Poem: Into the Dark Future

Dashed off a quick poem, below, for those out protesting today on behalf of workers’ and immigrants’ rights, especially for everyone doing great organizing and protest work in/about what’s going on in Arizona.

For more poetry on the topic, Facebook users can see the amazing virtual mobilization going on at Poets Responding to SB 1070.

Images in this post are by Xicana artist Melanie Cervantes.

Into the Dark Future

In the twelfth generation
when we are no longer Indian
or Japanese, not Mexican
or Hmong,
who will police
the borders in our blood?

As the rivers burn
with oil & loss,
as the mountains
erupt
with hollow rage,
what papers shall we carry

except those inscribed
with love?
Will we remember
the names of the dogs
who chased us like furies,
rabid white

mouths foaming
because they have lost
their homes, their meat,
their mother’s love,
and even their gods,
who left them

barking, barking
against the tide?
Look: We are the future.
And isn’t it rich,
dark, sweet, dazzling,
unrelentingly brave?

Science Friday: Political Science

This week’s science news really had me worried. You know, it’s so hard to sort through all those statistics and stuff. I really appreciate it when politicians cut out the smartypants-talk and tell it to us straight.

Food science is a super important field, since we all, you know, eat. So in Bolivia, the president revealed that consuming hormone-enhanced chicken causes men to become homosexual … and bald! How messed up is that? What ARE they putting in our food, anyway?

Strangely, “Morales’s theories do not appear to have been immediately accepted by the scientific community,” reports the UK-based Guardian newspaper.

Actually I don’t eat chicken, though, so I’m not *too* creeped out by that. What really had me stressed out were the new developments in seismology.

In Iran,  a hard-line religious leader says women and girls who dress immodestly spread promiscuity, and “When promiscuity spreads, earthquakes increase.”

So I guess France is just asking for it by trying to make women wear revealing clothes.  The French want to ban the full Islamic face & body covering to protect “the dignity of all persons and equality between men and women.” I do get where they’re coming from, though, because people who choose weird clothing for their weird religions really don’t deserve dignity, equality, fraternite, and whatever those other things in the French motto are. I just hope the French are getting their kits de séisme ready.

Anyway the promiscuity-earthquake hypothesis totally made sense to me,  until I read that a hard-line religious leader right here in the United States (Pat Robertson) has determined that earthquakes are caused by pacts with the Devil — or at least, the one in Haiti was.  So now I’m kind of confused.

Either way, it makes a lot of sense that San Francisco, with all the loose women AND pacts with the Devil going on, is prone to earthquakes.

Maybe I should move to Idaho. Potatoes don’t cause earthquakes, right?

Unless, I guess, they’re promiscuous, spawn-of-Satan type potatoes:

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It’s National Poetry Month!

This Thursday, I will be reading poems about beauty pageants, anger, fast food, and possibly unicorns…

…as part of two events in one day to help launch INDIVISIBLE, the first anthology of South Asian American poetry, which U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has praised as “among the best anthologies of poetry.” More info: http://www.indivisibleanthology.com/anthology/

Would love to see you!  And don’t forget to celebrate National Poetry Month:  write a poem, get a poetry book (like Indivisible), read a poem aloud to someone, buy a poet dinner, you know, stuff like that. 🙂

**** Thursday, April 22 *****

indivisible

3:30pm:

Reading and Q&A, Poetry Center, San Francisco State University, Humanities Building Room 512 (fifth floor), 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco. (415) 338-2227. Indivisible editors Neelanjana Banerjee, Summi Kaipa and Pireeni Sundaralingam, along with contributors Tanuja Mehrotra Wakefield and Minal Hajratwala, will be featured readers at The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University. Don’t miss this reading at this historic Poetry Center, originally founded in 1954, and get a chance to be a part of the American Poetry Archives: http://www.sfsu.edu/~poetry/aboutUs.html

7:30pm:
Reading and Release Party, The Green Arcade, 1680 Market Street @Gough, San Francisco. (415) 431-6800. Come to Part II of Indivisible at The Poetry Center, held at The Green Arcade — one of SF’s newer bookstores. If you can’t make it out to San Francisco State University, come see some of the women of Indivisible read here. Featuring Indivisible Editors Neelanjana Banerjee, Summi Kaipa and Pireeni Sundaralingam, along with Tanuja Mehrotra Wakefield and Minal Hajratwala.

