All posts in the ‘ India ’ Category

Somewhere in between the planning and the execution of Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes, I changed the name of the tea shop from the Hot Spot to the Why Not? (That question mark threw the spelling and grammar checking software into some confusion.) I also ended up leaving out tidbits about Mr. Joshi, the proprietor. Such as his view on planning: “Five year plan? Who can plan in life? Life unfolds according to the destiny of individuals, which has …Read More

Oh, the joys of composition. While I was writing the third Jana Bibi book, Emeralds Included, I threw out more than I kept. It always happens that way for me. Subplots, characters–they rise and fall, appear and disappear. The last draft resembles the first very little. In the story, Jana’s son, Jack, is an engineer. At one point, I had him researching earthquakes in the Himalayas, and I threw an earthquake into the plot, too, for good measure.  …Read More

Next week is a big week for me. On Tuesday, July 8, the third Jana Bibi book, Emeralds Included, comes out. Then, over the weekend, I go to the Friends of Woodstock School reunion, this year in Baltimore. I’m looking forward to participating in a panel discussion about literature. Moderator and fellow alum Jessie Lacy has asked three of us to comment on how the Woodstock experience influenced or informed our writing. Piece of cake. Have you got …Read More

There’s a jeweler in my new book, Emeralds Included. His name is Mr. Shah. Jana’s son, Jack, doesn’t trust him, but Jana finds herself hypnotized by Mr. Shah’s poetic and knowledgeable musings on gems. When I was growing up in India in the 1950s and 1960s, my family got acquainted with a jeweler who was both an artist and an excellent businessman. Mr. Nanda Lal Varma was then just starting on his career. He had no storefront; carrying …Read More

One of my favorite Hindi movies is the 2011 blockbuster Zindagi na Milegi Dobara (Life Doesn’t Come Twice.) It’s the story of three bachelors taking a road trip through Spain, just before one of them is supposed to get married. Each picks a dangerous sport and the others are honor-bound to try it out with him, and they’re all pushed to their limits. The film explodes with energy. It’s also highly authentic in its details–it was shot on …Read More

Here is my eleventh-grade roommate, Barbara, “signing out” of the girls’ dorm at Woodstock School, sometime in the early 1960s. We weren’t allowed to wear jeans to class, so this picture must have been taken on a weekend—probably on a Sunday afternoon, when we could go for two-hour walks on our Himalayan hillside. With boys, no less. (Those walks were a significant loophole to our supervised existence.) However, woe betide the girl who arrived back a minute late—she’d …Read More

Long after we returned from India, my mother used to brag about the birthday parties we’d had there. She pitied the poor pathetic kids who had grown up in the States, since they didn’t have the resources for a bang-up celebration. Such as street entertainers—dancers, snake charmers, performing monkeys, stilt-walkers, acrobats, puppeteers, jugglers….you name it. Best of all, in my mom’s opinion, was having a merry-go-around set up in the yard, and that was always my favorite, too. …Read More

At our house in New Delhi, during the 1950s and early 1960s, our head bearer (major domo), Pratap Singh, ran the show. Pratap came to us on our first night in Delhi. My travel-weary parents were already on the job and had to go to a formal reception; the hostess told them that she’d send someone over to mind me, Lee, and Jane, then aged eight, six, and two. Come evening, there was a knock on our hotel …Read More

December, 1952: My mom doesn’t look all that encumbered in this picture, but actually she was within a very few weeks of delivering my sister Jane to this world. My parents had arrived in Madras (now Chennai) just the previous month. They’d traveled from the US via London, Frankfort, Istanbul, Beirut, Basra, Karachi, and Delhi, with my sister Lee and me in tow. Lee and I carried Pan Am bags full of coloring books and games, plus a …Read More

Woodstock School has a pull on its alumni that goes beyond the usual old school tie. Much of this has to do with the physical setting in the first range of the Himalayas, but there’s more to it than spectacular views. There’s the way the campus feels–you don’t just visit it, you practically wear it. You move through it–and I mean move. To get from the dormitories to the classrooms–from the auditorium to the lunch room–from the library …Read More