BOOKS, WRITING, LIFE
Definitely the one aspect of life you take for granted until something goes wrong: good health. Older people tend to wish you health and happiness without your ever giving it a second thought. You smile at grandparents, parents of friends, and elders. Then one day they start disappearing. Cancer, old age, infirmity – they all claim us at one time or other.
When I was eight what I wanted most in the entire world was a Barbie.
My father wanted me to put down toys and read a book. He meant academic books,
the kind to get me ahead in school.
He didn’t buy me a doll. My mother had no money of her own but she did have a car.
She took us to the library every week. I was a reader long before I ever became a writer.
I stayed up late tonight (despite an early morning looming on the horizon) to finish the third round of revisions on a manuscript years in the writing. To be this close to the end – i.e. publication and the eyes of readers – is a major temptation to rush on through.
The protagonist is a young, female South Indian girl who grows up in the United States, trying to find her place between her parents’ traditions and her heart’s ambitions. She losses every kind of innocence there is – physical, spiritual, emotional – in her quest to claim herself. A sobering but triumphant story that I hope readers will come to love.
