New Short Story Published

I have a new short story in Arizona State's Superstition Review. This is the first piece of fiction I have published about India. The new issue of SR launches today. Congrats to Patricia Colleen Murphy and her editors on another excellent production.

Three Ways to Know You're Back in California

My parents came to visit this weekend, and a few things happened which confirmed we were back in California, a place unlike any other:

1. You are reminded that Steve Jobs is your neighbor. That's what you call someone you see sitting at an outdoor cafe when you are walking to dinner, right? We were in Palo Alto, on our way to our favorite Mexican place, and we stopped to check the menu at a new restaurant. Credit Jessica for spotting the incognito Mr. Jobs, who was wearing a deceptive yellow t-shirt in lieu of his usual black. Apple fans will be happy to know that he was eating steak. With vigor.

2. The beach is filled with naked men flying kites. We took Violet and a friend to San Gregorio State Beach for a picnic. After the meal, Jessica and I left the girls with my parents and took a romantic walk down the beach. Romantic, that is, until we started seeing pasty overweight men hiding in the bluffs, sans maillots. To their credit, these gentlemen kept their distance, so we weren't blinded by the whiteness of their flesh (we're still not used to the prevalence of white people in this country). In fact the only nudists who came close enough for us to see the whites of their eyes were a couple of toned and muscular lads dipping their toesies in the frigid San Mateo surf. No fear of shrinkage, apparently.

3. Old friends pretend not to know you. And you, them. This scene would never happen in India: you are sitting in a restaurant having lunch with your family and a woman you used to know (before she and her husband divorced and she moved back to the midwest) walks in and starts looking around. She takes off her sunglasses and you make eye contact, confirming her identity (and she, presumably, confirming yours), but when she sits down with her friend at the next table, neither of you say hi, hello, or even hey. It's a game of chicken, waiting to see who will cave and make a greeting. But you have underestimated her determination. Forty five minutes later, you pay your check and leave without saying a word.

There's No Place Like Home

We made it. After an epic seventeen-hour flight from Dubai to Los Angeles, we arrived in the United States of America last Monday. The country was obsessed with the question of whether Congress would raise the debt ceiling, but we, the newly repatriated, were interested in much more pedestrian things. For example drinking water. Thanks to the ineptitude of United Airlines, we missed our connection to San Francisco and got bumped to a flight the next day. Luckily LA is the best place in the world for us to be stranded, because my family lives nearby. So we took a cab to my parents' house and then, because they were not home, promptly stretched out on the sidewalk. Why the sidewalk? Well, for one thing, because nobody was stretched out there already. Also because there were no stray dogs. And because it looked clean. After a few lazy, jetlagged moments on the concrete, I realized I was thirsty and began to wish I had purchased a bottle of water before we left the airport. But then I remembered! I leapt up, uncoiled my parents' garden hose, and shot long blasts into my mouth. Jessica did the same. Violet thought we were crazy.

I don't know how long it will be before I get used to drinking from the tap. Every night when we run our toothbrushes under the faucet, it feels a little naughty. I think Violet and Jessica feel this way about wearing tank tops too. That is, they would feel that way about tank tops, if it weren't so damn cold here! Apologies to any readers suffering heatstroke in the middle part of the country, but here in the San Francisco area, it is about 75 in the sun and 60 in the shade. In August. I am reminded of the time Jessica said, shortly after we arrived in India, that she realized she had been cold and sleep-deprived for the last four years (ie, since we moved to Northern California). I feel bad bringing her back here, but--did I mention you can drink from garden hoses?