SF: Tuesday, April 13, Lambda finalists reading

I’m excited to share a stage this week with 14 other fabulous writers who are finalists for the 2010 Lambda Literary Awards. The “Lammies” are kind of like the Oscars for LGBT writers in the United States. You’re welcome to wear your red carpet attire if you like. 🙂  And if you’re looking for great books to read, click here to see the whole list of finalists. Winners will be announced May 27.

I hear the food at the reception will be awesome, so come early if you can.

Tuesday, April 13

San Francisco Public Library
100 Larkin Street (at Grove)
San Francisco, CA 94102

Reception at 5:00 pm in the Hormel Center

Reading at 6:00 pm in the Latino-Hispanic Room

Featuring (not necessarily in this order):

Rhiannon Argo
Tommi Avicolli-Mecca
Lynnee Breedlove
Matt Dean
Elana Dykewomon
Z Egloff
Dexter Flowers
Jon Ginoli
Minal Hajratwala
Karin Kallmaker
Kevin Killian
Patrick Letellier
Malinda Lo
Randall Mann
Ron Palmer

Hosted by Tony Valenzuela, Katherine Forrest and Karen Sundheim.

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Come out ‘n’ see me

Just returned from a writing residency in paradise, and am feeling super-recharged by three weeks of communing with the unicorns.

I am delighted by the news that Leaving India is currently a finalist for both a California Book Award and a Lambda Literary Award. How excited will I be if I beat Dave Eggers? Ha ha!  Seriously, it’s awesome to just be a contender, and I’m looking forward to meeting many amazing writers whose work I’ve admired for a long time.

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I seem to go through periods of hibernation and then mega-event-mania. The rest of April is all about events.  So please come and see me this month if you can!  Because who knows when I’ll crawl into my cave again. 🙂

All the details are at www.minalhajratwala.com/events (please share with friends in Denver, Chicago, and the SF Bay Area!).

Some upcoming things I’m excited about:

• Making a splash, or at least a very significant ripple, with other South Asian American writers at the largest U.S. writers convention, in Denver (April 9-10).

• Sharing a stage with other Lambda award finalists — including Lynnee Breedlove, Malinda Lo, Elana Dykewomon, Tommi Avicolla-Mecca, and others — at the San Francisco Main Library (April 13). I hear the reception will have great food, too! Come by & help us celebrate.

• Helping to launch Indivisible, the first anthology of South Asian American poetry. It’s already earned high praise, with U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins calling it “among the best anthologies of poetry.” I’m honored to have three poems in the book and will read with a couple of other contributors at the San Francisco Poetry Center (April 22).

• Talking to students in Asian/Asian American Studies who are reading the book for classes at the University of Chicago-Illinois, and then reading at one of my favorite bookstores, Women & Children First (April 28). Campus visits are some of my favorite things to do, so I’m really looking forward to the smart discussions and dialogues of this trip.

(Want event details? Here’s the link again:  www.minalhajratwala.com/events)

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Thanks to my lovely friend Sunita for sending me a link to this month’s Guernica magazine interview with Alice Walker!  Alice was asked, “What are those books in either fiction or nonfiction with which you are now in dialogue as writer and as earthling?”

In answer, she talks about a whole bunch of interesting stuff, and includes a list of three Indian writers: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Arundhati Roy, and me!  She says, “I recently read a wonderful book called Leaving India—not a novel but one woman’s travels all over the earth to trace relatives and ancestors who’d left India to settle in odd places: Fiji, for instance.” You can read the whole interview here.

