Desirable Daughters..

I have just finished reading a wonderful book – Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee, after hearing about the book on Planethalder’s blog. The book is well-written, gripping, intense, vibrant and fast-paced. It’s hard to classify this book into any specific genre – because of the varied characters. There were parts of the book which I did not agree with nor did I particularly care about the ending, but I liked the book all the same. But this post is not a book review, it’s about the emotions and thoughts that came to my mind while I was reading this book.

Since it is relevant to the post, I have to mention something about what the book is about. The main character in the book is Tara, a divorced mother of a teenager living in San Francisco with her Buddhist boyfriend. (to my fellow Buddhist friend who reads this blog, its Zen Buddhism!). She has two sisters – one living in India and the other in New Jersey. One day a young man turns up at Tara’s doorstep claiming to be her illegitimate nephew. Tara is obviously in turmoil and has to get to the bottom of it. The book is about Tara’s search for answers and explores the relationships between the sisters.

Why is this relevant to me ? because it got me thinking about my relationship with my sister. My sister is 8 years older than me and while we were growing up, she was always the big sister who sat in her room and read books. She was the epitome of a good daughter, studied well, no trouble, got married to the boy my parents chose for her at the ‘right’ age. She never rebelled against anything and led a vastly protected life. My brother, who is a year and a half older than me was my constant companion, as were friends in my building who were of similar age groups. My brother and I had no time for our bookworm sister and we would constantly gang-up, play pranks and annoy the hell out of her. As a result, my sister and I were never really close and I don’t remember having very many in-depth conversations with her, during my childhood.

It was only after she got married and left home, which was during my college, that we really began to acknowledge the other’s presence. We constantly wrote each other letters, spoke on the phone, visited each other and that was the start of a beautiful relationship. She would turn up, unannounced at our house from half-way across the country and surprise all of us. Those weekends when she turned up like that are some of my best memories.

Though we are close now and know a lot about each other’s lives, speak and email very often, I am not sure if we are that close. When I was going through a difficult time in my life a couple of years ago, she knew that I was down but probably did not know the exact reason. I have never spoken to her about that part of my life, nor has she asked me about it. Its almost as if we bottle up our innermost feelings and don’t mention unpleasant topics. I am like Tara’s sister in the novel – steer clear of controversial topics and change the subject quickly, if ever we discuss anything remotely controversial. Come to think of it, if one of us had an illegitimate child, I am not even sure the other would come to know !! Its almost as if our family peace is preserved through silence….