Around the World in 80 Books discussion

Start discussion here for Kalyana by Rajni Mala Khelawan.

Book Summary (from Goodreads)

Growing up in the Fiji Islands in the late 1960s, Kalyana Mani Seth is an impressionable, plump young girl suited to the meaning of her name: blissful, blessed, the auspicious one. Her mother educates Kalyana about her Indian heritage, vividly telling tales of mischievous Krishna and powerful Mother Kali, and recounting her grandparents’ migration to the tiny, British colony.

While the island nation celebrates its recently granted independence, new stories of the feminist revolution in America are carried over the waves of the Pacific to Kalyana’s ears: stories of women who live with men who are not their husbands, who burn their bras, who are free to do as they please. Strange as all this sounds, Kalyana hopes that she will be blessed with a husband who allows her a similar sense of liberty.

But nothing prepares her for the trauma of womanhood and the cultural ramifications of silence and shame, as her mother tells her there are some family stories that should never be told.


About the Author (from Amazon author page)

Rajni Mala Khelawan is originally from the Fiji Islands. She emigrated to Canada in 1988 to pursue her education, graduating from Athabasca University with a BA in 2004. There, she rediscovered her love of writing and started her first novel.

Discussion Questions

1. Think about the time period in which the story is set (late 1960's). How well does the author convey the era? Did you have a sense of whether or not the author remained true to the events, social structures and political events of the time period?

2. Is Fiji a part of the world that you knew a lot about before you read this book? If so, did you learn anything new? If not, did you come away with a greater understanding of what this particular place was like during this time in history?

3. Can we imagine what life was really like for the characters within the context of the place and time period?

I finished this book a couple of weeks ago, and I enjoyed it quite a bit overall. I'll give the questions a shot.

1. I thought the time period was conveyed well in the book since several times Kalyana's mother and aunt comment on the women's movement that was going on in the US and Europe. They mention that women are getting jobs, wearing pants, and burning their bras. They seemed both perplexed and intrigued by the differences that they were hearing about in the lives of these feminists from their daily lives in Fiji and constraints they still had. It was unheard of in Fiji when Kalyana's aunt asked to learn to drive and then actually got her driver's license. The men still ruled the world completely in Fiji at the time, and everyone ignored things like a neighbor beating his wife constantly. And of course, it was common knowledge that Kalyana's brother was constantly visiting a Fijian prostitute, but Kalyana and all other girls were expected to be virgins when they married. It would have made Kalyana unmarriageable if it became known to anyone that she was raped by her uncle.

2. I knew hardly anything about Fiji before reading this book other than it is a small, very remote island in the South Pacific. I had no idea that it has a very large Indian population from a large wave of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries due to workers needed on sugar plantations. Today the Indo-Fijian population is over 36% of the island population. And in the time period of the novel, the indigenous Fijian people and the Indo-Fijians apparently had little to do with each other. Towns and schools were separate and inter-marriage was essentially unheard of. It was overlooked that Kalyana's brother visited a Fijian prostitute, but he could have not married a native Fijian. Kalyana was even shocked when her mother hired a native Fijian maid. And I had never heard of the coup in the late 1980s that caused many Indo-Fijians to leave since the new government became very oppressive to Indians who had lived there for generations. This is the catalyst in the story for Kalyana and her husband to emigrate to Canada as the author herself did.

3. The story is a good depiction of times changing and the roles of women changing from the late 1960s to the 1990s in the life of an Indo-Fijian girl. Her family experienced many changes that had to do with culture and society that were a big part of who Kalyana was. She had to deal with difficulties of being a female and a Hindu in an old-fashioned society in Fiji, and she had to learn how to adjust to a new time and place in Canada that was less-restrictive but also unfamiliar.