When reporter and novelist Sonia Faleiro (The Girl) meets a lively, fast-talking 19-year old dancer named Leela in Mumbai, she finds herself intrigued by the characters of the dance bar world and decides to learn more. Over the course of five years, Faleiro painstakingly interviews Leela and her friends and family, as well as other key characters in the Mumbai dance bar scene and captures their stories. The result? Beautiful Thing, a captivating nonfiction narrative full of rich prose and powerful Hinglish dialogues that exposes readers to an underground world where people are mere commodities. A world where relatives sell young girls to the highest bidder and dancers lose their value well before their mid-20s.

At its center, Leela, a proud, beautiful bar dancer full of infectious joie de vivre whose philosophies and observations belie her horrific upbringing. Faleiro tell us haunting tales of Leela and her compatriots in their own voice — sharp, vivid writing that deftly avoids any preachiness, piety or poverty porn. Faleiro documents Leela and her friends as they navigate the world of exotic dancing, brush up against violent gangsters and educate themselves about the ever-present dangers of HIV/AIDS. But when Leela and the other dancers face a politician determined to rid the city of dance bars, their lives are changed dramatically.

In between her travels in India, a jet-lagged Faleiro kindly agreed to tell SM readers more about Beautiful Thing.

In writing this book, you spent roughly nine months with Leela, two years interviewing scenesters in the Mumbai bar dancing scene and two more years continuing to write and research the book – a total of five years. Were you ever tempted to cease work on Beautiful Thing? If so, what led you to persist? I remember coming home at dawn after the birthday party in the hijra brothel, which you read about early in the book, and thinking I couldn’t do this for five years. It was just too hard. But the fact is that however hard it was for me to observe, those times, that life, was a hundred times worse for the hijras or Leela to experience. I reminded myself of that every time I wanted to quit. Researching Beautiful Thing changed me. Now I’m suspicious of easy stories. I know the untold, the hidden, the stories we need to report on take time to reveal themselves. They demand as much as they promise to give.

What are some of the perils and perks of writing nonfiction narrative? Well I’m in Bihar right now. So you tell me, peril or perk? I write non-fiction because I want to understand India. The people who interest me live on the margins or in sub cultures, and they experience India in a way that’s impossible to imagine—It must be observed. And I like to observe people and things. I like to take my time finding my way around what intrigues me. Non-fiction is an excuse to do that.

What did you learn from writing Beautiful Thing that you will incorporate in your next project, also a nonfiction piece (the topic of which you have not yet disclosed)? I’m not sure I should have stopped at five years. I’d like to spend more time on my next book.

Who are the writers (if any) that inspired you while you wrote Beautiful Thing, both contemporary and classic? When I first started writing about the margins I had no template to refer to.  No one in India did that sort of thing. One of the editors at the publication I worked at told me I was being obsessive and suggested I get down to interviewing Aamir Khan instead. Then I discovered Dayanita Singh’s Myself Mona Ahmed, a memoir/biography in which Dayanita’s photos of Mona, a hijra trying to find her place in the world, are accompanied by text supplied by Mona. That was the first book I ever read that made my ‘obsession’ okay. And every couple of years I return to Adrian Nicole Le Blanc’s Random Family. It’s a book about poverty in America. And it’s reportage at peak form.

Beautiful Thing offers a colorful rendering of the Mumbai bar world. In many scenes, you, the narrator, find yourself chatting with gangsters over chai, hanging with hijras in the redlight district, etc. What was the most threatening situation you found yourself in? There were a few. But it’s never going to be easy doing this job, and dwelling on such matters isn’t helpful. I carry my cell phone and pepper spray.

Since writing the book, I know you have been unable, despite efforts on your part, to keep in contact with Leela herself. What do you think her response would be to the finished product? She won’t be thrilled at the amount of space expended on her mother, Apsara. Or on Shetty, her former boss. On people she didn’t care for, either at the time or in retrospect. But that apart, I think—I hope—she’ll really like it.

What surprised you most about the reactions to Beautiful Thing? That Leela’s experiences came as a surprise to many. You cannot live in India and fail to see how difficult women have it. And I’m not just talking about women who are poor or low caste. But of course a woman like Leela who is, in fact, poor and of low caste is born into a life of difficulties that are to us unimaginable. And these difficulties are inevitably compounded by all manner of abuse. This is life for a majority of women in India and we need to realize that. Leela is not the ‘Other India.’ She, and women like her are representative of India.

