In the novel Sister of My Heart, the Indian-born American author and poet Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores issues of family, womanhood, and diasporic experience, constantly affirming and exploring the redemptive power of storytelling. Divakaruni’s first collection of stories, Arranged Marriage, won an American Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles Award, and a Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. Her novel The Mistress of Spices was released as a film of the same name in 2005. Sister of My Heart was made into a television series by Suhasini Maniratnam and aired in India in Tamil.

This study guide uses the 1999 Black Swan edition of the novel.

Content Warning: The source text contains references to arranged marriage, abortion, and pregnancy loss. 

Plot Summary

Sister of My Heart follows the life of two Indian cousins, Anju and Sudha, who grow up as sisters in a household presided over by three widowed “mothers”: Gouri (Anju’s biological mother), Nalini (Sudha’s biological mother), and Pishi (a widowed aunt). The cousins also share their home with various servants, including Singhji, their driver; Singhji’s face is burned beyond recognition, but he is kind to the girls and loyal to the mothers, even when they can no longer afford to pay him.

The story begins with Pishi telling the eight-year-old girls the story of the Bidhata Purush, a deity who steals into babies’ rooms on the night they are born and writes their destinies on their foreheads. The night of the girls’ births was inauspicious: Their mothers both went into premature labor on learning of their fathers’ deaths during an ill-advised treasure hunt. Anju is defiant and resists the story as silly superstition. Sudha, in contrast, imagines which words the deity might have written, speculating that the last might have been “sorrow.”

After pressing Pishi for further information about her father’s death, Sudha is devastated at what she learns. Gopal, her father, not only encouraged Bijoy, Anju’s father, to come hunting for rubies but also was an imposter and very possibly of no relation to the family. The weight of this knowledge, which Sudha decides not to share with Anju, drives a wedge between the two girls.

As they grow into their teens, both girls intend to pursue university studies. However, their hopes are dashed in close succession. When the girls sneak out of school to the cinema, Sudha sits next to a young man, Ashok, with whom there is an instant attraction. The girls are spotted, though, and Nalini, terrified of her daughter’s reputation being ruined, decides to seek out a husband for Sudha immediately. Shortly afterward, Gouri has a heart attack and decides that Anju, too, must marry to secure her future.

Sudha hopes to marry Ashok, and Ashok, in turn, convinces his family to put in a proposal. However, his offer is ignored because he comes from a lower caste, despite his wealth. Desperate, Sudha plans to elope. Meanwhile, Anju meets her prospective husband, Sunil, who works as a computer programmer in the United States, and falls in love with him. When Sunil’s tyrannical, abusive father discloses his fear of scandal, Sudha feels obliged to abandon her hopes of eloping with Ashok so as not to damage Anju’s future. Sudha instead yields to the pressure to marry Ramesh Sanyal, a kind but weak man who is utterly subjugated to his domineering mother’s frustrations and bitterness. At the girls’ weddings, Anju is horrified to realize that Sunil, her new husband, is attracted to Sudha.

Sudha initially survives her married life in a kind of resigned tranquility, but her mother-in-law grows increasingly hostile as she and her husband fail to conceive a child. Anju adapts swiftly to life in the United States and loves her college studies, although neither her new country nor her new husband are the fairy tales she imagined. Anju is initially distressed to learn that she is pregnant, but she and Sunil swiftly warm to the idea. Aware of her cousin’s fertility struggles, Anju is anxious to tell her the news, but when she finally calls, she is delighted to learn that Sudha is also expecting.

Both cousins undergo amniocentesis tests because a cousin’s baby has been born with a genetic defect. Both babies are healthy, but on learning that Sudha is expecting a girl, Mrs. Sanyal books an appointment for an abortion. Determined to save her pregnancy, Sudha flees back to the mothers’ house in Calcutta. Ashok renews his marriage proposal, but Sudha turns him down when he asks that her daughter remain to live with the mothers.

Anju, who is expecting a baby boy and suffering from gestational diabetes, begins working behind Sunil’s back to try to pay for Sudha to move to the United States. Anju grows increasingly exhausted and suffers a pregnancy loss, which causes her to fall into a profound melancholy. Sunil pays for Sudha’s ticket, and she flies over with baby Dayita. In a package left for her to open on the airplane, Sudha finds the ruby with which Gopal, the man she believed to be her father, enticed Bijoy away on the fateful treasure-hunting mission. She also finds a letter from Singhji, revealing that he is her true father. Born out of wedlock to Bijoy’s uncle, Singhji lived as a servant with his mother until her death, then vowed to have his revenge on the Chatterjees. However, Bijoy’s genuine love and warmth changed his mind. The night before Bijoy’s death, Bijoy confronted him about his deception, learned the truth, and embraced him as his cousin. Later the same night, both men were drugged and thrown overboard by their guide.

When Anju sees baby Dayita, she is instantly smitten, despite her conviction that she could never love another baby after her pregnancy loss.