Faint Promise of Rain by Anjali Mitter Duva
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a luminous journey into a long-ago time, faraway place, & little-known vocation I was fascinated to learn about. Congratulations to Anjali Mitter Duva for leaping — bravely & lovingly — into the 16th-century Rajasthan dance world, & also to SheWrites Press for publishing this unique story. It’s quite an achievement to paint a convincing picture of a scene so thoroughly foreign to the 21st-century West. The Indian desert, temple buildings, & characters’ homes all emerge into sensuous 3-D plausibility. Especially poignant are the transitory aspects: the sacred dance tradition to which the narrator’s father has given his life & family is is a world — sites, people, values — is about to pass into history. With a new ruler, political & social changes filter out from the capital, & the main characters can see their long-held assumptions about their lives eroding. Duva adeptly brings out the parallels with our own cultural dissolution in the 21st-century: we can’t help feeling for these people.
Yet I never felt completely enveloped by Duva’s Rajasthan. Partly that’s my own unfamiliarity with the area & its customs; partly it’s her choice to give her narrator a sort of second sight which lets her write in the first person while jumping from one character’s point of view to another — to me, not quite believable. Also, although there’s plenty of conflict & incident, the dramatic arc isn’t as strong or the dynamics as varied as I’d have expected (& wished).
I did enjoy this book, & I recommend it.