The New York Times noted its “limber, detailed prose.” The Guardian stated: “Waldman’s prose is almost always pitch-perfect, whether describing a Bangladeshi woman’s relationship with her landlady or the political manoeuvring within a jury.” In The Washington Post, Chris Cleave wrote that Waldman “excels at involving the reader in vibrant dialogues. Additionally, The Submission was named Esquire’s Book of the Year, Entertainment Weekly’s #1 Novel for the Year, NPR’s Top Ten Novels for 2011 and the list goes on. NPR’s Maureen Corrigan called it “gorgeously written novel” and went so far as to call it the 9/11 novel. High praise, indeed.

In an interview with The Browser, Waldman was asked to define a 9/11 novel.  She responded:

“I guess a 9/11 novel is one that grows out of the attacks in one way or another and uses literature to try to shed some new light. It seems to cover such a wide range of books – from ones that are trying to completely reinvent that day to ones where it’s only a plot device to reroute characters lives. And it includes one where 9/11 isn’t even mentioned – my novel, The Submission.”

According to that same interview 150 works of fiction and nearly 1,000 works of non-fiction have in some way, shape or form been inspired by the events of 9/11. Salon columnist Laura Miller writes that the absence of any great 9/11 literature suggests the banality of death itself. She states: “Life, not death, is the novelist’s subject.” Well, that doesn’t seem to have stopped hundreds of writers, including Waldman. However, The Submission may be a 9/11 novel, but it isn’t the 9/11 novel. It remains simply one of forgettable hundreds trying and failing to meet the strange, insatiable thirst for 9/11 literature.

The Submission tells the tale of half a dozen characters whose lives change after an American-born architect of Indian descent named Mohammed Khan wins a contest to design the  9/11 memorial, provoking widespread outrage and controversy.  (Think the Maya Lin controversy magnified a gazillionfold.) While Claire, a 9/11 widow and wealthy Manhattanite struggles to fight for Khan’s right to remain in the competition, others, like the ambitious New York governor, use the occasion as a vehicle to make political gains. The novel introduces us to a smarmy Muslim American politician, a hapless community of Bangladeshi illegals, a family of angry blue-collar workers who lost a firefighter son in the attack, a radical Islamaphobe and others whose lives have been drastically affected by 9/11.

Waldman, who was assigned to the New York metro desk as a reporter at the Times when the towers fell, likely found herself exposed to many of the factions that arose when the disaster occurred and undoubtedly possess an enormous amount of familiarity with the topic.  As one of the writers who contributed to the Portraits of Grief project, which attempted to chronicle each life lost in the September 11^th attacks, she has seen her share of 9/11 firsthand. One wishes she had been able to take that experience to humanize her characters. In an interview shortly after the book was released, she said:

 “As a novelist, I didn’t want to raid details of people’s lives for material. But also, as a reporter, I felt ambivalent about the “Portraits of Grief”. The wordcount left no room for complexity. The project made me ask, how do you avoid reducing the dead to thumbnail profiles? People are much more complicated than can be represented through daily journalism. They deserve to be portrayed and remembered in all their fullness.”    

Clicking through the Portraits of Grief project, which average 200 words apiece, one can see how tempting it would be to delve into the subject in depth and allow an individual narrative to flow on to the 300+ pages Waldman employs. Unfortunately, allowing a novelist to roam untethered poses its own risks. Waldman makes the rookie mistake of trying to do too much where much less would have sufficed.

The novel first appeared as short-story excerpts in The Atlantic, a form much better suited to Waldman’s futile endeavor to encapsulate the entire post-9/11 debacle in a single book. The Submission nobly attempts to stuff the narratives of half a dozen characters into an entire book, but weaves them in a confusing, unsatisfying manner. The biggest failing, by far, are Waldman’s loosely sketched characters, who spew forth earnest, stiff dialogue that serves to stereotype, not humanize. And sadly, Waldman attempts to accomplish a neat, cyclical narrative through the use of convenient plot twists and various ironies. (Along with a heap of wishful thinking and clunky prose.)

