readnartana

February 11th, 2012: Hello there! I just put up the first few pages of a new novel on Japan, entitled
One-Thousand Views of Wonder (or, Dreams of God and Paper).

I recently got back from Japan; I lived there for year soon after I graduated from college (with a degree in French!). I had no idea why I was going to Japan; it just happened. Looking back on it, Japan is where I began to understand I am a writer.

The novel on Japan deals with the extraordinary resilience of survivors of the devastating earthquake of 3/11/2011, alongside the marvelous creativity of Hokusai. I also have 2 poems for Japan on this site.

I also just completed the following poem—for those of you who don’t know, I am absolutely enraptured by light, and color….

light; a love story

the light writes its love tonight. sunlight leaps
from the moon,
unfettered, unlettered,
falling

in love with the never-ending manuscript

of night; illuminating its furtive alphabet

modestly—for it never allows itself to be

caught. silently—for light is shy, speeding away

(toward) so fast

it is still;

waiting.

Additionally, I just put up some poems inspired by India, and by St. Louis (specifically, the Lemp Mansion in St. Louis, considered one of the most haunted homes in the US). Other poems include:

1)perseverance (or lunacy). A friend of mine said she loved it, so thought I’d put it up. It’s for all of you out there who’ve persevered, and persevered, and persevered….and are still persevering…to quote Winston Churchill: “Never give up. Never ever give up.” There are also two other poems on perseverance.

2) Seventies Child (filled with references to music I love from the late sixties/seventies),

3) and Pioneer (an abstract piece about the notion of being a pioneer~I’ve always been fascinated by the arduous challenges & vision required to be a pioneer and by the pioneers who settled the Midwest and Western US).

4)There’s also poetry, On our Place in the Universe. For those of you who’ve read me for years, you know I can’t get over the mysteries of the universe, the subtle finesse of infinity.

Also included are excerpts from my first novel, The Moment, Before Sleep, another novel entitled The Palace of the Seven Stories– a fun, adventurous journey through Paris, complete with historical Buddhist monks and a curious dog named Jacques who find themselves in a quest to find a mysterious Palace of the Seven Stories, and an excerpt from a children’s novel in progress, entitled Rinku & the Silver Wings.

There is also a piece on the closing of Borders, the 40-year old bookstore chain.My whole journey of serious writing started in Borders–I worked there for over five years. And more than that, I’ve always loved bookstores so much—here in St. Louis and all around the world. It’s a place for dreamers, misfits, and shy folk of assorted sorts.

I’ve also included the introduction to a memoir I’m currently writing, entitled My Sari Missouri. It’s about growing up Indian in St. Louis–but it’s not just about me. It’s about what it means to be American today, in a richly diverse, intricately and incredibly complex country. That follows below. I’ve posted the first chapter of My Sari Missouri on the left.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Introduction

“I want to thank you,” the middle-aged white American woman told me, in the Francis Scheidegger Recycling Depository in Kirkwood, Missouri—a suburb of St. Louis, filled with graceful old homes, and nearly all white except for a tucked-away pocket of blacks—“for choosing to live in our country.”

It was just a day or two after 9/11. I’d never seen this woman before, who approached me as I was dumping a bag of magazines in the magazine-recycling trailer. Not knowing quite what to say, I blurted, “Oh, actually I didn’t choose to live in this country. I was born here.”

She seemed a bit bemused. Not many Indians resided in St. Louis in 2001, after all—certainly, many more than when I grew up here, in the 1970’s, but still, a relatively small population, hidden away in doctor’s offices and university engineering classes. And very few Indians had actually been born here.

“Well then,” she said, “Thank your family for choosing to live here.”

“Sure,” I said, smiling. “And thanks.”

I wasn’t quite sure what I was thanking her for. She meant well, certainly. But if it weren’t for the color of my skin—a milky-chai—she would never have assumed me to be foreign.

But then, I wasn’t foreign, really. I was born right here in the heartland. St. Louis, Missouri. Home of the Gateway Arch, and the St. Louis Cardinals. Or, as a friend of mine, Tom, a local librarian, calls it, “Flyover country.” Because no one really visits St. Louis, they visit the airport while in between destinations. Or, so it seems.

But I said, “Thanks” anyway.

Because Americans are always thanking one another, for everything.

**

I still meet people in St. Louis, the quietly elegant city upon the banks of the quietly mighty Mississippi, who are shocked to hear I was born here. In 1968, at that.

After all, I’m not part of the recent IT wave of Indian immigrants. Not only do I not work in IT, I never even had my own computer until five years ago, when my grandma, 85 years old at the time, bought me one.

I’m a writer. It’s a very odd occupation for a professional South Indian family, especially as– in the grand tradition of several of history’s most imaginative writers– my work (novels, poetry, lyrical short fiction) has been turned down for years. And not just by the publishing industry in the US. In England and India as well.

Twelve years of rejection. From all over the globe.

Damn. I must be good.

And after all that time, I continue to write.

That’s very American.

**

I envisioned this little book as a primer of sorts, for getting to know someone who’s as American as they are Indian, and along the way, explore the nature of what it means to be American today.

I see each chapter in this book as a “pleat” in the sari of my identity—which, I suppose, is really an American identity. For those of you who are not familiar with saris, they are lengths of cloth, about six yards long, which adorn a woman’s body with an extraordinary, lissome, grace. They are made of silk, cotton, and a variety of synthetic materials. The colors and patterns of saris are literally infinite, as is the breadth, lyricism, and depth of the collective Indian imagination.

Saris are one-size-fit-all. The trick is in how you pleat the sari. You can make small pleats, or large pleats, and tuck them neatly—very neatly and smoothly, or the older Indian ladies will take note!—at your waist. A few pleats leads to a longer pallu (the flowing segment of the sari that drapes over the left shoulder). More pleats lead to a shorter pallu. The pleats support the whole piece—although of course nowadays most women use the help of safety pins to keep them in place.

So many pleats necessary for a neatly-worn sari. So many chapters necessary for a richly- cherished life.

Let’s begin…