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Sunday, May 26, 2013

Other Waters

Can a curse ruin your life?  Otherwise rational Maya Das begins to think so after a vindictive family servant places one on her father's entire family over a property dispute.  Her father has only told Maya about the curse because she's been born and brought up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and is modern and competent, according to him.  But suddenly her closely-knit Indian family begins to fall apart; health issues and marital crises pop up and Maya's long time relationship dissolves because she can never find the right moment to tell her family that her boyfriend isn't Indian.  Her career seems to be going down the same path when the hospital where she is a second year psychiatric resident  is sued for malpractice, and she is named as a defendant.  What else could possibly go wrong?  Maya doesn't want to wait to find out in Eleni N. Gage's Other Waters (#294).

A trip to India to celebrate her cousin's wedding becomes a pivotal point in Maya's life.  Her best friend from college comes with her, but Maya is intent on finding the servant Parvati and making her take back the curse.   Heidi (short for Aphrodite) is enthralled with all things Indian, and the seeds are planted for her new fashion business amongst the wedding frenzy while Maya has to decide what values are really important to her and the path she must take to find her own happiness.  How does she kick start karma?

Although there are some interesting descriptions of India in Other Waters, this is principally a novel about the clash of cultures within a family between the expectations of those relatives in India, and those who are brought up in the United States.  When do you honor traditions and when do you follow your own heart?  The answer is never really clear cut at the end of the story, but that's Maya's reality.  She's not a bad person to travel with down that twisty road.

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