Pagan Thoughts

The book quickly draws you into the world of a cultural hybrid called Pagan, who issearching to fill the void inside herself, but in the process somewhat unexpectedlydiscovers her roots. But her roots, we discover, are not simply Saraswat Brahmin GoanCatholic on one side and Southern Baptist American on the other. They are far moremixed-up than that. There is slavery and Africa in her blood, and Portugal too.There's love, deceit, emotionally impotent men and powerful though unfulfilled women,extra-marital affairs and illegitimate children. And in the end there's Pagan, aheroine who is global right to her very genes.

From the start the reader is made aware of the fact that Pagan looks like a white girl.She has green eyes, light brown hair and creamy skin. Most people see her as a white girland treat her as such, but Pagan knows she's not white in her soul. The dilemma isbrought out beautifully in little Pagan's friendship with Yvonne Lafayette, a blackgirl in her all-white school, with whom she feels most at ease. The other little girlsgive Pagan a white stone to 'protect' her against becoming black like herfriend. Pagan takes the stone and in an effort to compromise with her troubled heart sheshows the stone to her friend. Yvonne bursts into tears and never comes back to schoolagain. Pagan never forgets that first betrayal. It is where her need to get 'underthe skin' of things begins.

Even in India, Pagan's pale skin is envied and admired. It makes her the darlingof the nuns at her convent school in Mangalore and of her Goan grandmother who sees inPagan's skin colour living proof of her family's aristocratic lineage. ButPagan's heart is drawn to the dark-skinned people—her father Francisco, hermother's nanny Esperanca who taught her to worship a shape-shifting, form-changingAfrican goddess, Xico her boyfriend, who is half-Lebanese and half-Brazilian. Moreimportant, she dreams constantly of a woman with "honey coloured skin and largecompassionate eyes".

Serendipitously she gets a telephone call that returns her to India to where hergrandmother is slowly dying in hospital. To take her mind off her grandmother'sdeath, her aunt Livia tells her the family history. Only, this time, the adult Pagan knowsit is a story and that beneath it, there are other stories that aren't being told. Asthe grandmother dies, Pagan slowly finds out the real history of her family, and in theprocess comes to understand herself.

There are a few patchy bits to Skin. For one, there's a rather unnecessary descentinto magic realism where the young Pagan and her friends leap into a painting of aBrazilian forest and find their way to a lake in the middle where they each make awish.... It's one departure from the otherwise very successful use of magic realismin the book.They risk turning Pagan into an Enid Blyton character rather than theintrospective and tormented person she really is. The book is beautifully produced, with avery evocative cover photo by Dayanita Singh.