Shapely Sentences and Lovely Moments

I love the gentle flow of the prose of Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni. 

from "The Lives of Strangers"
in The Unknown Errors of Our Lives
Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni

Aunt Seema sits at one of the scratched wooden tables with a group of women, all of them swaddled in bright shawls they bought for this trip. From time to time they look down at their laps with a startled expression, like sparrows who have awakened to find themselves plumaged in cockatoo feathers.

I probably would have opted for something like "enplumed" rather than "plumaged,"  but the simile is just wonderful and startling without being strained.

The women smile, pleased at having had the foresight to leave sweaty Calcutta behind at the height of summer for a journey which is going to earn them comfort on Earth and goodwill in heaven. They hold their chins high and elongate their necks as classical dancers might. Plump middle-aged women. . . already they are transformed into handmaids of Shiva. . . .

Comfort on Earth, away for  the summer in Calcutta; and good-will in Heaven as this is a pilgrimage. But I love the juxtaposition of motives and what it tells us about the traveling group.

There is a lot more, but his Bengali is full of long, formal words that Leda does not know and her attention wanders. He ends by saying something about sin and expiation, which seems to her terribly complex and thus very Indian.

I will continue to savor through this book and into The Palace of Illusions.