Taking care of various chores over the past week (utilities, groceries, auto maintenance, etc.) I have had a realization of my own. Although our life was on the surface much easier in India--because we had servants to iron our clothes, drive us to and fro, cook our food, and so forth--in fact life was more difficult there. Say you want to buy a bag of pasta. You have to call the driver and wait half an hour for him to pick you up. Want a visa extension? Good luck with that. There is just more friction in daily life over there. Part of this is contextual--friction caused because I was a foreigner--but most of it is cultural. Indians don't think much of efficiency. In fact many of them believe (wisely, I think) that decreasing the number and duration of face to face interactions is not necessarily a good thing. My colleagues at the university in Hyderabad, for example, understand that a good portion of each day will be spent in perfunctory conversation with peers. To an American observer, this is wasted time. To an Indian it is a job requirement. And not a bad one, either. Want to get a chai?

Of course, this is not to say I miss the Foreigner's Registration Office. Jessica and I made one last stand there on the day before we left, begging for permission to leave the country one day later than her residency permit prescribed. I have grown accustomed over the years to Jessica waltzing effortlessly, thanks to her superior negotiating skills, into outcomes I could only dream of achieving, and that is exactly what happened: we were out of there by two pm, exit stamp in hand.

Of course, this being India, the guy at the immigration desk at the airport didn't even ask to see our paperwork, so we might as well have let everything expire.

Most of my re-entry observations have been the ones I expected--the miracle of clean water, lack of litter, quantity of white people, girth of those white people--but there have been some surprises as well. One is the friendliness of the average American. From the customs officers at the airport to the guy who smog-checked my car, we have been met by nothing but smiles and helping hands since we arrived. Maybe these people were all holding knives under the table, but it seems to me that Americans are a friendly bunch of people.

Another surprise is the almost baroque silliness of the American upper class. This past weekend we went down to Carmel, a town of rich dog-lovers and probably rich dogs (a la Leona Helmsley). I can't tell you how many times I wanted to stop someone--invariably a white woman between the ages of fifty and seventy, with eerily glossy skin, leading a flock of tiny poodles by a cat's cradle of leashes--and say, "In India, there are people living like dogs!" But I was afraid she would turn it around on me and say, "Yes dear, but in Carmel, there are dogs living like people."

And what do you say to that?

What it's like to be a writer (when your wife is a businesswoman)

Yesterday Jessica was home sick, which meant she had a rare opportunity to see me working. It looks like this: me with my laptop, typing, hour after hour, all day long. She said she was glad she didn't work at home, that it would be too boring for her.

So five o'clock rolled around, then six o'clock. Violet went down to the courtyard to play with her friends. Jessica said, "Are you still working?"

I said, "Yes. Are you surprised?"

She said, "Not that you're working, I knew you worked. I'm just surprised it amounts to so little."

Wrapping Up

We're about a month away from our departure date. All transitions should be clean and no-sense so as to reduce the amount of stress of those going through them. They never are. Uncertainty around my job when we return is causing some anxiety though I'm trying to remain upbeat about it. This is making it difficult to book a final vacation and tickets home. (Problems that are good ones to have.)

Nick's 35th

As the blog posts document, we've followed the typical trajectory of homesickness. We're in a final phase that has been (in part) fueled by our birthdays. (Hooray for middle age! It's finally here! We've awaited your arrival breathlessly for as long as we could remember!) We've been relishing what we love about living in India AND permitting ourselves to do some profligate customary tourist shopping (pashminas, madubhani artwork, more Hyderabadi pearls, etc...)

Mmm...Pudina dosa

Yesterday was a classic Saturday in reveling. Our wonderful cook, Saraswati (her name is for the Hindu goddess of knowledge, learning, and books), made the most wonderful South Indian lunch for us. Pudina dosas with masala and fresh coconut chutney with a side of sambar. Translation: fermented lentil pancakes filled with fresh mint chutney and a mashed potato-curry concoction. You dip these in delicious savory coconut chutney and eat a watery slightly-sweet dal on the side.

Now that's coconut chutney!