Take for example, a passage about the architect Mohammed “Mo” Khan, as seen through the eyes of a skeptical, tabloid reporter. “He had a beard, but it was tastefully trimmed. His suit looked expensive, and his bearing, unlike the grasping, too-eager-to-please Indians in her neighborhood, was haughty. Next to him sat a dark-haired, foreign-looking woman in a cardinal red suit that suggested she was not only comfortable with attention but craved it. Men, some of them in Islamic costumes, and a few women in headscarves, stood stiffly against the wall behind them, looking like a police lineup of terrorism suspects.”

For a book that drives along on the suspense of a single question (Will Khan be allowed to design the 9/11 memorial?), any interest in an outcome dies of boredom 20 pages in.  For example, Waldman’s depiction of Asma Haque, the illegal Bangladeshi immigrant whose husband, a domestic worker, perished in the attacks, represents potential for a powerful narrative about the problems families of undocumented workers faced after 9-11. However, in Waldman’s prose, any elegance a character like Asma may have had falls flat. Seen through a narrower scope, the characters could be compelling. But as a whole, the characters are tiring.

Somewhere out there, people have come up with some fanciful checklist of the quintessential elements a 9/11 novel contains and have decided that The Submission meets this standard (however vague that may be). But the fact remains, a true 9/11 novel would delve deeper into the human complexities that drive the issues surrounding the attack. Ten years after September 11, the nation still reels with the aftereffects of the catastrophe’s reduction of humans into mere keywords. Brown? Terrorist. Muslim? Terrorist. Turban? Terrorist. Sadly, Waldman’s The Submission does much the same thing. It takes the same tired tropes and trots them out for the reader to rally over. Maybe The Great 9/11 Novel exists. Maybe it doesn’t. But either way, the list will not include The Submission.

Instead, it comes from candid portraits such as that of Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, a 20-year old in New Jersey who was appended by the FBI after he tried to join a militant group in Somalia. In her portrait of Alessa, Rockwell depicts him in bubble-gum pink tones, prone on a floral bedspread, cuddling with his beloved cat, Princess Tuna. Unsettling. The narrative of terror that we often see seldom contains photos of wannabe terrorists cuddling with their kitty cats, or of the underwear bomber as a sullen teenager, posing during a school trip.

I first came across Rockwell’s vivid, unforgettable portraits by chance, wandering around an exhibit at the Twelve Gates Gallery in Philadelphia. There, a series of small, glittery paintings of a regal, coy Benazir Bhutto caught my eye. Two years later, on February 3, Rockwell returned to Twelve Gates Gallery for the launch of The Little Book of Terror, where she read from her book to a rapt audience. Rockwell graciously agreed to build upon temporarily suspend the Sepia-Chapati friendship rivalry and share more about her book with SM readers.

Tell us about your time at Chapati Mystery.

About six months or so after I left academia in 2006, I reconnected with Manan Ahmed, aka Sepoy, and he asked me to write for Chapati Mystery. I’d never written for a blog before and I was not interested at first. But Sepoy guaranteed me complete anonymity and after a while I agreed and took the pseudonym Lapata. “Lapata” in Hindi-Urdu can mean anonymous, but also ‘disappeared.’ I had disappeared from my life as an academic, my vocation for fifteen years. I also began to sign my paintings with “Lapata,” because they were only seen online, and on Chapati Mystery for a couple of years. A part of me also wanted to escape the legacy contained within my real name, I suppose, that of my grandfather, Norman Rockwell. I wanted to make art without the burden of expectations that come with that identity.

 Was there a certain amount of hesitation about revealing yourself as Lapata?

Yes, I was happy with remaining anonymous, but after a while I realized that in the absence of any input from me, people invented their own story of my identity. It was clear that I was assumed to be Pakistani, mostly because Sepoy is, I suppose. I decided I’d rather have my own baggage than some invented identity, so I slowly went public, starting with my first art exhibit in San Francisco in 2008. I do continue to blog under that name, though, and all my paintings are signed in Urdu with “Lapata.”

Writing vs. painting. If you were forced to pick just one which would it be and why?

When I was an academic, I did pick one, and that was writing, of course. I stopped thinking of myself for an artist for quite some time. But I was very depressed. I didn’t even think I was going to leave academia to do art, I just knew I had to leave. But when I started to paint again, I realized that it was something I couldn’t live without, like eating or sleeping. Writing is very important to me too, but I suppose I could live without it if I had to.

How has the birth of your daughter refined your artistic process?

