Posts Tagged ‘ Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes ’

Jana Bibi book 3 is coming soon–July 8, to be precise. You can pre-order it now from your usual sources. Here’s the summary and an excerpt to download. I love the art department at my publisher, Henry Holt and Company, Inc.–they keep coming up with wonderful new depictions of Jana’s parrot, Mr. Ganguly, for the book covers. This time, you may wonder where Mr. G is heading. Just look at the spine of the book… And then turn …Read More

I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell! They’d banish us– you know! How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell one’s name the livelong day To an admiring bog! Emily Dickinson Well, Emily wasn’t an athlete, but if she had been one, she certainly wouldn’t have gone into triumphant leaps and high fives after winning an event. In contrast to Emily’s attitude, here’s …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

Knowing that I collect parrot stories, the other day a friend sent me this news item. Recently, a man in Mexico City was pulled over at an alcohol checkpoint. The police were startled to hear a voice from inside the car screeching, “He’s drunk, he’s drunk,” and even more startled to find out that the tattle-tale was a small green parrot. The man did indeed turn out to be under the influence and was put in the pokey …Read More

It was odd enough to be experiencing mental double-exposures of past and present during my recent India visit, but how about combining fact and fiction? Walking through the town of Mussoorie, I kept my eyes open for the fictional hill station of Hamara Nagar (“Our Town”), where I set my Jana Bibi novels. Granted, it was hard to screen out the automobile traffic. Motorcycles beeped incessantly and swerved by, apparently trying to get as close as possible without …Read More

Someone asked me how I thought of the title for this book. It came from an ear worm–adapted a bit. Abinath, the pharmacist of Abinath’s Apothecary in my Jana Bibi series, is developing an alphabet of vitamins. He figures vitamins A, B, C, and so forth are all very well, but why stop with the ones everyone knows? He’s gotten to L. At the Giant Roller Skating Rink in the town of Hamara Nagar (Our Town), the current …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

A minor character in Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes is Mr. Abinath, the town’s dispensing chemist. He plays a bigger role in book two, Love Potion Number 10 (scheduled to come out in May, 2013.) His apothecary is crammed full of medicines and cosmetics, including a line of vitamins he is developing. He wants to go beyond the commonly known vitamins (A, B, C, D, etc.) and formulate a concoction for every letter of the alphabet. I got the …Read More

Jana’s in India, folks. Well of course she’s in India. That’s where Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes is set. What I mean is, in addition to the original book put out by Henry Holt (a MacMillan company), soon there will be an edition for sale on the Indian subcontinent, published by Random House India. RHI offices are in a high-rise building in Noida, a glittering modern town across the river from Delhi. Noida didn’t even exist when I was growing …Read More

I was asked recently to list the most striking differences between India of the early 1960s and India today. Oh my! Call in the pundits. For starters, then, there were about 440 million people in India; now, there are more than 1.2 billion. The cities have exploded—greater Delhi, for example, has gone from about 2.6 million to about 17 million. India is now one of the fastest-growing economies on earth. Perhaps most importantly, the communications revolution has arrived, …Read More