Sister India

by Peggy Payne

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

On the rooftop patio of a small guesthouse in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi sits an American woman who weighs more than 400 pounds. Both in her fat and in her cloistered life, Natraja, born Estelle, is in hiding from the life she tried to escape in North Carolina. Sister India is the story of her courageous emergence. It is also a love story of an unconventional sort, a tale critics have called unsettling, mesmerizing, delicious, and enthralling.

Vedic astrology, violence between Hindu and Muslim, healing massage on the riverbanks, an American-born innkeeper, and a hidden romantic passion form a tale that "is not comfortable," says Atlantic Monthly senior editor C. Michael Curtis, "but neither is it easily resisted."

Sister India is a traveler's tale and a story in which the mysterious processes of psychological healing are made visible. "A mesmerizing, hypnotic story," says the creator of PBS's Body & Soul Series, "of discovery and redemption."

Special offer to fiction book clubs

Peggy Payne will talk without charge by speakerphone with any book club that is reading Sister India.

She'll be happy to discuss her time living in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, and the process of book publication. She'll explain how she came to write about an American character who weighs 400 pounds, and another character who is gripped by irrational obsessions. Peggy Payne will talk with you for as much as half an hour, answering your questions about this story of an unexpected love and a spiritual transformation.

Click to send an e-mail and set up a mutually agreeable time for your group to gather with plates of goodies and call this author (who loves to talk).

"...Pits the ineffable demand of the spiritual against the pragmatic concerns of the worldly."

—New Age Journal

"Payne writes with a sure, graceful hand, moving her characters from fearful isolation to connection, from awakening to redemption."

—The Charlotte Observer

"Sister India is a book of wisdom, even, one wants to say, of enlightenment."

—The Independent Weekly

Click here to buy this book.

Reader's Group Guide

1. When the twenty year-old Estelle flees her American life to live in India, she selects a new Hindi name for herself: Natraja. What does this choice say about the way she sees herself and her future? Does having this name influence the course of the life she makes for herself? Can you think of a counterpart in Judeo-Christian culture to what the name Natraja signifies to a Hindu?
2. What part does the river Ganges play in the transformations of the people in the guest house? How is the effect different for each character? How do other religions make use of water as a symbol or a sacred entity?
3. What physical elements of the city of Varanasi make the spiritual transformations in this story possible? Are any of these seemingly negative or frightening, perhaps dangerous? Does the nature of the physical environment in the story seem to shift in any way as the novel progresses? How so?
4. Do you think Natraja would have changed if the terrorist violence had not broken out around her? What similarities do you see between the psychological effects of terrorism in the story and those in the real world?
5. Do Ramesh's feelings for Natraja evolve during the course of the story? What drives him? What are his passions? Is he a happy man?
6. Did the young Natraja's love affair with the princely Bhushan turn out as it should have? Do you think their romance was based mainly on the temptation of forbidden fruit? Or were they true soul mates, kept apart only by their cultural differences?
7. How are Hindu rituals and images pivotal in the characters' lives? By what method do these outward signs of Hindu belief lead to inner change?
8. What are the stages in Natraja's emotional decline? What triggers the changes in her state of mind and how do these show themselves to people around her? How does Natraja inadvertently alter the emotional lives of the other characters?
9. What makes a city or a place holy? Is a pilgrimage site essentially different from other places? How?
10. This story takes place in India with flashbacks to the American rural South. Do you sense some kinship between these two very different parts of the world? What would you identify as the source of any similarities between the two regions?
11. Do you think there's a way to end the cycle of retaliation in this story, or will both groups attack each other until one or both fall from exhaustion and depletion?
12. What part does love, romantic or otherwise, play in the outcome of this story? If Dr. Rai were to vanish, could T.J. and Mrs. Rai live together happily ever after? How do you think the tie between Natraja and Ramesh will evolve? Will Jill and Marie ultimately find happiness in a romantic partnership?
13. Jill appears at times to be tightly wound and at other times to be crazy. Does her obsessive-compulsiveness have a solution? Do you believe she would seek help, or content herself with an emotionally constricted life?
14. What might Marie realistically accomplish in the years she has left? Do you think she has made a good choice at the story's end? What might her children have to say? What would be the wisest stance for them to take toward their elderly mother's behavior?
15. What is the place of hunger in this story? Will Natraja remain obese? What do each of the characters hunger for? Must a profound longing be satisfied for a person to lead a happy life?
16. Why do you think the novel is called Sister India? Is there more than one way to understand the title? Does it fit the book?

Questions for discussion with author Peggy Payne

1. The main character is fat—more than 400 pounds—and bitter. The New York Times says: "From the novel's very first sentence, her ravaged voice grips the reader, her words so blunt, so scalded with disillusion, that they feel as if they've been bitten off and spat out." So, Peggy, why would a sweet-tempered, not-that-fat individual like you create this character?
2. At least half a dozen critics have used the word "mesmerizing" about Sister India. What have you learned about hypnosis from your hypnotist/psychologist husband that you use in writing?
3. You were living in Benares, India, when Hindu-Muslim rioting and bombing broke out there, closing down the city of a million people for two weeks of day-and-night curfew. What was that like? How did these events affect you and the novel? Do any of the psychological effects of the various kinds of terrorism in the story seem similar to the effects of the attacks on the United States that began September 11, 2001?
4. India's news magazine India Today said that Sister India "defies the oriental stereotypes." How does an American set out to learn—in a three-month stay—about a Hindu holy city? Can an American write from the point-of-view of an Indian, without living a lifetime in that country? What are the advantages and limits of an outsider point of view?
5. This novel has been published in India and has been, for a few weeks at least, a bestseller in Delhi. What do you make of this Indian response to a foreigner's view? Have there been negative responses from Indians as well, and what form did they take?
6. Is any of this story autobiographical? How are real events transformed into fiction? Does it matter that some or much of a story might have occurred?
7. How did you come up with this story idea? What was the process? Were there surprises? What understanding do you hope for the reader to take away from the book?

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