Kiss from India

Rani was adopted when she was very small. In this book, she travels with her adoptive parents to her native village in India to learn more about her biological mother and her family. Her mother is no longer alive, but Rani wants to visit her two brothers, Palin and Sabal, to get an idea of ??who her mother was. Rani is very insecure about these encounters. With Palin it clicks right away. Rani feels good with this warm, friendly man. The meeting with Sabal is more difficult. But in the end, Sabal and Rani appear to have more in common than they dare to suspect at first sight.

During her stay, Rani is constantly confronted with the difference between her homeland and her native country. She worries if she will ever feel at home in her mother's country. When Rani decides to stay alone with her brother for a while, without her parents, this opens many doors.

In this book Rani gets an answer to the question why her mother gave her up for adoption. She discovers that her mother was a temple dancer who was forced into prostitution against her will, just like her sister. Her sister loses her life and her mother eventually dies of grief for not being able to protect her daughter. She wants a different future for Rani and gives her up for adoption.

Rani discovers how hard it is for her family, as Dalits, within the caste system in India. Ultimately, Rani and her family fight against the injustice caused by this system. When she travels back to the west at the end of the story, she feels like a real Dalit, who wants nothing more than to wake up the West for all the injustice that is happening in her homeland.

'Kiss from India' is the sequel to 'Barefoot Dancing'. However, you can read the book separately. The information you have obtained in the first book can sometimes be enriching, but you do not really need it to be completely absorbed in this story.

Nicole Derycker tells this story from different perspectives which makes reading interesting: you have Rani's relationship with her parents; her friendship with Bram, her rakhi brother (= strong friendship), Cor, her boyfriend; Anna, her good friend; Ram, an Indian boy, not to mention her close relationship with her grandmother. Rani regularly sends them emails from India. Through the e-mails and the information from her travel diary, we get a picture of who Rani is, what doubts she has and how she looks at the whole thing.

Throughout the story you get to process a lot of information about India and Indian culture.

I thought the story was written very smoothly and I didn't have the impression, unlike the previous book, that the story was written for the sake of the message. The informative aspect is incorporated, but the story takes precedence. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Ilse Verhulst

t