Darjeeling: A Novel [Paperback]

Bharti Kirchner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 16, 2003

Novelist and award-winning cookbook author Bharti Kirchner has written a sweeping family saga, a first class fiction about forbidden love and family honor.

Set in the mountainous tea plantations of Darjeeling, India and in New York City, Darjeeling is the story of two sisters - Aloka and Sujata - long separated by their love for Pranab, an idealistic young revolutionary. Pranab loves Sujata, the awkward, prickly, younger sister but, out of obligation, marries Aloka, the gracious, beautiful, older sister. When all of their secrets are revealed, the three are forced to leave Darjeeling. Aloka and Pranab flee to New York City and Sujata to Canada. The story opens ten years later, when their Grandmother summons everyone home to the family tea plantation to celebrate her birthday. Despite the fact that Aloka is still very much in love with Pranab, they are in the process of getting a divorce. Sujata, who is still single, runs a successful business importing tea, a business that doesn't fill her broken heart. This trip forces the sisters to wrestle with their bitterness and anger and to try to heal old wounds. What complicates matters is that Pranab, too, is going to India and is intent on rekindling his relationship with Sujata now that his marriage is over.

Although filled with the rich foods, smells, and social confines of another culture, Darjeeling is really about the universally human emotions of jealousy, rivalry, love, and honor. It is a complex novel about family, exile, sisterly relations, and how one incident can haunt us for the rest of our lives.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Forbidden love, sibling rivalry, and the immigrant experience in New York City: these are just some of the themes packed into Bharti Kirchner's Darjeeling. As the novel opens, 40-year-old Aloka stares out her apartment window in midtown Manhattan, contemplating the end of her marriage to Pranab--a man she met in her homeland of India. The lost marriage, like the lost country, fills her with nostalgia and angry confusion. Soon the reader learns the source of Aloka's bitterness: her sister's affair with her husband, a scandal that propelled her to this distant city with its "gray-brown bustle." Chapters alternate between the two sisters' lives, and Kirchner renders the passions of both women with empathy and grace. At the heart of Darjeeling is the question of the broken bond: will the sisters be able to cross the emotional and geographic distances that separate them? --Ellen Williams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Two Westernized sisters who grew up on a tea plantation in Darjeeling waste a decade in rivalry over the same unworthy man in Kirchner's firmly grounded, workmanlike novel of Indian mores. Aloka Gupta, the elder, conventionally pretty sister, married the man, Pranab, her disgraced fiance and expert tea taster, despite the revelation of his affair with her younger sister, Sujata. The couple fled Darjeeling for the U.S. in 1992 because of threats by Aloka's outraged father, while brokenhearted Sujata was banished to British Columbia, Canada, by the family's matriarch, Nina. It is now eight years later, and the marriage has ended in divorce; Aloka is a successful journalist who writes a "Dear Seva" column for transplanted Indian immigrants in New York City, while Sujata, now called Suzy, has become a self-made tea importer. When grandmother Nina requests that the two sisters return home to celebrate her 70th birthday, their rivalry over Pranab, whose adjustment to American life has not been smooth, flares afresh. Kirchner writes most convincingly when delineating the frustrated lives of Indian immigrants in America, as evidenced through the letters Aloka receives as her alter ego, Seva. The sprawling, aromatic tea plantation in Darjeeling, in contrast, tends to be glimpsed through a gossamer nostalgia. Likewise, many of the rosy characterizations, such as that of Nina and Aloka's new boyfriend, Jahar, border on stereotype. However, Kirchner, a novelist (Shiva Dancing) and cookbook author, reveals a tremendous faith in her characters and their love of their homeland - especially its food - and if her portrayal of the clash between traditional and modern ways seems formulaic and sketchily handled, she does infuse her work with a genuine Indian spirit.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (August 16, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312316062
• ISBN-13: 978-0312316068
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,673,006 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bharti Kirchner is the author of eight books--four critically acclaimed novels and four cookbooks and hundreds of short pieces for magazines and newspapers. Her essays have appeared in nine anthologies, the most recent being Foreign Flavours. Her fifth novel, Tulip Season: A Mitra Basu Mystery is due out in 2012.

