I THINK I have a rather unusual relationship with India. Given that my ancestors came from India as a part of the system of Indentureship, it might be expected, particularly by the generations that came before me, that I would have retained some fascination with India, some need to return to the country from where my ancestors came, some deep-rooted urge to partake in the place that forms the basis for a lot of the cultural norms that

I know and, sometimes, indulge in. However, to make this assumption would be, also, woefully incorrect. I have no intentions of visiting India – at least no intentions other than the superficial, touristy intentions that everyone who suffers from wanderlust has. Sure, I might like to visit to see the Taj Mahal and the temples of Tamil Nadu, but do I want to visit because I believe India is my ‘motherland,’ or the place I truly belong to, or somewhere that may unveil to me the true nature of who I am? The answer is: absolutely not. Going to India does not hold any such emotional sway over me. Guyana is my ‘motherland,’ and the deeper recesses of the Guyanese interior is where I would like to travel to, and understanding the cultural complexity of a land like Guyana is something that I would like to know.

Having said all of that, I will admit that there are aspects of India that I find interesting, in much the same way that there are aspects of it that I find repelling (such as the patriarchal nature of many aspects of Indian society, the conservative nature of the country, etc.). The lures that India possesses exist, at least for me, in its art forms. I am a sucker for Indian art, Indian dance and music, and I started watching Bollywood movies long before I

watched anything from Hollywood. However, my favourite thing about India is its literature. Despite maintaining my distance from the country – in a way, I visit again and again by reading works written by Indians, about Indians in India. Some of my favourite books fall into this category. Good examples include Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things,”

Rohinton Mistry’s “A Fine Balance,” Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children,” Amitav Ghosh’s “Sea of Poppies,” and Kiran Desai’s “The Inheritance of Loss.” So, I guess, even though a visit to India may not be for me, I find that the literature coming out of that country certainly is.

The newest addition to the long list of Indian authors whose works have come my way is the writer of “Girls Burn Brighter,” Shobha Rao. In her book, she presents a poor village in India, where many of the people gain money by making a living at the loom or through menial jobs. One of her central characters, for example, once worked as a garbage-picker.

The society of the novel seems to present a section of Indian in which our major characters, two young women, have nothing left for themselves but dowries to find, and stability and a safe life through arranged marriages. It is a bleak and daunting dramatic opening that is only countered by the strong relationship that blossoms between the two central characters.

Poornima’s mother has died and as she await the day when she will have to marry a man she has never met before, she works at her father’s loom, weaving cloth so that the family may make enough money to get by. Coming from even poorer circumstances is Savitha, who, navigating her way through a poverty-stricken life, finds herself working for Poornima’s father. Eventually, the girls become very close friends. This is where Rao’s writing is at its best. It is in those moments when the author presents hope and beauty to us in moments of bleakness and squalor that she truly demonstrates her skills at writing. Her ability to portray the purity and life-changing effects of Poornima and Savitha’s

friendship, especially in the slightest and most subtle of ways, having them bond through food or their love of cloth and weaving or their dedication to having a future that is not presided over by the masculine and the powerful are elements that are sure to make the reader ache when he/she reads them. This is because Rao makes us care for her characters. She makes us want to see Poornima and Savitha succeed. She makes us root for them, and she then pulls the rug from under our feet by inserting a shard of violence into the narrative that permanently destroys the lives of the two women, violence that begets even more violence, violence that causes the girls to become lost to each other for many, many years.

The search for each other is what really forms the crux of Poornima and Savitha’s relationship in “Girls Burn Brighter,” because it is in their respective journeys that we learn about all of the lessons that Rao is trying to impart to us through her novel. Themes like the power dynamics between men and women, trafficking, sexual assault, and friendship are explored in the novel, and they are all extremely well-integrated and essential to a narrative that reaffirms the soul-shaking power of friendship and the heart-stopping power of terrible men who exploit their strength. There is no doubt that with this work of fiction, Shobha Rao has joined the list of authors who continue to convince me that Indian literature is one of the strongest genres of writing that exists today.