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115 pages

English

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In a village in India, a forsaken man is about to kill himself in quiet despair. A million miles away, Katya Misra is celebrating a perfect evening in her fine, academic life in Seattle . . . until she is informed that her teenage son Kabir has run away to India in search of a father he has never met. Contemptuous of her homeland and determined to bring Kabir back where he belongs, Katya must follow her son into the home of a suicidal farmer, in a village where, every eight hours, a man kills himself. Here, as Kabir's father inspires his son with his selfless social work, Katya finds an ally in the farmer's wife Gayatribai, who saves Kabir's life by damaging her own, and in return asks for Katya's help in keeping her husband alive in the suicide epidemic that has gripped this treacherously changing nation. Whipped up in a world of violent protest rallies, mass weddings, inglorious suicides, and a love that demands to be rekindled, Katya must learn whose life can be saved and whose she should just let go.

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	23 avril 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184004106
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0600€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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RANDOM HOUSE INDIA
Published by Random House India in 2013 Copyright Sonora Jha 2013
Random House Publishers India Private Limited Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301, UP
Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London SW1V 2SA United Kingdom
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author s and publisher s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 9788184004106
For Sahir
Contents
1. Indian Children Don t
2. Father or Guardian of Meera Andhale
3. There s No Getting Around Death in Vidarbha
4. Kids and Cows and Strangers, All Come Home
5. To Speak of Sweet Things
6. Bajirao is a Lucky Man
7. Drought, Desire, and Deceit
8. Lost
9. Like Startled Crows
10. The Waters of Drought
11. Can You Really Help Me?
12. There is No Crisis-vrisis Here
13. The Young Dhanpurean Theatre Company
14. Protest
15. Prayer
16. Paaus
17. The Forty-first Criterion
18. Marry Me
19. The Wanton Bride
20. Has He Done it Yet?
21. I Grinned at Her
22. Immigrant Song
Acknowledgements
A Note on the Author
1