That’s a good question. Having a child refines your sense of available time, because all of a sudden you don’t have any. I have become much more efficient in my use of time, and, surprisingly, much more productive. I had a show opening in Canada recently, where someone came up and asked me what I did to get my mind off all the horrible things I’m obviously obsessed with (terrorists, torture, etc.). I said, “I have a two-year-old.” She said, “Ah, I understand now.”

How do you describe “The Little Book of Terror?” A collection of essays? An art book?

It’s both. In my creative process, the art usually comes first, but in some cases a project evolves in tandem, words and images come to me at the same time. It doesn’t take that long to read, because the art is part of what you are meant to ‘read.’ In that sense, it’s similar to a graphic novel. I am a great admirer of that genre, but, unfortunately, I do not have what it takes to pull off that kind of work. Let’s call it an art book with words. Or a words book with art.

Tell me about the cover of your book, it’s a very provocative pose. A young hijabi woman with a gun in her right hand sits cradled in the arms of a young man (ostensibly her lover), also armed. It’s a jarring portrait.

That painting is based on a photograph of the young woman who allegedly suicide bombed the Moscow subway in 2010. Her name was Dzhanet Abdullayeva and she was seventeen years old. The photo was a self-portrait of her with her husband, who had earlier been killed by Russian forces. I remember when I first saw the photo of her on the cover of the New York Times at a rest stop somewhere in Vermont. It’s the kind of grainy, low quality self-portrait people use on their Facebook pages. I couldn’t get it out of my head, which is usually how a painting starts for me.

In the introduction to your book, Amitava Kumar writes, “I think of Daisy Rockwell’s portraits as a bright, playful gallery composed of pictures that terrorists themselves might put up on their Facebook pages.” Comment.

Perhaps? I kind of imagine terrorists as being subscribers to some service other than Facebook, such as Orkut.

What’s your favorite portrait in the set?

I don’t like to play favorites with my paintings. It’s sort of like asking which of my children I like the best (luckily I only have one of those). I am very fond of portrait of John Walker Lindh, it’s nice and colorful, and empathize with his desire to really immerse himself in learning a language. The cover portrait I’m obviously attached to as well. But really, I love them all equally.

What have been the reactions to your book? The portraits are charmingly idyllic, but feature some of the most divisive figures in history. Can you tell me about the most negative reactions to them?

Well the book is just out, so I have not had that many reactions yet. But I’ve exhibited many of the paintings in different places, and weirdly I have had no negative reactions at all. I’m not sure why, but it might be because the message is ambiguous. Although there is a lot of sympathy in my portraits, I don’t think people think I am saying, “Go, terrorists!” My goal is to provoke thought and reflection, rather than to take sides.

Plans to publish again? This particular book features only a smattering of your paintings.

Definitely there is material for more publications, but I’m not sure which direction I want to go in yet. I also have some books just made out of words in the pipeline, so look out for those!

Charles Dickens would have turned 200 today. If you haven’t read his books, here is the digested read. At the request of BBC World Service I wrote a brief reminiscence recalling my experience reading Dickens in my childhood. Here is the longer version of what I recorded for them:

Children have lurid imaginations. They don’t need much help imagining misfortune. But if you are aware of poverty, or see suffering around you, Charles Dickens can be a boon. This is because he is so good at populating that stricken landscape with indelible characters outfitted with violent habits and unforgettable names.

I grew up in a small town in India. The novels of Charles Dickens, in abridged form, were required reading in schools. My uncles on my mother’s side worked in prisons. I could look up from a page of Great Expectations and see the convicts working in the house, sweeping a stone courtyard or feeding the cows. Each man, clad in white khadi with blue stripes, would have an iron manacle around his ankle. I went back to the page I was reading, but now troubled by the thought that soon one of them would be beside me, asking me to fetch a file.

In the books that we read, a dramatic pencil illustration would be printed every few pages, with a line from the novel serving as a caption.

“Please, Sir, I want some more.” That line was Dickens’s gift to me.

At bus-stops, in the homes of less well-off relatives, outside tea-stalls, I looked at the faces of other children as they regarded food that was displayed, or that someone else was eating, and I’d think back to the line I had read in Oliver Twist.

