Karma, by Rishi Reddi, Harper Perennial; $12.95: Each of the stories in this startlingly mature collection shows first- and second-generation Indian-Americans attempting to manage the disconnect between cultures. The premise is hardly a new one, but Reddi’s understated prose and her choice of details give her revelations a quiet power.(link.)

Some part of me groaned. Karma? You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s really the best title you can come up with? Saying the premise is hardly new seems like the understatement of the generation. My skimming glance over the title story (then findable online, now sadly only partially available online as a pdf excerpt) quickly got me to a line that seemed worrisomely familiar:

. . Shankar and Neha were deposited on the threshold of their new life.

Oh not, not another catalog of the first apartment’s goods! Quick, do they mention those EIGHT DOLLARS?And then I caught myself. So what if there’s another book with tales of confusion and misunderstanding blossoming into a new life? Yet another list of the precise order in which first a chest-of-drawers was purchased and then a record player? Every husband’s frantic search for his clothes among the silk saris cheongsams? How many books do we have on roadtrips, replete with convertibles, mix-tapes, and crazy encounters? Or thrillers about the moody American expat? Perhaps immigration-fiction, the constant probing of that crease in the heart, is a genre unto itself. (Shanti, Manish, there are no mangos or mehndhi patterns or emroidered mirrors on the cover, just a stencilled pigeon and some flowers, and even the font is free of devnagari-styled serifs.)

I frequently bemoan the fact that minority writers feel the need to their minority’s themes while a white man has the freedom to write a Japanese story and gets the whole canvas to play on. I want the New Yorker to write a two-page review of a great American novel that’s deeply, equally relevant to the whole nation and have the desi name be almost an afterthought, as it is with so many of the other categories of accomplishment we celebrate here. I want my white or Asian or black or Hispanic friends to call me up and say, “You have to read this book,” where the book is by a desi author but that commonality between me and the author has nothing to do with their insistence. Why must we always be meekly constrained to the edges?

But who am I kidding? I want to write that book, and I want all my friends to rave to each other about it. But I can’t even write most of a blogpost in two whole weeks. This woman, on the other hand, is an environmental lawyer, is raising a daughter, and serves on the board of SAALT. Yet somehow she found the time to write story after story, one of which was even chosen by the illustrious Michael Chabon for a Best American Short Stories collection, and then get them published as a book. (link.) If she needs to write out her version of the disconnect story, and she does it well enough to garner good reviews from The New Yorker and the Washington Post, maybe I should give her a chance without rolling my eyes. Literature is not just about the keywords on the dust jacket. It’s also about voice–and this woman has voice.

The cliche is that the test of a pudding is in the taste–but the aftertaste is where a masterwork can be destroyed or raised to heavenliness.(Example: I could give you an intellectual list of reasons why Snow Falling on Cedars is a good novel, but the best proof is that strawberries have always smelled sweeter since.)I read the title story, Karma, online. It’s pleasant enough, and deeply recognizable in its basic structure–new couple from India, how will they make it? Hard work and serendipity, of course! And yet, for all my cynicism, it has since stuck with through the darkening of the moon–not because of the life details which are recognizably uber desi but the details which anyone can appreciate, like the lives of birds . As the Washington Post reviewer Adriana Leshko wrote, “While Many of the stories seem simple, characters and plots linger long after you turn the page.”

So next weekend I’ll try again to work on my Great American novel. This weekend I’ll be in a bookstore, humbly paying for my Karma.

Five of the ten rivers listed in the report are in Asia alone. They are the Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Ganges and Indus. . .Even without warmer temperatures threatening to melt Himalayan glaciers, the Indus River faces scarcity due to over-extraction for agriculture. Fish populations, the main source of protein and overall life support systems for hundreds of thousands of communities worldwide, are also being threatened.(link)

In a report issued about dangers to 10 of the world’s great rivers, the WWF. Climate changes threatens the Ganges and especially the Indus with both a decrease in supply and the hazardous instability of sudden floods. The Indus basin more than 178 million people and draws as much of 80% of it’s water from Himalayan glaciers; the Ganges basin has atleast 200 million people (See Razib’s comment below). 60% of the tributaries of the Ganges are being diverted. Both rivers are the homes to their own special populations of rare freshwater dolphins–approximately 1100 Indus river dolphins and only a couple thousand Ganges Dolphins, as well as a very rare Ganges freshwater shark. The Ganges and Brahmaputra together span 10 biomes and water the last tiger inhabited mangroves. The report is available in PDF form and is well-written and well-foot-noted–it’s a concise set of geography lessons and worth reading on its own.

One of the loveliest things I ever saw in India was while crossing a branch of the Ganges in the West Bengal countryside–half a dozen dolphins jumping in coordinated arcs across the river, their tails flipping, backlit by the afternoon sun. I stood up in my amazement, rocking the boat, but I was suddenly unafraid–they were so delightful. I want my grandchildren to see them too.

Related: Drinking Water, Melting Glaciers and Climate Change, previous WWF report on Rivers.

(Updated in light of Razib’s comment.)

Last month Abdul Ghani Khan, a senior Pakistani doctor, was killed by a remote-controlled bomb shortly after urging villagers to vaccinate their children. [link]

According to the Daily Times of Pakistan Dr. Khan was killed in Bajur Agency after trying to convince addressing a convening local jirga, or council; he was greeted angrily in an area where opposition to the vaccine has spread by word of mouth and radio sermon.

“As soon as we reached there, an armed prayer leader warned us against visiting the area. Some locals said: ‘On one hand, our enemy (a reference to the United States) is bombing us for no reason while on the other hand you are coming here disguised as polio campaigners to spread vulgarity,” [an injured companion of Dr. Khan] told Daily Times at the hospital. (link)

The day before the Daily Times had reported that 24,000 children in Northern Pakistan have gone unvaccinated, and earlier Pakistan confirmed a sharp uptick in polio cases (28 to 39), concentrated in the borderlands with similarly troubled Afghanistan. To put this all in perspective, the two nations apparently did successfully immunize 2 million children only a few months ago.Clerical exhortation can cut both ways:

In response, senior Muslims in Pakistan have issued pro-vaccination fatwa decrees. Some mothers are reportedly getting children vaccinated secretly for fear of local reprisals.[link]

Last fall Saudia Arabia began requiring vaccination certificates for young pilgrims from polio-stricken countries; while many of these families are too young to make the voyage to Mecca, the news might travel back and influence parents, especially mothers.

Compared with fathers, however, mothers, when addressed alone, seem less hostile to the vaccine. “Women are often willing to have children vaccinated, but don’t dare defy their husbands or fathers-in-law,” said Shazia Irum, 27, a health worker in Pakistan’s programme to offer basic care to mothers and children.. . .The Pakistan government has also encouraged leading clerical figures to launch polio vaccination drives and messages about the benefits of the vaccine have been broadcast from mosques in many towns and villages.(link)

Women sneaking away from their homes to immunize their children underscores the one iron-clad rule of development–educate and empower women, and you will help the whole society. Another common theme in articles about the crisis is distrust of foreign vaccines and foreign visitors. If you’re a brave, gold-hearted diaspora volunteer who might come off as more desi than pardesi, check out the options. Despite the grim news, when I look at the numbers I can’t help but feel that the martyrdom of Dr. Khan was not for nothing, and that diligent, unflagging efforts will ultimately succeed. It’s just important to nurture the local infrastructure and very important to not give up. Persistence pays off, much as I learned by sneaking in here.