Alka Joshi is a debut novelist at 62. Women at any age are often made invisible, but brown women in their 60s are particularly not in the forefront of a literary revolution – although, there’s no reason for that not to happen. Patriarchy and societal structures often have ways to diminish some voices. Through her work, Joshi defies that stereotype. The Henna Artist is a well-written Book and shows me the India my mother was born into, newly independent, exuberant, and positive- in the 1950s. It’s also a book with a female protagonist who finds agency while retaining her softer energy in a man’s world, like the author.

I read the book a few weeks ago in February, and let it marinate in my head a while. It’s a cinematic book creating bright visuals of newly independent India, as you go through it. Joshi’s background as an all-round creative (ad agency) is reflected in the aesthetic of the book. Not surprisingly, it will be made into a production for the screen, starring Frida Pinto (who I want to rediscover).

Considering Joshi is American, it is not surprising that her book touches on caste in a light way, informing, yet holding back on the more grueling nature of what it could represent. This doesn’t make it perfect, but it still allows it the nuance that can’t be ignored. Like so many of the unspoken social rules around class, gender, and caste. In a way, it let’s the story unfold itself organically not forcing a theme for the sake of it. It lets the reader in on an English-speaking, world-traveling Indian world which perhaps represents Joshi’s own background better than the ways the west looked at Indians in the 1950s. That’s refreshing and I haven’t read many books focusing on the optimism of those times from a woman’s lens (both the author and her protagonist).

Joshi is planning this to be a trilogy with a couple more books coming up in the series. I am interested. She has a uniquely hopeful voice that I enjoyed even more in this morbid pandemic time. I like it when books are able to do that.

Maybe one day when I’m 60, I’ll also remember writing the book that’s in me forever. Sometimes you have to see (or read) it to believe it.