Sister India

Author: Peggy PaynePublisher: Riverhead BooksYear: 2001Language: EnglishPages: 275ISBN/UPC (if available): 1573221767 DescriptionA poetic evocation of contemporary India as well as of the human spirit. With its insights into clashing cultures, it deserves comparison as a modern version of E M Forster's classic: 'A Passage to India'.The lonely Planet guidebook recommends the Saraswati Guest House in Varanasi and meeting its proprietor Madame Natraja, ' a one-woman blend of East and West', as a worthwhile side trip for the adventurous traveler in India. Over the course of one weekend, several guests turn up at the Saraswati, shocked to encounter a nearly four-hundred-pound surly white woman in a sari. Jill Thornton, thirtyish and single, has come only to rest and see the sights before home from a business trip to New Delhi. T J Clayton, a swaggering southern bureaucrat, has arrived in India on a grant to study the pollution-plagued River Ganges. And Marie Jasper, nearly eighty years ol