What I'm Writing
I have several short stories and essays circulating. This is the first picked up in many years. It's one of about a dozen stories that respond, in one way or others, to literary classics. This one uses three epithets (three!) from Dostoevsky's The Brother's Karamazov, one of my favorite novels. I love the scene in which Ivan leans out the window of a tavern and calls his brother, in full novitiate's caftan, to come inside and talk with him. I used that talk to illustrate a conflict between three brothers not much like the three brothers Dostoevsky created, but I gave them some of the same concerns--in a twenty-first century context.
Fifty-Fifty
I wrote this novel to explain why some families, despite strong cultural values and a great deal of lip service about staying together, end up all over the world. Grandmother Gulab Kaur Gill worries about settling her family in the same country, city, and even house, but circumstances and the very nature of this ambitious family settle her daughters and son in the Middle East, Africa, India, England, and the United States, east and west coasts. Their kids move back and forth, even more mobile than their parents. Such is the modern world.
In my first two books, I wrote about Punjabi culture. It’s a culture I married into in my twenties in the seventies. My husband grew up in New Delhi and came to the United States for graduate school. We met in the International House at the University of California, Berkeley.
In my first two books, I wrote about Punjabi culture. It’s a culture I married into in my twenties in the seventies. My husband grew up in New Delhi and came to the United States for graduate school. We met in the International House at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Bride Wore Red
This is my first published novel. It’s a book about three Punjabi cousins and the American women—mostly—they marry. This is a comedy, as much a satire of American life as culture itself. It’s also a tragedy.
Dry Land Sailors
This novel is currently like the legendary boll weevil, "just looking for a home."
Heat
This is one of two poems written for artist Harry Narr's pen and in drawings. It was displayed at the State Museum in Trenton, New Jersey and the gallery at the Blaire Academy in the spring and fall, 2005.
Sea Legs
This is one of two poems written for artist Harry Narr's pen and in drawings. It was displayed at the State Museum in Trenton, New Jersey between February 22 and May 12, 2005.
The Music of the Spheres
This is something brand new which I've been writing piecemeal, to some extent, chapter by chapter, the chapters, hopefully, able to stand as individual stories. That's a genre I like very much, as you can see from The Bride Wore Red and Fifty-Fifty, and I hope this one, about an entirely different subject, will work as well. As these chapters begin to look complete, I may post them on the page for this book.