Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

It takes Liz a while to make friends with Nyomo, Ketut’s wife. It finally happens after she photocopies his notebooks, which contain secrets about healing. He has piles of these in which he recorded information passed down from his father and grandfathers: medicinal properties of trees and leaves, diagrams for palm reading, astrological data, mantras, and spells. The notebooks are falling apart, mildewed, and chewed by mice. Liz takes the first one to the Internet shop, makes copies of each page, and then binds it in a plastic folder. Ketut is so pleased, that he allows her to copy all his notebooks. Up until this time, Nyomo has only glared at Liz from the kitchen. When Ketut, overjoyed, shows Nyomo his new copies, Nyomo carries Liz a cup of coffee in a jelly jar and each day that week adds another treat. Then, one day she takes Liz’s index finger and squeezes it: “I could feel her love pulsing through her power grip, right into my arm and down into my guts” (271). Then she shuffles away as if nothing had happened.