In the new shining India, 42.5 percent of its children suffer from malnutrition. The term “Dickensian” evokes cold dark workplaces and cramped rooms. It doesn’t belong to the India of teeming cities with soaring flyovers and glittering multirise buildings. Yet, you can still look at the stunted children and remember, without sentimentality, that old line from Dickens: “Please, Sir, I want some more.”

(L-R) Hisham Matar, Amitava Kumar and Zohra Saeed at the “War and its Representations” panel discussion at last Saturday’s AAWW event. Photo Credit: Preston Merchant

Today is exactly six days after Sugi sent me to the Asian American Literary Festival and four days into National Novel Writing Month. What better than a poetry contest with a literary giveaway and some photos of your favorite Asian American writers to inspire you fervent scribblers?

Here’s the deal. This week marked the end of a pop culture era. I’m talking about the anti-climactic marital misadventures of E! darling Kim Kardashian. Frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn. But Sir Salman Rushdie obviously thought it worth a Tweet or three. Here’s his limerick about the sex-tape starlet:

“The marriage of poor kim #kardashian / was krushed like a kar in a krashian. / her kris kried, not fair! / why kan’t I keep my share? / But kardashian fell klean outa fashian

But guess what, mutineers. You can do better. Leave your entries in the comments along. Winner gets a copy of Amitava Kumar’s award-winning book, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb. We’ll announce a winner in the comments next Friday, November 11th.

Writer’s block? Check out another lovely photo from the Asian American Literary Festival below from the Mutiny’s own Preston Merchant along with some writing advice. (Thanks Preston!) The accompanying quotes were tweeted on the day of the event through the SepiaMutiny account.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz (L) hangs out with author Min Jin Lee (R). Photo Credit: Preston Merchant

On Finishing a Book

“I live in the universe of doubt. The hard part isn’t writing the book – it’s finishing it.” – Junot Diaz

“It took me 12 years to publish my first book.” – Min Jin Lee

“To finish a book, you need compassion for yourself.” – Junot Diaz

On Authors Who Inspired Them

“Reading Naipaul really helped me as a writer. I don’t think he wants to help me – but he did.” Min Jin Lee on A House for Mr. Biswas

“We’ve drawn so much courage from writers that we didn’t know.” -Min Jin Lee

On [Ethnic] Origins

“As immigrants, we cast our audience as the parents who wish we became doctors. Our audience is the neighbor offering us a joint” Junot Diaz

“The idea of being a fiction writer was such a luxury to me.” Min Jin Lee

“I was told many times that my writing was either too Korean – or not Korean enough.” -Min Jin Lee

“Can we please tell ourselves to stop being the Tiger Mom editors?” -Min Jin Lee

“It’s a-historical of our biographies to write.” Junot Diaz

“If you grew up the way I did – a Dominican kid in New Jersey – being an artist was insane.” – Junot Diaz

On The Importance of Audience

“Despite all the hating in the blogosphere – most of the people [that read your work] want to like you.” Junot Diaz

“As a writer, you need a strong conceptualization of what the reader needs.” – Junot Diaz

Photo Credit: Preston Merchant

I love me a good book. But even more than that, I love me a good literary festival featuring some of my favorite authors. Tonight kicks off Page Starter 2011, the Asian American Literary Festival’s third annual event. The event, which concludes tomorrow, features literary darlings such as Junot Diaz and Teju Cole. And even more exciting for Sepia Mutiny, our very own Amitava Kumar will be honored as the winner of the Asian American Literary award for nonfiction for his book, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb. To celebrate, we turned the tables on this SM blogger and asked him some questions for a change.

What surprised you about the response to your last book, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb?

That it won a prize?

No, actually, now that you ask, let me unburden myself. At the New York launch of the book, an academic friend, very political, a proper hater of the FBI, walked out after I had said something about how exasperating I had found talking to one of my subjects, someone who was convicted of terrorism. Was the man guilty of everything the government had charged? No. Was he a pathetic liar? Yes. Couldn’t both facts coexist?

Academics, so many of them, demand such purity! I hate it. As a writer, I want to portray how messed-up the world is. Also, if I could add: As a writer, I am so messed-up, and I don’t want to hide that either.

What’s the most risky situation you found yourself in while writing your last book?