If I haven't expressed my gratitude to Saraswati in these blog posts yet - let me do so now. Every Saturday she makes us a delicious lunchtime feast (which is usually followed by a leisurely afternoon nap that I am slightly ashamed to fess up to. When we awaken, the house is clean, dinner is made, and tea is served.) On the weekdays, I get home exhausted and drained to find a nutritious and humble meal laid out on the table. Nick has been freed from the bondage of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches during the weekdays when he's home writing. Saraswati embodies, in short, everything we will miss about our life here. I'm looking forward to sending her off with all of the kitchen supplies we purchased to make her cooking more efficient (a modern rice cooker, a food processor/blender, some pots, and china). I advised her to start a catering business, but she just laughed. The catering model may never make its way to India with the longstanding servitude of the Indian housewife and low labor costs.

After Violet's final Spanish lesson (her tutor is moving to Mumbai to attend a graduate program) we went out on one of our exploration/shopping trips. Nick and Violet were delighted to find our Guru (who lately is missing a front tooth) Yoga Master's  advertisement in front of his mythical Yoga & Meditation Centre. We visited our favorite local Kashmiri handicraft store, and then pulled over on the side of the road to have tea at a "local place" with our driver, Nayeem. (I'm mercifully omitting the hour-long massage I had at a local spa with my employee discount!)

Violet pays tribute to our Master

We got happy news last week that it looks like one of my buddy's from California will be our final visitor. She just began working at a start-up whose offices she'll be visiting in Bangalore. We're looking forward to reconnecting with all of you next month!

Staying Connected

Jessica observed the other day that at this point in history it doesn't matter where on earth you live, because so much of your professional life occurs online. That is certainly true for her, and for the writing side of my career. I only speak to my literary agent a couple times a year, for example. A month ago we had an hour-long Skype call to discuss my latest manuscript. I was in a Holiday Inn in Goa. It was night for me, morning for her--but there is a time difference to negotiate between California and New York, too. It was a productive meeting.

Okay, so Jessica's statement is not so true for doctors, teachers, and others who work face-to-face with clients and colleagues. But she got me thinking about other applications of the phenomenon of distance-irrelevance. One of the things I like best about living abroad is that my long-distance friendships and familyships have been unchanged by the change in distance. I only see my parents two or three times a year, for example, but I have corresponded with them more since I've been in India and feel like I have a better sense of what's going on in their lives from 8000 miles away than I did from 400.

The same is true is with old friends. To a friend in Virginia, what does it matter if I live in California or India? Either way, our relationship consists of typed words. And because I have been corresponding more since I've been in India (because I have more time, because it seems like the right thing to do...) these long-distance relationships feel stronger here than they did when I was in California.

I also feel like a better US citizen here. Mostly this is because I have more time--you could argue that if I had more time to browse the New York Times online from my office in California I would feel just as well-informed. What I'd like to point out, though, is that for a writer (or a computer programmer, or a day trader, or anyone who sits by himself in a room all day) the feeling of "localness" is no longer defined by where you are. For example, I have a "Menlo Park, CA News" heading on my Google News page. News articles from all over the web that mention Menlo Park show up there. I find that by reading that list of articles, I feel more Menlo Parky than I did most weeks when I was living in Menlo Park--weeks in which I rushed up and down the peninsula by car and train sometimes twice a day, grading papers in every scrap of time. Even the most annoying hallmark of localness--reminder emails from the elementary-school class parents--have continued to find me here. And I have continued to delete them, unread.

So yeah, Jessica, you were right. As long as you and Violet are with me, it doesn't matter where I live.

Indian Fiction Roundup, Part 1

Maybe the best thing about being in India is that it has given me time to read. In the US there is always something to do besides reading--laundry, dishes, grading, mowing the lawn--that reading ends up getting pushed to the end of the to-do list. Here, with all those chores taken care of, we have been able to indulge in kitab khana (in Hindi: "book food").

I have read mostly Indian fiction since I've been here, and I thought I would write up my impressions in a series of posts exploring Indian fiction in English, past and present.

