57



57

Darjeeling Bharti Kirchner (2002)
This third novel by BHARTI KIRCHNER is much more
ambitious than her first two. The story centers on
two sisters, Aloka and Sujata, who are daughters of
a tea planter in Darjeeling, India. Aloka is sweet,
beautiful, and refined, with a love for literature.
Described as “homely,” Sujata is a talented busi-
nesswoman who is exceptionally knowledgeable
about tea. When the novel begins in 2000, we learn
that Aloka and Sujata now live in New York and
Victoria, British Columbia, respectively, and that
they have been summoned to Darjeeling by their
grandmother, the matriarch of the family, to cel-
ebrate her birthday.
The novel then flashes back to the early 1990s,
when the two sisters had had a falling-out over a
man. This man, Pranab, was a tea estate manager
in their father’s plantation but had sympathy for
the poor laborers on the plantation. When a bi-
zarre set of events lead to his life being threatened,
he marries Aloka, although he loves Sujata, and the
couple flees to New York. Sujata moves to Canada
and sets up a retail outlet for tea. Aloka leads a
conventional immigrant wife’s life until her mar-
riage begins to dissolve. She begins working for a
community newspaper and under the pseudonym
Parveen writes advice columns for the newly mi-
grated Indians. Her secret identity allows her to
break out of conventional roles and to reinvent
herself. The novel ends with the two sisters return-

ing to India with Pranab and reconciling their dif-

ferences and establishing a happy life. They are

aided in all this by their wily grandmother.

Like her other novels, this is also a romantic

novel with the familiar theme of culture clash, the

need for female autonomy, and the need for im-

migrants to balance the values of both their home

culture and their new culture. The plot has impos-

sible twists and turns that are also a hallmark of

Kirchner’s writing. Although the novel is set in a

tea plantation and there are passing references to

labor conditions, the author does little to explore

these in depth. They largely remain an exotic back-

drop for the plot, which is reminiscent of Indian

commercial cinema with its improbable story lines

and broadly drawn characters.

Nalini Iyer

Dark Blue Suit and Other Stories

Peter Bacho (1997)

In this collection of interconnected, semi-auto-

biographical short stories, PETER BACHO explores

the Filipino-American community of Seattle.

Narrated from the perspective of Buddy, the son

of a migrant worker who arrived among the first

wave of Filipino immigrants in the 1920s and

1930s, the fictional stories blend the genres of

oral history and personal memoir to connect the



d