Waterfall Cottage, Hedgebrook

Waterfall Cottage, Hedgebrook writers retreat ("Women Authoring Change")

Unicorn image from Harappa (Pakistan/India), ~3500 B.C.

Unicorn image from Harappa (Pakistan/India) ~3500 B.C.

P.S.  I’ve gotten super lazy about blogging. If you tweet, you can follow me around on Twitter (@minalh). I will post pithy comments about my adventures at the writing convention and elsewhere.

Fan Girl meets royalty

Laura Albert aka JT Leroy

On Sunday, I got to meet two writers whose work I’ve been interested in for a long time: Laura Albert, who wrote the amazing J.T. LeRoy books, and Lucy Jane Bledsoe, an award-winning novelist as well as anthology editor and children’s book author. I met them at separate events and ended up having fascinating (private, sorry!) conversations with them, and by the end of the day I was glowing in that particular way that only talking with other writers gives me.

I was also thinking about fame, and how astonishing it is that suddenly I seem to be meeting kinda famous people on a regular basis.

I’m not normally a name-dropper and I’ve never really met celebrities, mainly because I’m sort of clueless. Plus I don’t watch much television (once, I was told after the fact that Roger Ebert was sitting behind me at a Sundance screening, but I’d had no idea because I didn’t know what he looked like).

Lucy Jane Bledsoe

I am also super-shy, especially around people I admire. I remember going to a reading of June Jordan‘s before she died and being literally too afraid to walk up to the signing table and ask her to sign my book.  Even just a few months ago, I sawDorothy Allison read at Writers With Drinks, an event at which I’ve also been on stage, yet the most I could manage was to thrust a Leaving India postcard into her hand and scurry away.

But lately, I’ve been a bit more courageous and have on occasion spoken to, photographed, or even posed with celebrities I admire. So I thought I’d start a series of posts about my recent encounters as a Fan Girl. I want to share these pictures not just to show off, but also because these folks are doing great work that I admire, and even though they’re well known in their own worlds, you might not know about them and you should.

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With Prince Manvendra MUMBAI: I first heard about “the gay prince” of Gujarat several years ago, when a friend excitedly forwarded me an email that said something like, “Hey look, another gay Gujarati!” It was sometime before he appeared on Oprah and sometime after his family attempted to disinherit him. Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil could have stayed in the cocoon of privilege and wealth that enwraps many of India’s royal families, but instead he has become an amazing activist, spending much of his time traveling, organizing, and directly counseling gay men and people with HIV. I was thrilled when he stopped by my reading at Bombay Dost, India’s oldest LGBT organization. He was sweet, unassuming, kind, and clearly had a warm and familial relationship with other members of the community. (I blurred out the face of the person next to him because many of the folks who attended are not out.) Aside from just being publicly out as a gay person, his contributions include HIV direct services in Gujarat, regional HIV organizing in South Asia, and starting a home for gay elders who have no one to care for them as they age, all through his organization The Lakshya Trust. With the largest number of HIV/AIDS cases in the world, India faces a huge challenge and is lucky to have a few visible faces for a movement that consists of hundreds of dedicated activists working in obscurity and still plagued by the closet, stigma, and anti-gay as well as anti-HIV bigotry.

Snapshots

Jodhpur: “I look back on life—it’s funny how things turn out. You, the creator of beeping sirens and honking cars, yearn for the solitude of the mountains. You, a connoisseur of fast food, now gaze at water that took years to gather natural minerals as it trickled its way down from the Himalayas to within your reach. And I, some of the purest water in the world, stand here, trapped in a bottle. Come, enjoy the irony.” — actual label text from Himalayan brand bottled water, sold by Tata in India. Possibly the strangest marketing tactic I’ve ever seen.

