Sister of My Heart

Sudha begins the novel as the most docile and traditionalist of the two sisters. A lover of traditional tales, she sees herself as a fairytale princess in a palace of snakes, a figure who will only truly come into being once rescued by a man. Her passivity is tied to her fatalism, that is, to her acceptance of the words that she believes the masculine deity Bidhata Purush wrote on her forehead at birth. When Sudha learns of her father’s deceptions from Pishi, she is convinced that she is bound to suffer in atonement for his sins and sacrifices her hopes of happiness with Ashok.

However, Sudha undergoes a rapid change in attitude when the life of her unborn daughter is threatened. Inspired by the historical warrior queen, Rani of Jhansi, she imaginatively reinvents herself as the “queen of swords,” drawing power from the child in her womb. She strives for financial independence through sewing, an activity that comes to emblematize her ability to decide on the pattern of her own future life, in defiance of the dictates of the Bidhata Purush. In this transformation, Sudha develops the theme of The Power of Storytelling: In a literal sense, she is driven by stories, and in a figurative sense, she becomes the weaver of her own fate as she claims autonomy in part by tapping into her creative capacities.