In the best traditions of Cold Comfort Farm but without the humour of the classic parody.
A maharajah pops up, Hindu-Muslim conflicts provide a backdrop of simmering tension,astrology gurus and massage men lend local colour. The tourists at the Saraswatiguesthouse meander through absurd Hindi-English dictionaries, survive flies, heat andcurfew, and Shiva's "dance of death and birth" open and close the book.
But Payne's employment of every cliché in the book is deliberate; she signals asmuch by introducing an extraordinary character in Madame Natraja (sic), nee Estelle, theguest house proprietor and well-known tourist attraction. Natraja looms large over thebook; she's a mountain of a woman, the ultimate consumerist American fantasy comethrough, a one-woman army taking on the combined labours of Varanasi's sweetshops.Without her, Payne would have had just the maunderings of some tourists escaping fromcomplex West to exotic East; with her, Payne successfully inverts stereotypes.
Just when Sister India starts to redeem itself, however, Payne lets us intothe dark secret that propelled Natraja all the way from the US to India, from twiggybeauty into obstinate obesity. It turns out she saw something nasty in the woodshed, inthe best traditions of Cold Comfort Farm but without the humour of that classic parody.
Sister India feels like an unscheduled dip in the Ganges: the faithful willreturn with renewed ardour, the rest will emerge with spirits, well, dampened.