Udaipur: Shopped at Sadhna, a store linked with the twenty-year-old cooperatively owned Seva Mandir that provides livelihood to 625 women of rural, tribal and urban slum areas; beautiful fabrics and crafting: http://www.sadhna.org/

Online: Enjoying my friends’ blog in which they travel the world exploring many of the issues that also occur to me as I travel, from a critical progressive ethos. Latest entry is about the Tourism Industrial Complex and why tourism is pretty evil: http://www.yearofnoflying.com/

In my belly (Rajasthan): Kachora, malpura, dal bati, besan gatti, pineapple-ginger juice, whiskey & coke, papadums, yogurt, pizza, lots of bottled water (not all in one day, of course!).

Air India flight: Um, I’ve never heard an airline safety spiel begin with “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a seatbelt” before.

Hyderabad: Scandalized the tailor by requesting a barely-above-the-knee skirt. He actually asked my father’s permission before agreeing to make it!

Mumbai: Went to the opening of Azaad Bazaar, India’s first LGBT store. Loved the rainbow rickshaw magnets and t-shirts saying “Straight like jalebi” (search for “jalebi” in google images and it will make sense!): http://www.azaadbazaar.com/

Off to Jaisalmer tomorrow… busy busy!

Goa picks

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Just arrived in Bombay / Mumbai after 10 relaxing days in Goa, on the coast — lovely beaches, food of the gods, and twice-daily yoga.  I am so relaxed that my shoulders are now seriously three inches lower than they’ve been all year!

I was quite lazy during my week in Goa and did not see all the sights by any means, so my recommendations are more idiosyncratic than comprehensive.  But I’ll share anyway…

My Goa favorites:

Yoga on the terrace There are lots of yoga and ayurvedic options in Goa, and I was really happy to spend part of my time there with a group led by Sabine Kuehner.  Sabine is an amazing yoga teacher who is originally from Germany, lived for many years in San Francisco (where I met her), and now lives in Pune, India, where she assists and studies at the Iyengar Institute. Her specialty is medical/therapeutic yoga classes geared toward working with people with injuries and non-typical bodies. I first went to Sabine’s restorative therapeutic yoga classes at the Yoga Loft in San Francisco because I had a serious repetitive strain injury in both wrists, from typing, and was finding it too painful to do any of the weight-bearing poses that regular yoga classes require.  After several months with her, I built my strength back up, learned to re-align my muscles to prevent re-injuring myself, and was able to take regular yoga classes again. Sabine leads an annual 10-day yoga retreat in Goa over Thanksgiving week and occasionally has other classes, including an upcoming week in Rishikesh; contact her through http://www.namaste-yoga.com/.

Warm aubergine salad at Bomras

Warm aubergine salad at Bomras

The best meal I’ve had in India was at Bomras, a Burmese fusion restaurant in North Goa that was truly delicious. The menu descriptions won’t do justice to how delicious my food was: warm aubergine salad, pumpkin soup, and homemade fried tofu with tamarind sauce that was like no tofu I’ve ever had — the carnivores at the table were all grabbing pieces of it and eventually had to order their own! http://www.bomras.com/

Travel Bar is a bar, restaurant, AND travel agency, run by the tireless and fierce Angeline, who will do whatever it takes to make it right, whether it’s your meal or your booking. Someone at the Travel Bar has had some serious chef training and it shows in the creative menu which ranges from risotto to noodles to fresh fish to burritos, all with a slight Indian twist. Lovely atmosphere, delicious cocktails (ice made with purified water) and desserts as well. Calangute, North Goa. No website; see Trip Advisor ratings here: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g306995-d1171421-Reviews-Travelbar-Calangute_Goa.html

Angeline booked me a couple of nights in the Baga Marina hotel, a new and very nice hotel for about $95/night (includes full breakfast). The location is central to all of the restaurants, bars, and shops of Baga, yet the hotel is set back from the main road and is very quiet at night. Nice amenities, two restaurants, 24-hour room service, every room has a balcony, 10-minute walk or 2-minute rickshaw ride to the beach through a busy lane full of shops and restaurants. The beautiful swimming pool with a built-in bar was a lovely place to hang out all afternoon with a vampire book, a glass of red wine, and a plate of pakoras. http://www.thebagamarina.com/

