Only The Eyes Are Mine
Usha Alexander
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 Frog Books
ISBN: 8188811211

Sita looks back on her life in India during the 1940s when she was given as a poor, illiterate child bride to Kailas, a boy with a secret.

In old age & now living in America, Sita remembers that marriage & her husband's lack of connubial intimacy, even though he helps her learn to read, & she finds worth when her mother-in-law, Lakshmi, teaches her to weave so that in time, she becomes famous for her tapestries, & brings her family wealth. Yet all the while she yearns for love, & a child.

Confined within the strict society of her community, & listening to Kailas talk about the world outside, she wonders at how he could admire the British who only make her feel like a second class citizen in her own country. For all his companionship & talk, Kailas has never touched her as a husband since their childhood wedding, & when his family moves them all into the country beside the forest, Sita meets Gopal. So intent is she upon having a child, she starts a mystical, forbidden romance.

Now ill with an ominous growth in her side, Sita remembers her glory years as a respected wife, mother & weaver, until the dreadful day when Kailas' secret life comes to their home, & she's left a useless widow, closely watched by her aging in-laws. & the years hurry by until it is time for her adored daughter, Deepa, to get married. Everything changes again, & this time it is Sita who breaks the rules. Now an outcast, she returns to her parents in the city to take care of them in their old age. Later her brother in America, brings her over to care for his motherless children.

Meanwhile, Sita's niece, Meera, whom she has raised & is in her own right, an extraordinary artist, is dreading her upcoming wedding to a “good Indian man.” Especially as she's turned the love of her life away, because he wasn't what her family wanted for a son-in-law. Meera loves her father & auntie & wants to please them, even as she yearns for a life of her own with the man she truly loves.

Now at the end of a long, full life, Sita asks herself: What has my life been worth?

Spanning two generations & two cultures, Only the Eyes Are Mine is a richly told tale full of atmosphere & characters, magic & mistakes. It peers through the veils that blind us to each other's stories to take us on one woman's remarkable journey.

Only the Eyes Are Mine is a lyrical, engaging mixture of modern immigrant life & memories of the way it was, as seen through the eyes of a very old woman who found some peace within the family she's grown to love.

An engrossing debut drama.

You can find Usha Alexander, who now lives in the city of Gurgaon in the state of Haryana in Northern India, at: www.shunya.net - a truly fabulous site of world sights & images.
(10/23/05)

Rebecca