Sister India
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REVIEW BY EVE ZIBART
Novels that weave back and forth between story lines in the past and in the present sometimes lay bare the fault line between what the author has felt sincerely and what he has only imagined. The most obvious example is Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides, in which the astonishing descriptions of South Carolina -- the narrator's past -- make the contemporary scenes set in New York seem clumsy and convenient. Peggy Payne's Sister India, a sort of small-scale Grand Hotel set against the backdrop of Hindu-Muslim violence in the ancient Indian city of Varanasi, has that same uneasy duality, but in this case the lesser strain is the past; though it is no doubt intended to unreel in a way that illuminates the (quite fascinating) peculiarities of Payne's narrator, these rather melodramatic flashbacks never successfully intrude on the present. Which is fortunate, because there is a great deal of evocative language and a vivid and very languid, river-like rhythm to the writing. Even more intriguing, Payne allows several of her characters to break out in ways that are convincing precisely because they are so offbeat. One character's flash of temporary abandon, almost madness, in swimming down the Ganges provides one of the best passages in the novel and abruptly reverses the reader's previously ambivalent impression of the man (an impression intentionally suggested by the narrator) into a real affection. Madame Natraja, nee Estelle, a once-lovely and susceptible small-town North Carolina girl, weighs close to 400 pounds, her fair skin freckled and rolling in fat and sweaty sari. She spends her days either in the entrance of the guest house she manages, fixing her unwary guests with a distant, almost lifeless gaze or in a weary sprung rope chair on the roof of the inn, from which she can see the sacred Ganges River, as she binges on honied sweets by the pound. With her long, ash-blond hair and pale, almost golden eyes, she is an object of both curiosity and respect in Varanasi, even after 20 years; she calls herself "once-American," but knows she will never be truly Indian. She feels a spiritual twinship with Ganga, the river goddess, consults the astrologer who warns of danger and turns over in her mind the grudges and violence of her own past even as she senses the coming violence in Varanasi. The Ganges is the reason most tourists come to her guest house, and in the course of the story, Natraja and her guests, struggling first against the teeming crowds and filth and funerals, and later against a police lockdown of the city, will have to face the crucible of the river to find the answers they have come seeking. And while the early sections of the novel seem a little predictable, the increasing tension and the wild and strange discoveries of the Americans in this ancient place are not. Sister India rewards your indulgence. Companion wines: A toast to India Of the handful of serious winemakers in India, the best is Chateau Indage, whose Francophile name is at least partly a salute to the equipment and expertise it imported from the Old World, particularly from Piper Heidseick. Its several sparkling wines, notably the for-export-only Omar Khayyam, flatter the spice and textural twists of Indian fare: It's a crisp, dry, almost aperitif-style sparkler but a frankly physical one, with abundant largish bubbles, a sweet woody fragrance and toned but unmistakable acidity. The Chateau Indage is especially appropriate because the great 12th-century mathematician-philosopher-astronomer Omar Khayyam wrote some of the frankest pro-wine poetry of the then-strongly orthodox Muslim world, not just the familiar "A book of verse . . . a loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou . . . " but dozens of potentially troublesome paeans to vinicultural pleasures. In fact, the scholar called wine "the cup whose power/Yields more wisdom in one hour/Than a whole year of study." If you can't find the Omar Khayyam, look for Cakebread Cellars' 1996 Rubaiyat (about $20), named in honor of the loaf and jug and thou line. Although most people still know Cakebread for its rich but well-mannered Chardonnays, the Rubaiyat (Cakebread's spelling) is a big, almost boisterous red, a blend of Zinfandel, Pinot, Cabernet and Malbec that can take some extra chilling and still square off against spicy food. And the tandoori lamb lovers in the group will really be in luck. Eve Zibart is a restaurant critic for the Washington Post.
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