Sabine’s retreat was held at Dona Florina, which is somewhere between a hotel and a European-style pensione.  The Goan owner, Jessie, lives on the premises with her daughter and oversees everything keenly; there are about 15 spacious, comfortable rooms, each with its own bathroom, as well as a couple of larger apartments for families.  Guests are mostly older Europeans, many of whom come back every year and stay for weeks at a time, giving the place a mellow vibe. “Resort” as it’s called on the website is a bit of a stretch, but Dona Florina is a lovely, simple place to stay, and you really can’t get any closer to the beach unless you sleep out under the stars.  Bring your own toiletries and expect the staff to clean your room every three days, rather than daily as in a regular hotel; this keeps the place super affordable (around $30/night during peak season; breakfast included). As with many places in India, the electricity and water go out from time to time, but all of these episodes were short (less than half an hour) during my stay. The terrace is nice for yoga or an aperitif, and there are restaurants and “beach shacks” serving food all around, as well as on-site ayurvedic and regular massage. Easy stroll to the main road for access to the rest of North Goa. No air conditioning. Book in advance and ask for a sea-view room. Candolim, 1 hour north of the Goa airport. http://www.donaflorina.com

Barracuda Diving is the original dive shop in Goa. I went out one day but was unable to dive (my ears wouldn’t equalize), and they kindly offered to refund my dive fee. Diving in Goa isn’t the greatest due to low visibility (8 feet on the best days), the local practice of dynamite fishing, and polluted waters; but if I were going to dive or even go snorkeling again in Goa, I’d go with these guys for their professional, friendly crew (all Brits on the day I went out) that double-checks everything and emphasizes safety and fun above all. http://www.barracudadiving.com/

I had lots of great local meals too, but I was too busy eating to take pictures. We had fresh pineapple, papaya, and watermelon every morning and I enjoyed sampling the Goan speciality, vegetable xacuti (also available in chicken), a rich dark curry made with coconut milk, available everywhere. The Anjuna market held every Saturday is huge and a fun place to shop and bargain; I bought a lovely hand-embroidered jacket and a fierce-looking belt from Nagaland featuring (supposedly) yak teeth. My fellow yogis liked getting massages on the beach from women like the one pictured above who offer hourlong sessions for less than $10 US, but I didn’t indulge, since I was already mellow enough.

More soon!

India book tour details

What I’m eating: Dragonfruit (pictured)

What I’m reading: India edition of my book, prepping for readings and interviews; Hindustan Times (delivered free to my hotel room);  Poets & Writers magazine

What I’m doing next:  Going for lunch at Eatopia and taking a walk in Lodhi Gardens before tonight’s launch event

And now for a brief commercial …

LEAVING INDIA launch schedule

If you or people you know are in India and would like to come to book events, here is my tour schedule. The India edition of LEAVING INDIA: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents launches today from Westland/Tranquebar.  I’m excited to see how the book does in its homeland, and I am very much enjoying meeting journalists in the thriving media landscape here.  Events are now through December in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, and Ahmedabad.

New Delhi: 7pm Monday, Nov 16:  In conversation with columnist and literary critic Nilanjana Roy. Drinks afterward. (Conference Room III, Annexe Building, India International Centre, 40 Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi  110003 Tel: 24619431)

Mumbai:  7pm Friday, Nov 20: In conversation with author and journalist Jerry Pinto. (Crossword Bookstore, Kemps Corner location)

Pune: 6:30pm Saturday, Nov 21: In conversation with FLAME President Dr. Indira Parikh, a women’s issue scholar. (Crossword Bookstore,  IIC Towers location)

Ahmedabad: 6pm Sunday, Nov 22: Crossword Bookstore, Ahmedabad. (Details to come, please see http://www.minalhajratwala.com/events for updated information)

