All posts in the ‘ Real People ’ Category

I’m just back from New York City, where I had a great visit with my childhood friend, Deborah Keehn. Debby and I were friends in Delhi, where we took Bharatanatyam dance lessons together. Later, we were Woodstock School roommates. Here we are on a typical Saturday morning, busily cleaning our dorm room. We had to pass room inspection before we could go to “the buzz,” as we called the bazaar in Mussoorie. See? All cleaned up! I had …Read More

Some of the traffic to my blog comes from people searching online for pictures of the three Travancore sisters, my family’s movie star neighbors in Chennai. Queries come from India, but also from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, Sri Lanka, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and the Netherlands. Perhaps the sight of these three beautiful ladies has been a remedy for homesickness for people spread over the globe by …Read More

One of the nicest parts of having a book published has been hearing from complete strangers and immediately feeling a sort of kinship with them. What more colorful thing could I find in my mailbox than this air letter from Malaysia? It was from a lady in Kuala Lumpur (British, I think), who apologized for being a “dinosaur” and not using a computer. Apologized? Good grief, she made my day! She had lived in Chennai (then Madras) during …Read More

I was about to throw out a shoebox of cassette tapes the other day, but instead, popped one into a portable cassette player (also retrieved from the dark corners of a closet) and had a listen. The tape was of my sister Lee interviewing my dad in 2002. Most of the lore had been ingrained in our heads, but I’d forgotten exactly how my dad, Everett Woodman, had met his retired schoolteacher friend, P. A. Thiruvenkatachari, “Mr. Patch,” …Read More

I’m looking for a picture. Here’s the story. When I was planning and writing Love Potion Number 10, I wanted some helicopter lore. A friend introduced me (by phone) to Captain Rustom Captain, who had served as helicopter pilot to Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister. Captain Captain, whose Indian civil helicopter pilot license was number 1, is now retired and lives in Canada. We had several good phone conversations about such things as makes and models of …Read More

As I have mentioned, our next-door neighbors, Lalitha, Padmini, and Ragini, were in and out of our house in Chennai a lot. Left to right: Lalitha, Ragini, Padmini Lalitha and Ragini, alas, died way too young, but Padmini and my parents remained in touch for decades. All three stars live on in their Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Hindi movies. The Travancore Sisters’ cousins, Ambika and Sukumari, were dancers and film actors, too. Sukumari (born in 1941) is still …Read More

Every couple of years, we came back to the United States from India for about three months. Some things my sisters and I loved about home leave: ice cream, television, and magazines to name a few. Other things we were less fond of, including running the gauntlet of inquiring relatives at family reunions. We could predict the questions: Have you ever seen the Taj Mahal? Have you ever ridden on an elephant? My sister Lee and I both …Read More

I’m looking through my dad’s address book. It’s got a worn green leather cover, and is bulging at the seams with stuff he inserted. He obviously copied some items over from an earlier book, but also taped in addresses from torn off corners of envelopes, return address labels, scraps of notebook paper, stickies of every color. Some things, especially notes to himself, he didn’t tape down, so you have to turn the pages carefully or bits of paper …Read More

I did my first official reading and signing of Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes this week, at the Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, NH. The next morning, I poked around Phillips Exeter Academy, founded 1781. My dad, Everett Woodman, graduated in 1935, and he called the famous preparatory school “the best university in the world.” If he could see the campus today, with its science and art centers, observatories, and Louis Kahn-designed library, he’d be doubly convinced of that. …Read More

It’s wonderful to work with an editor who makes you laugh (actually, with anyone who makes you laugh.) Materials arriving in the mail from Joanna Levine at Holt include treats that I put up on my refrigerator next to pictures of my favorite people. Joanna’s got a keen editorial eye (she zeroes right in on that missing bit of plot), but other talents, too. Here’s what came with an edited manuscript: “Good bird” is high praise from Mr. …Read More