I got myself into riskier situations when writing Husband of a Fanatic. For example, I was waiting in a market in Lahore to meet a man at midnight–that man was from the same group that a few weeks later would kill Daniel Pearl. Or the day in Ahmedabad when I was ushered into the room to meet the RSS leader who had ordered the killing of Muslims. The man wasn’t threatening but I had lied through my teeth to get there, and I could see I had aroused the suspicions of his handlers.

During the writing of A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, my return to Kashmir posed a problem. But it posed the risk only of embarrassment. I was visiting an alcoholic uncle in an army camp.

How have you seen your writing evolve since Husband of a Fanatic?

No. Oh wait, maybe this is what I want to say: as you get older, your joints become more stiff, but your writing flows better.

Life-writing balance. Your advice for young writers?

It’s difficult, it’s difficult. That repeated phrase in that preceding sentence is the only odd kind of balance I find in my life these days. Most of my time, or at least most of my energy, seems to go into tending my children. And there are rewards, sure, but better sentences sure isn’t one of them. And yet my advice to young folk is not to say no to life, but to be disciplined. Write every single day, even if it’s only a little.

The premise of your next book?

A young man comes to the United States and hears Dr .Ruth on the radio.

Which modern Asian American writer(s) are you reading at the moment?

I’m reading the Chinese writer Yu Hua because of an event that is coming up at Asia Society. Last week, I read Suketu Mehta’s interview with Raj Rajratnam and was singed with envy. The smell of burning flesh lasted for days.

Fiction vs. non-fiction. If you were forced to pick a mistress…

Fiction. Because fiction is a demanding mistress, difficult to please, and impossible to give up.

To hear Amitava talk about his book this weekend, check out a full schedule of tomorrow’s events.

What: Page Starter 2011

Where: powerHouse Arena, 37 Main Street, Brooklyn & Melville House, 145 Plymouth St, Brooklyn

When: Saturday, October 29, 2011, 11AM-7PM

Why: Because reading is fundamental.

Tickets: $5 per event / $20 All-Day Pass / $30 All-Day Pass (w/ Afterword Party)

The video was created as a DVD insert to the Asian American Literature Review Tenth Anniversary of September 11th issue.

So many of our communities have borne witness to so much over the past 10 years; it behooves us to critically consider the moment and its aftermath—the various political, legal, and civil rights repercussions, particularly for the communities most directly affected, South Asian, Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim American. But how can we do so, when so many of the voices of affected communities remain unheard? [AALR]

You can order your copy of the AALR special issue online here now.

Why India: A Portrait? Why not the story of Japan or China or any number of other countries? What about India fascinates you enough to dedicate close to 400 pages and over four years to covering the country? Because India is, objectively speaking, the most interesting country in the world at the moment – with the possible exception of the United States. I felt there was no current book which provides a snapshot of India as it is right now, at a time of great change, but which also placed the economics and politics in a historical context.

What challenges were there to writing “an intimate biography of 1.2 billion people”? Did you ever feel as if you had swallowed off more than you could chew? The book’s title is India: A Portrait. It’s a picture drawn from many angles, but it doesn’t seek to be comprehensive. For example: there’s not much about cricket, Bollywood, the north-east or music. That “intimate biography” line is an advertising slogan from one of the editions of the book. Yes, it’s an intimate piece of writing. It uses personal stories to communicate a larger history – for example by looking at Indira Gandhi’s death through the eyes of her assassin’s son, or at the Permit Raj through the experiences of a junior scion of a business dynasty.

You’re no stranger to controversy. After Liberty or Death – India’s Journey to Independence and Division was published in 1997, there were calls for it to be banned in India. And with the publication of The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of VS Naipaul, you were embroiled in controversy when Margaret Murray, the mistress of Naipul, accused you of inaccurately portraying her in the book. What criticisms did you expect with India: A Portrait? Were there any that surprised you? If you look at the correspondence in the New York Review of Books, you will see Margaret was portrayed accurately. Her (reasonable) complaint was that she did not want the biography to be written; unfortunately VS Naipaul did. You never know where controversy might come from, and whether it will be genuine or manufactured. With India: A Portrait, I didn’t anticipate problems. I didn’t realize I’d be attacked for celebrating some of the good things that are happening in India at the moment. And I thought the 1970s debate over “Who should be allowed to write about India?” had had its day. I think it’s a good thing if different people offer their perspective on a country. Nobody would seriously argue that only an all-American can write about America, or that only a PG Wodehouse can write about Britain.