Mumbai: 5:30pm Sunday, December 13: Bombay Dost Sunday High. (Details to come, please see http://www.minalhajratwala.com/events for updated information)

MEDIA CONTACT

FOR SOUTH ASIA: Renuka Chatterjee, Chief Editor, Westland/Tranquebar, +91 11 46049804 (direct), +91 11 4604 9800 (up to 4604 9810), renuka@westland-tata.com

FOR NORTH AMERICA: Alia Hanna Habib, Publicity Manager, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1-212-420-5878, alia.habib@hmhpub.com

From India with love

What I’ve been eating: lotus roots sliced thin and fried in honey-chilli sauce (at Kylin, Vasant Lok); Burmese khao suey noodle-coconut curry (at Kitchen, Khan Market); bear naked fruit & nut bar; custard apple; parathas, rotis, brown rice, home-cooked vegetable curries; pizza

What I’ve been reading: Perdido Street Station by China Mieville; Wicked by Gregory Maguire; Lonely Planet India; The Cost of Living by Arundhati Roy

What I’ve been spending (43 rupees = $1): 44 rupees to have 2 days’ worth of clothes ironed; 1 rupee per minute or per text on my new Vodaphone (email me if you want the phone number); 400 rupees for an hourlong massage

What I’ll be doing next: Book touring! Click here for updated India event details

Landing

I don’t feel like I have much new to say about India (at least not yet) that hasn’t been said a million times by foreigners coming here and being awed, overwhelmed, etc. So if you’ve been to India or read enough about it, nothing here is going to be that exciting. But for my friends, I want to use this blog as a way of staying in touch and sharing what’s going on; so, banal as these observations may be, I’ll continue. 🙂

I usually fly into Mumbai, but this time it was lovely to arrive in New Delhi, a more manageable city in almost every way — size, congestion, pollution, weather (a perfect 72 degrees upon landing, followed by a couple of cool and slightly rainy days). I’ve pretty much recovered from jet lag and this morning transferred over to the first of several hotels/guesthouses where I’ll stay for my book tour.

I stayed with friends for the first three days, which was really a lovely way to acclimatize and rest before starting work. The friends I stayed with are, like me, second-generation Indo-Americans, living in India for a year. Let’s call them Sweetie and Eatie, since the wife is super-sweet and the husband is known among all our friends for his prodigious appetite.

On my first afternoon Sweetie took me to buy a cell phone. Compared to my $100/month unlimited cell + data plan at home, here I paid about $50 for pre-paid talk time that will probably last me most of my trip. That includes the phone, a nifty little Nokia that rings with Hindi film jingles and offers me a Hindi word of the day. The most expensive calls I’ll be making, to the United States, are 7 rupees a minute — super cheap compared to the $1/minute it costs to call India from the U.S. on a regular land line.

Pretty much everything in India involves a lot of paperwork, so in order to get the cell phone, I had to first get passport-size photos taken. Sweetie took me to the photo place, where for 50 rupees I got 5 photos. The guy even photoshopped my hair so that it looked neater and (sigh) lightened me up a few shades. Instant “fair & lovely,” I guess. Back at the cell phone place I gave them one of the photos, a photocopy of my passport, and a photocopy of the passport page with my India visa on it, plus I signed several sets of forms; who knows where all this goes. I was so glad Sweetie was with me to show me which cell phone stall to go to and ask about special deals (“schemes”).

It’s 25 hours of travel to get here from California, and although I usually sleep well on planes, I didn’t this time, so I was practically hallucinating by the time we got back to the apartment. I took a five-hour nap, blearily had dinner with them when Eatie got home from work, and went back to bed for ten hours.

Sweetie is a human rights education scholar, here on a fellowship for a year, and I loved hearing little bits of her fieldwork with organizations that are teaching children from marginalized Dalit and Adivasi communities across India about their rights. I took a peek at one of the student workbooks and it had questions like, “Does your teacher beat students?” — a common practice.

