I pride myself on being a niche reader. If someone has written a book about her year in the Gobi desert with a pet Chihuahua for company she has in me a very interested audience. Great if it has not made it to any of the best-seller lists. There is a certain feeling of selectivity and intimacy knowing you are among the chosen few who have glimpsed into her rather unusual world. One evening on my way home on the Metro I had a seriously humbling experience.
I was seated across from two young men leafing through a book in a state of feverish excitement. My bibliophilic receptors were alerted at once in the presence of such suggestive stimulus. From where I sat I could see the book jacket but not the title. Tantalizing and wholly frustrating. Since I couldn't possibly keep staring at a man's lap, I turned back to my crossword. I kept a sneaky eye on the duo hoping to catch the title before they de-trained.
I got lucky just when their station arrived. As they walked to the door I saw it - "Secrets of Gay Witchcraft". In terms of niche I was not going to be able to best that one any time soon.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
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