar and Jindan has soothing effects.
Also read: Book Review: Hindutva And Dalits—Perspectives For Understanding Communal Praxis
The life of a queen is not a fairytale; it’s a life of sacrifice – Jindan is reminded by Fakir whenever she complains. She is quick to learn courtly manners, but does not care to fit in anywhere, except in Sarkar’s heart. He is her solace, as is Punjab, her motherland. But when she loses Sarkar, she is quick to access the foreboding danger and manipulates Dhyan Singh to help her flee to Jammu with Dalip, her infant son, and Mangla, her trusted maid.
When ‘Queen’ opens Jindan is riding Toofani amidst the blue shades of Jammu hills. Although her boisterousness seems mellowed in exile, she still likes speed. Confined to a golden cage, her only solace is her growing son, her trusted maid, and Fakir’s letters which bring her comfort and counsel. She is terrified by the political conspiracies raging in Lahore and wishes to stay away. But she is forced to return soon and pulled into the vortex of intrigues, murders and betrayals.
The first person narrative from now on allows the reader to navigate the alleys and sidewalks of a stronger, intelligent, brave, impudent woman, almost other-ing her from convenient womanhood of the period.
In such a treacherous atmosphere, five-year-old Dalip ascends the throne of Punjab, and Jindan becomes Mai Jindan, mother of Punjab. However, the narrative never loses sight of the humane Jindan who encounters an unprecedented tussle in her life as Queen Regent, a mother, the widow of a great king, and a young woman who is yearning for love.
Fearless and unconventional, she listens to the call of love, tears herself from her crying child at night to meet her lover, speaks explicitly to her dear ones of her womanly desires, bravely bears an abortion and unveils her pox-marked face to ensure her fidelity to her kingdom. But she falters to subdue her ego, loses her visionary sense, pushes her Khalsa army into a self-defeating fight against the British, and loses her all. Separated from her son by the conspiring British, she reaches Nepal to seek both asylum and rest in order to prepare herself to strike harder.
In ‘Rebel’ we find the rootless queen longing for her roots, her country, her independence. She meets her son, chooses motherhood as her sacred love, and then longs for a return. It is only when she commingles her love for her country with the love for her son that she decides she must bring him to his mother, to his motherland. This section, seeped in nationalist fervour, aptly paints Jindan’s efforts in bringing Dalip back to his roots. Her uncompromising attitudes, even at the face of vicissitudes in life, makes Dalip wonder and question himself, encouraging him to look beyond.
Also read: Book Review: Why I Am Not A Hindu Woman By Wandana Sonalkar
Divakaruni’s blends in Jindan the attributes of a girl-next-door and a magnanimous queen who is rooted, intelligent, beautiful, feisty, who bows to no external force but her passionate love for her dear ones and her Punjab. As the writer and the reader engage in dynamically creating Jindan, she might seem unimpressive to the modern woman whose awareness of her rights and dealings is acute and almost normalised. But to realise that we bear the legacy of a mid-nineteenth century independent spirit might allow us to contemplate the many Jindans who questioned conventions and unregrettably lived a life they chose, making us aware of possibilities today.
Divakaruni deftly weaves Jindan’s life with earthliness that allows the reader to befriend Jindan empathetically. Her life bears witness to the fact that being a feminist is a way of life and Jindan can be every woman, while also being outside the lot. This simple narrative of a woman, who dreams, believes, achieves, falters, loses, but never allows life to dictate her, points at what we have inherited, and must propagate sensitively – a strategic commingling of compliance and contestation, setting the rules of the game by playing it.
Micro review: 'The Last Queen' by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
By - TIMESOFINDIA.COMCreated: May 25, 2021, 18:06 IST
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Micro review: 'The Last Queen' by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
'The Last Queen' by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
HIGHLIGHTS
Title: 'The Last Queen'
Author: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Price: INR 599 (Hardcover)
Pages: 372
Bestselling author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's first historical-fiction book 'The Last Queen' released in 2021 and it will soon be adapted for screen. The book follows the extraordinary yet lesser-known story of Rani Jindan Kaur of Punjab.
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While one might have heard stories of Rani Lakshmi Bai and Padmavati, the story of Rani Jindan Kaur of Punjab is fairly lesser-known. Born to the royal kennel keeper, the beautiful Jindan Kaur married Maharaja Ranjit Singh and became his youngest, favourite and last queen. While she adjusted to her new role of being a Rani and a mother after the wedding, her real troubles started when she lost her husband to age-related illnesses. She then navigated her life through cunning courtiers to become a Maharani when her son Dalip was made the King at the age of six. With her sharp acumen and passion, Rani Jindal dedicated her life to protecting Dalip's inheritance of the throne. She was one of the few Indian queens of her time to defy tradition, cast away the veil, and address her audience and courtiers. Rani Jindal distrusted the British; so much so that she even addressed and inspired her Khalsa troop in wars against them. Fearing her influence, the British tried to rob her of everything that she had-- from her kingdom to her son-- but that didn't crush her undying will. In her later years she lived in exile in Nepal and Britain, where she finally reunited with her son.
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This is a fascinating story of one of India's most fearless women of the 19th century, who fought against the British with all her might. The book is divided into four parts-- 'Girl', 'Bride', 'Queen' and 'Rebel'-- that revives Rani Jindal's remarkable life. Fast-paced and a quick read, the book manages to capture Rani Jindal's character and indomitable spirit quite well. Banerjee Divakaruni's magic with words and exceptional storytelling skills shine through her writing. Fans of the author would love to add this book to their reading list.