Eatie is a lawyer working on financial reform in India, and he likes it here so much that they’ve decided to extend their stay by several months. He’s really embracing the India lifestyle and says he doesn’t miss life in New York at all.  They both seem to be doing really great work.  I was inspired by their projects and also by how skillfully they’ve immersed themselves into life here, living in a typical middle-class Indian apartment rather than a Westernized enclave, getting around in auto-rickshaws and eating at dhabas (open-air restaurants), and managing all the issues that came with their apartment, from the cook who grumbles every time she has to cook brown rice (“you pay double price for this? and it’s such bad rice!?”) to unfamiliar situations such as water being available only at certain times of day, pigeons invading the apartment, etc.!

Food

Woke up after my sleep-a-thon to hot, fresh parathas made by their cook, delicious with yogurt delivered from the store. I ate about a million parathas and felt quite revived! (I’m vegan at home, but I’ve decided to incorporate some dairy while I’m here, so that I don’t have to fret about getting enough protein and can share the social ritual of chai without awkwardness for my various hosts. Also, yogurt does help with the digestive issues that plague most travelers to India, and which I’m prone to — though I’m feeling well so far, knock on wood. In the few days I was with them, the cook also made bengan bharta (one of my favorite eggplant dishes), moong daal, aloo saag … and oatmeal.

As I list all the food I’ve eaten since I’ve been here, I think I must be eating non-stop.  I usually come back from India skinnier from getting sick, but maybe this trip will be the exception and I’ll come back fatter!  It’s all been delicious so here goes:

One day we had lunch with Eatie’s cousin, a travel editor, at a restaurant called Kitchen in Khan Market. The place has an airy, cafe-style feeling and is known for its khao suey, a yummy, spicy Burmese stew with noodles, coconut milk sauce, and vegetables (mine had tofu, Eatie’s had prawns).  Sweetie ordered penne and was happy because it’s the only place around that makes whole-wheat pasta; like me, she’s a Bay Area-an at heart, and craves healthy organic food which takes some searching here.

Last night we went to KyLin in Vasant Lok, a very nice pan-Asian restaurant with fancy cocktails as well as “mocktails” (since many Indians don’t drink, most high-end restaurants offer non-alcoholic versions). My “Asian green soup” and ginger-pepper stirfry were quite good, but what was really amazing was our appetizer, lotus roots sliced thin and fried in a honey-chili sauce. I’ve only ever had lotus roots as a bland hard thing floating in a soup or stew, but these were really great.  Better than buffalo wings.

Both restaurants were in sort of open-air malls, with stores catering to the expatriate and middle/upper-middle class Indian crowd. If you’ve never been to India, please don’t picture a U.S. style strip mall. Khan Market and Vasant Lok are tidier than many areas of Delhi, for sure, but not sanitized in the way that Americans might picture a high-end shopping area to be. As you walk between the two- and three-story arcades, you can’t get too distracted by the cute-looking Mrs Kaur’s Crepe House or the gorgeous textiles in the FabIndia window; you also have to look down so that you don’t step on a trash heap or stray dog or puddle or random construction materials piled here and there.

I had time to browse around the boutiques, English-language bookstores, etc. It’s tempting to buy things since even in these higher-end places, the prices are much cheaper than they would be in the U.S. (even if you could find equivalents), but I’ve held back and only bought one very pretty Indian kurta-style top which I’ll wear once I get to the warmer climes. Since I have several weeks of travel ahead, I don’t want to overload my suitcase right at the beginning. These malls also have wifi cafes as well as American fast-food chains like Subway and McDonalds which, of course, have an Indian twist to their menus.