Indian Children Don t
IN A ROOM with perfect acoustics, she doesn t hear her smart phone ring. Sixteen missed calls, and then one more-from someone whose heart is pounding at the other end-assemble themselves urgently under the machine s command of silence.
Meanwhile, the smart phone s owner says into the auditorium s microphone, And that is why, my friends, you must join me in hoping that tomorrow, President Obama slips on a banana peel.
The rumble of laughter tells her she has just added around twenty more people to the line that will form in the auditorium s foyer for the sale and signing of her book. In her years here, she has concluded that Americans like nothing more than laughter. They especially like it when foreigners can touch the American funny bone. In Seattle, thank goodness, you can be more satirical than slapstick.
As she answers questions, she looks over at the one vacant spot in the audience. They could have filled that seat too, but she wanted to keep it open, so she could imagine Kabir there. What would he have thought of this evening if he were here instead of visiting her parents in Mumbai? He would have kept his face frozen, his eyes sardonic. People laugh too easily, he would say. And you, Mom, go for the low-hanging fruit of their ill-developed humour.
In the seat next to Kabir s, though, is a smiling face. It belongs to a man named Alec Rauland, who is grinning because he loves her and because this is her big moment. He may not agree with a single word in Dr Katya Misra s It s Racist Not to Laugh at Obama: Why Caricaturing the President is Important to Politics , but he s the one who cooked delicious meals for her and took Kabir skiing while she wrote. He s the one driving her home after tonight s wine reception.
Sixty-seven books sold tonight, and she s a hundred steps closer to tenure. The dean is here and so are the key members of the rank and tenure committee. The book should undo some of the damage of the letters that lie screaming in her tenure file. Two of these letters declared that Dr Katya Misra is not a team player . One went so far as to use that most damning of all words in American academia, that single adjective of intangible yet fatal potency that had seen many an otherwise tenurable head roll: Uncollegial. Nobody quite knows what the word means except that it means no tenure .
The other thing she knows is that the word came up a few times during the proceedings of the Ethics Committee that she set into motion against the department chair, whom she had accused of sexually harassing a female student. It turned out that her accusations were proven false, by everyone including the student involved and by the campus newspaper. Dr Katya Misra offered a written apology to the department chair for the distress caused; Dr Katya Misra was generously let off the hook with no more than a written word in her file: Uncollegial.
So, she s now done the collegial thing and invited all these disenchanted people to this event with a personal, hand-written, hand-delivered note on 100 lb recycled white smooth matte cardstock ivory-coloured paper. None of the people on the tenure committee has actually bought her book, but that s only to be expected because she has a signed copy waiting for them in their campus mailboxes. The department chair s copy is wrapped in luxurious 60 lb white textured litho paper with an embossed image of dragonflies working together-as a team-to lift up a daisy.
Katya walks around the foyer, generously receiving all nods and smiles thrown her way. People are dressed rather well tonight, for a city as badly dressed as Seattle. Men are in suits and women in dresses. The aging hippies are here too, thanks to some keywords in the book title.
She swims in and out of conversation over her glass of merlot and her favourite hors d oeuvre-apple-wood-smoked Anjou pear wedges wrapped with prosciuotto and gorgonzola. She can t eat gorgonzola at home, because Kabir is lactose-intolerant. But if he were here, he would have eaten these anyway, because he is fourteen years old and doesn t care about this thing called consequence .
She looks across the room and sees Alec rapt in conversation with someone. Is that Dr Elaine Steinberg? No, it s Alicia McKinsey, the department s administrative assistant. So, even Katya s fabulous book will not have her faculty friends engage her blue-collar fianc in conversation. They still wonder what Katya could possibly have in common with a cop from the Seattle Police Department.
Katya knows that the word on the street is that the only thing she has in common with Alec Rauland is that he, too, has a bit of a bad rap. Well, maybe more than just a bit. Six years ago, Alec Rauland shot a Native American man in the shin, on the suspicion that the visibly agitated man was wielding a gun and planning to aim it at a barista in a coffee shop when the barista declined to give the man some money. Turns out the man was asking for coffee. The barista was, yes, turning him away, but the man was only reaching into his pocket for a recyclable coffee mug, not a gun. The trigger-happy Alec Rauland was placed on administrative duties until authorities completed their investigation and reported their findings to the King County Prosecutor s Office. The police chief stuck his neck out for Alec Rauland, who had an otherwise stellar record. The Native American man was paid a large compensation and his medical expenses and subsequent care were taken care of. Alec Rauland apologized and was reinstated. But there was a report in his file.
Katya has also heard that some of the discerning intellectual minds around her believe that Alec Rauland is with this Indian woman as a form of atonement, albeit with the wrong kind of Indian. If she believed that for a day, she would at least get a good laugh out of it. But, no, Katya knows that Alec and she have something that goes deeper, so deep that she can t reach all the way in and turn it into words that she may then say out loud to explain herself to Dr Elaine Steinberg.
Explaining herself, picking an identity and playing into it, would make it all so much easier. But she knows better than to fall into the trap of belonging . Just when you think you do, someone shows you that you don t, or lets you go, or, worst of all, tells you you are free to leave. If rugs are so easy to pull from under your feet, it s best not to stand on rugs at all.
Katya moves closer to the dean, who has looked over at her a few times with a congratulatory grin. On her way, Alec reaches out his hand towards her, but it s too far away for her to squeeze, not if she wants to get a word in with the dean before he leaves. She throws Alec a grin instead. She can hear what he s talking about. That same story, about the first time they met, because that s always the question most people ask him at Katya s university events.
She was jaywalking, crossing the street right in front of my car. I turn on my police lights and she looks right at me with those gorgeous brown eyes of hers. She doesn t miss a step and goes right on walking. I m sitting there, shocked at this woman s nerve. I get out of my car, and as I approach, she starts saying all these things in gibberish. Later, I find out it s Hindi, right? But there I am in the street, looking at this woman in her figure-hugging skirt-suit and her high-heeled boots, yanking my chain, trying to make like she s fresh off the boat and doesn t know American pedestrian laws. Or how to speak English.
Alicia s laughing and she claps her hands. It s a good thing Kabir isn t here. He hates when people do that. It s overkill, he says.
But Alec seems to feel encouraged. And then, even though there are all these people watching, I just stand there and ask for her name and I let her go. No ticket. A week later, I still can t get this beautiful woman out of my mind. It was the way she walked, you know, like she owned the street she walked on. So, I find out she s a professor here at the University of Seattle and I call her and ask her out to coffee. Then I find out she actually thinks she owns the whole world. That s enough for me in a woman.
Did you run a background check on her through your police department? Alicia is asking, but Katya doesn t linger to listen. She is now almost by the dean. Someone steps in to shake his hand. She can t just stand here, looking unoccupied. She fidgets for a moment with the buttons on her white