In the foreground of the most recent Mumbai bombings, what in your opinion is the greatest threat India faces and why? There are many threats: water shortages, population growth, inefficient institutions, income inequality. I don’t see the bombings as the greatest threat. There will be more attacks like this one, for sure, but fundamentally India is a country where some very different communities live in comparative harmony. If you equate India’s experience to that of neighbouring countries, there are reasons for optimism.

The book itself is divided into three sections Rashtra (Nation), Lakshmi (Wealth) and Samaj (Society). If you had the opportunity – what other sections would you add and why? No more sections! It would have got too long. I wanted to write a digestible book.

Can you tell readers of SM a little about the database your research team created to measure political nepotism and what you discovered? We investigated the growth of hereditary politics in India by checking how each MP in the Lok Sabha had won a seat. More than 2 out of 3 MPs under the age of 40 were sons or daughters of politicians. 9 out of 10 Congress party MPs under the age of 40 were hereditary. For the older generation – MPs aged 70 or over – almost every one of them had got there on personal merit rather than through a family connection. The full dataset is available on The India Site.

I’m curious. Offhand, how many times did you get threatened in the making of this book? You featured a various government officials in a variety of unflattering poses… I assume not all of them were approachable… I didn’t get threatened once. Providing you know what you are doing, India is a fairly easy country to work in – because everyone wants to say something. I’ve been writing about India for 25 years now. My wife is Indian. It’s not like being in China or Tibet, where people get in trouble if they speak openly. If you get into a tricky situation with a government official in India, it’s best to play the dumb foreigner.

I found the book, especially the first section, Rashtra, made me laugh out loud much more than I’d expected from a biography about a country. What was one of your favorite stories from the book? Hey, I’m glad it made you laugh out loud! I think my books are funny. They’re written to entertain, and to provoke readers into thinking a little bit differently. One of my favourite stories was about the social adventures of Chandraswami, the political godman. Another story I enjoyed writing was about the man from UP who runs a posh escort agency in Delhi and visits the temple each morning. Even sad stories can be funny – like going to Tihar Jail and ending up meeting Afzal Guru.

Tell us a little about the mechanics of writing the book. Number of interviews. Number of research assistants. Pages you trimmed down from. Hours in solitude. Etc. Well, it’s the fruit of many years of thinking and watching. So that makes a lot of conversations in India. I didn’t use research assistants, except for the two who appear in the text assisting with the “hereditary politics” research. They also did some work on poverty data, on education and learning, on international trade. Some interviews were in languages like Tamil, Punjabi, Telugu, Oriya – so then I had an interpreter. I wrote the book in the form it is now. I didn’t trim. I knew what I wanted to say when I set out. Hours in solitude? Many. But that’s the writer’s life.

Any hints about the topic of your next book? It’s about the Himalayas, in all their glory and distress.

Readers, stay tuned for French’s upcoming US book tour this October. You can find details in the next few weeks on The India Site and on Twitter.

This is a video of 14-year-old Anika Tabovaradan giving an impassioned speech about the need for libraries in Toronto. It is 2 a.m., she hates public speaking, she’s been waiting for four hours to talk, and a bunch of Toronto officials–including Mayor Rob Ford–are watching her. AND SHE IS AWESOME.

Way to go, Anika. You reminded me how much I love libraries, librarians, and community space.

(Here’s the related article in the Toronto Star, and a tip o’ the old hat to Romesh H, who pointed out the vid in the first place.)

> Nasim was a fixture in Chicago’s South Asian community, known for his activism, flamboyant fashion and touching poetry that dealt with themes including homosexuality, politics and his native Pakistan. He immigrated more than three decades ago.

Nasim was a founder of SANGAT/Chicago, a South Asian lesbian, gay and transgender organization. His book “Narman” which was believed to be the first book of gay themed poetry to be published in Urdu.

He was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1996.

-Associated Press

More:
Nar Narman, a short documentary on the life of Nasim, regarded as the Urdu language’s first gay poet of modern times.
My First Day in New York, A Tree of Water for Matthew Shepard, A Dead Pedophile, Gerontophilia and How To “Kill” Your Brother With Kindness (Especially If He Is Homophobe), Nasim’s poems posted at the gay bombay forum
My Father, a translation of one of his Urdu poems
Punjab Explorer interviews Nasim