Her other novels include Pastries: A Novel of Desserts and Discoveries, Darjeeling, Sharmila's Book, and Shiva Dancing and cookbooks include Indian Inspired and The Bold Vegetarian. Bharti is a Contributing Editor for The Writer. She has written for Food & Wine, Vegetarian Times, Writer's Digest, Fitness Plus, Northwest Travel, and The Seattle Times.

Bharti has won two Seattle Arts Commission literature grants, two Artist Trust literature grants (including one in 2011), and has twice been a Fellow of Jack Straw Productions. She has been honored as a Living Pioneer Asian American Author. She is a popular speaker at writer's conferences nationwide.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars intriguing introduction to Bharti Kirchner...., October 7, 2004

By 

D. Pawl "Dani" (Seattle) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Darjeeling: A Novel (Paperback)

Bharti Kirchner, a locally-based writer in my hometown of Seattle, has written several novels where food and culture go hand in hand. I first was introduced to Ms. Kirchner and her writing at a multicultural literary exposition. She read a passage from "Pastries," another novel where food is an important part of the relationship between people and also a metaphor for their interactions.

I happened to spot "Darjeeling" on the book shelf at the library and was intrigued by the tea business in India and how it connects and divides a prosperous family involved in the cultivation of tea and the upkeep of the land from which it is produced. The patriarch, Mr. Gupta, has two daughters. The eldest daughter, Aloka, is beautiful, vivacious and seemingly has all of the breaks. The younger daughter, Sujata, is plainer, less social and the black sheep of the family. A twist of fate divides the two sisters when a young man, Pranab, comes between them. The arrogant and hard-headed young man wants to overthrow the power weilded by their father over the numerous workers he presides over. Pranab feels Mr. Gupta is exploiting them and not adequetly taking care of their basic living needs (healthcare, fair wage, etc). While Pranab is in love with Sujata and charmed by her brilliant mind, he is expected to be married to Aloka, the older, more well-respected daughter. Still, he embarks on a love affair with Sujata during their engagement. This is a scandal that divides and alienates the women from each other as Aloka agrees to go along with the marriage in spite of Pranab's poor character.

At first it was hard for me to grow accustomed to Kirchner's systematic writing style. At times, I felt I was reading an instruction manual. (Kirchner was a computer engineer for many years, prior to becoming a writer.) The second half of the book grew on me as I, as the reader, observed a transformation in both women who must rise above the patriarchical and misogynistic culture they have been raised in. Aloka was raised as the "good Hindu wife." This meant she wasn't to question her husband regarding any of his extra-marital affairs or his coldness. Sujata also undergoes a tremendous transformation and gains great self worth through great adversity and self discovery through life's hardships.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating Darjeeling, September 1, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Darjeeling: A Novel (Hardcover)

Wonderful and powerful book. Even if you had never been to Darjeeling, or to India, for that matter, it gives you an unexplained sensation of melancholy, as if the place belonged to your ancestry. It even made me run for the Internet to know more about Darjeeling and the tea business. A real lesson in geography and tea-tasting!

Apart from the obvious mastery of the language in descriptions, the story is an ode to self-growth and sufficiency, both for men and women. As in reality, love is not a bed of roses. Instead, real love is the ability to love oneself first, then the other. This can be seen when Aloka simulates being Parveen; she fell in love with her first, then discovered that she loved Jahar just as well.

It is a book I greatly recommend for all those who enjoy an intricate story without the classical happy ending.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good read, April 26, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Darjeeling: A Novel (Paperback)

Fast paced, good descriptions of scenery, tea business, manhattan immigrant life and food, food..food. I like Kirschner's writing more for food descriptions than anything else and this is no exception. In general the storyline is more like a hindi movie - two women for one man and a benevolent 'thakur ma' and an angry dad and so on. But credit should be given to the author for portraying women - particularly immigrant women's dilemmas with clarity and respect. The ending also speaks for the same thing, both women doing what they believe in and letting the men know and get what they deserve!