Art

Yesterday I went to the National Gallery of Modern Art. I was very pleased with myself as it was my first outing alone in India, and I had to direct the rickshaw driver who told me there was no museum near the area; I was able to give him proper directions and find it based on my map, even though I’d never seen the place. Hooray for Hinglish.  Delhi is quite an English-friendly city and I’ve been happy that I’ve been able to get by with my extremely rudimentary Hindi — which consists of about three verbs, one and a half verb tenses, a smattering of nouns, and a few useful prepositions (“later,” “next to,” “between” are especially useful, I’ve found!). I also know the basic numbers and the alphabet, which is handy, and when I get confused I just stick in a Gujarati or English word, and it seems to work out ok for these basic interactions.

At the museum, I really liked some paintings by V.S. Gaitonde, G.R. Santosh, Arpana Caur, and others whose names I don’t remember. Also liked MF Hussain’s Mother & Child series of lithographs in tribute to Mother Teresa (pictured), which I’d never seen before.  Overall, though, I have to say that the collection seems slightly dated to me, and a lot of the works feel rather derivative. It made me wonder where the newer contemporary art in India lives, since there was no installation art, video/electronic art, or even photography.

Randomly, I ended up getting interviewed at the museum by a tv crew that was doing a piece on an exhibit of sculptures by Dominican artist Claudia Hakim. I was the only person near the exhibit so the cameraman took shots of me looking at it, and then the young journalist (who apologetically said, “I’m only a trainee”) asked me on camera whether I thought the art fulfilled its purpose and whether “as a foreigner” I thought the exhibit would improve diplomatic relations between India and Colombia. Um, sure? Instead I talked about how much I liked the sculptures, which look like giant pieces of expensive gold and platinum jewelry, but up close are made of industrial materials, screws, nuts, bolts, etc.

Then I wandered around the outdoor sculpture garden, which is nice although the sight lines are interrupted by utility boxes and lighting structures and such; bought a bag of chips at a roadside stand; and splurged for a taxi rather than rickshaw back to the neighborhood, since I didn’t feel like breathing the rush-hour traffic (trying to keep my throat healthy at least through the book events).

Work

This morning I transferred over to the India International Centre, which is a kind of membership hotel and club that also has events, restaurants, and a library. It’s near Lodhi Garden which I’m told is a lovely place to take a walk, and also houses some monuments/tombs to past rulers of Delhi, so I hope to wander around there when I have some free time.

My launch event will be in one of the conference rooms here at the IIC on Monday evening (7pm, come on by!). It seems that discussions rather than readings are the norm here for book events, so I’ll be in conversation with Nilanjana Roy, who is the former editor of my Indian publishing house as well as a columnist/journalist/etc. Drinks afterward.

I also met my India editor for the first time for lunch today. We drank wine, ate pizza and tiramisu at The Deck (a private restaurant at another nearby members-only club, the India Heritage Center), and gossiped about writers and the publishing industry in India as well as New York, London, etc. English-language publishing in India is in a growth phase, particularly at my press, Tranquebar, which is releasing about 15 fiction and literary nonfiction titles this year, aiming for 50 next year and eventually 65. Their sister press Westland publishes mass-market books such as cookbooks, self-help, Chicken Soup series, etc. Both presses are a mix of Indian titles and reprints of books first published abroad. My editor is lovely and is going to chaperone me on the four-city tour, so I’m glad; I feel confident she’ll be able to take care of anything that arises. I have a couple of press interviews already scheduled and more on the way. Will update my Events page and Buzz page as things develop, and try to post here as much as possible.

Everything seems in good shape and now my only worry is about how the air pollution (too many diesel vehicles) is affecting my throat and respiratory system. Since I had bronchitis during the run of a stage play I was in last year, and also lost my voice this spring in the thick of my book tour, I’m rather paranoid about that; nothing worse than being unable to talk when it’s your job to talk! My throat is not terrible yet, but I can definitely feel the congestion and rawness, and have been trying to baby it with hot water, soups, honey, and cough drops.

My room at the IIC is very pleasant, rather like a nice American dorm room, which in India means real luxury: hot running water on demand, free wi fi, good lighting, electric tea kettle, tv, a work desk, no biting insects, and a twin bed which is now beckoning me, rather urgently it seems, to take a nap.