My greatest discovery has been the amazing novels of RK Narayan (1906-2001). I am ashamed to say that I had never read anything by Narayan before coming to India, but now that I have, I realize that many of my favorite Indian writers were influenced by his work. Narayan is considered the first major Indian author to publish exclusively in English (he is also derided for this). His first novel, Swamy and Friends, was discovered by Graham Greene in 1935, who recommended it to his British publisher. Narayan sets all his novels in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. His work was adapted into an extremely popular public-TV series in the 1980s, and if you mention the word "Malgudi" to anyone here, that is the connection they will make.

I have read five or six of his novels now, and my favorite is probably The Guide. The title character, Railway Raju, works as a tour guide for foreigners visiting Malgudi. I was especially interested in him because we have met so many of these guides during our stay here. Narayan--who always knew his audience included a large percentage of foreigners--surely counted on this. Anyway, the plot gets going when Raju takes a scholar and his wife to see some ancient caves near Malgudi. Raju promptly falls in love with the wife--and she, neglected as she is by her workaholic husband, falls for him. I don't want to reveal too much, but it is a fantastic story of reinvention and rebirth, and ultimately of disappointment.

My second-favorite Narayan novel is The Vendor of Sweets, a refashioning of the prodigal son story using a Malgudi sweet-vendor and his expatriate son. The son returns with a foreign wife and a new set of morals. It is reportedly Narayan's saddest book, although that honor would have to be shared, in my opinion, with The English Teacher, which draws on Narayan's own experience as a young widower. Finally, I also recommend The Painter of Signs, a copy of which was given to me by my sister (thanks, Megan!) just before we left the US. This one is about feminism, population control, and the way love sometimes takes a back seat to principle.

Okay, one more Narayan book. I would be remiss if I did not mention My Dateless Diary, Narayan's memoir of the year he spent in the US (I think it was 1953) on a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. He's not exactly the Indian de Tocqueville, but he's close. Maybe if de Tocqueville had hung out with Aldous Huxley in LA...

Moving on. Few English majors these days earn their BA without having read Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. The book is a standard text in "post-colonial" literature courses, and with good reason: it is a masterpiece of historical fiction. The protagonist, Saleem Sinai, was born at the strike of midnight on August 15, 1947--the moment when India was declared independent from Britain--and so his life is an extended metaphor for independent India. Rushdie also riffs on three major Indian religions (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) and a host of other topics which make for excellent term papers. The thing is, few English majors really enjoy the book. I was lucky enough to have missed it in college--I say lucky, because when I finally read it a few months ago I did not have the baggage of a first, forced reading. I thoroughly enjoyed Rushdie's playful, rambling prose, his cartoonish characters, and his deft treatment of historical circumstances. If you know the basic outline of 20th-century Indian history, it is even more fascinating.

Another Bombay-focused novel that I enjoyed is Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance. Somebody told me this was an Oprah book. I guess that's possible, but if so, it was an unusual choice. It's about two sets of characters--a group of Parsis and a group of Hindu Dalits (or untouchables)--who end up together in a small apartment during Indira Gandhi's martial-law Emergency in the mid-1970s. Mistry's narration is much straighter than Rushdie's, but no less masterful. Because his mode is more realistic, you see the characters and their circumstances more clearly. For example, Mistry takes you inside a jhopadpatti, or shantytown. But because his aim is not to shock you with the horrible conditions, he portrays it like any other neighborhood. Kind of.

If you are interested in slum life, I highly recommend Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. You may have heard of this novel. It's by an Australian convict who escaped a maximum security prison and fled to Mumbai, where he reinvented himself as a slum doctor and mob operative. There's no telling how much of the book is real and how much is fiction, but it follows the outline of the author's life fairly closely. But shock value is not the reason to read Shantaram: this guy is actually a hell of a fiction writer, and the 900 pages feel like half that many. He takes you inside the Cuffe Parade slum in Mumbai (where he set up his accidental clinic) and the notorious Arthur Road Prison, where he was beaten and starved to within an inch of his life. There is even a love plot--with some very flowery, Bollywoody sex scenes. I don't normally like crime fiction, but I loved this book.

Next time: Indian pulp!