Thanks for this review, John Cheeran, I’m glad you liked my book!
Thanks for this review, John Cheeran, I’m glad you liked my book!
Patriots-Steelers 2005
The very first blog I wrote was about football. American football. I was dissuaded from posting it, because, I was told, it would have little relevance to those I hoped would read my book. I wondered why. I wasn’t really talking about football, but the inspiration, awe, thrill, high and low emotions that any game we follow and are fanatic are about brings us. For me, when I lived in India, it was cricket. The game, the skill, the teams, the players, wins, losses, arguments about who was the better bowler, batsman, all of it was an endless source of captivation. It was personal. From the time I was eight or nine, I remember the atmosphere in the public bus during the test match season – the whole bus hanging on someone’s radio to listen to the scratchy, tinny commentary, as if a war were in progress, our life depended on it. Then there was tv, and I was delighted when we were playing Australia, and I got to see Jeff Thompson with his blond hair doing a little dance as he ran up to deliver devastation. As an adolescent, I had a crush on Ravi Shastri. Later, I had bitter fights with dear friends about my unpatriotic love for the Sri Lankan team. And then, I moved to Southern California, and there was no more cricket. That space was empty. I tried to understand baseball, but it was not for me. You have to grow up here, play it, or at least watch your children play it, you have to have a sense for it – a cultural sense – just like I had for cricket.
And then one afternoon late in September of 2001, soul tired from watching what was the only thing on every talk show and news show, I surfed away. And there it was, that odd and jerky and violent game, the New England Patriots playing another team in colors that I did not know, yet. I watched. I did not get it. But as the months, and years have gone by, I get it. It will be many years before I fully understand the details of the game – I did not grow up with this one either, as I had with cricket. I don’t have the history, nor do I know every last intricate rule yet. But I get the feeling, and feel the things that every sports fan feels when their team is up, and when their team is down. It allows me, again, to ride those emotions with abandon, to allow myself to be jubilant, or crash and burn without fear.
“New England is back in form” it says in the sports section today.
After losing the final game of a perfect season, after losing number twelve to a shoulder injury the following season, and after a shaky start this season, New England is back in form. And reading that made me feel almost happy. I’m finally ready to take whatever comes, be that reviews that revile me, poor sales, or even, god help me, some people reading my book and liking it. Because, whatever happens with A Pack of Lies, The Patriots have another chance at the Superbowl this February. And a chance is something to look forward to, and to enjoy, and a reason to live in a present with a sense of the future.
Florida State Jazz: Paul McKee combo
http://www.youtube.com/user/umi963#p/a/u/0/L-dsI536Nkc
http://www.youtube.com/user/umi963
If I had to perform in front of a live audience I would fail. Last night, I saw a 45 minute performance by a group of young men, and was delighted and awed. These kids are not yet twenty, and their passion is undeniable, and, unsurprising. What amazes me is how, at this young age, they sound experienced. How will they sound when they really are experienced? I always said to my son, the saxophone player in this combo, that he will never sound experienced because I hoped he would never be – and by experience I meant only adversity. But I may have been wrong – and Sheila Curran may have been right, when she said, “don’t buy into that myth that you can only be a good artist if you are in pain. If you are good unhappy, you will be good happy.”
Asian Age Newspaper Mumbai, Oct 25.
Life is different back home – no elephants in the streets, nor even any dogs, with or without testicles. But, there was a fox limping down the driveway late last night. After all the chaos and events and activity, it is odd to be in such silence. There is, thankfully, a paucity of smells here. Bombay is particularly virulent in that area. That part of it we can all do without.
Started on what might become a book of short stories. 9 erratic stories. I think my dear editor may have meant, and may have preferred 9 erotic stories. Oh well.
And, a few photos of the event in Bombay – yes, it’s the same shirt, and yes, I am aware it is a fashion faux-pas. It’s a good color, however, and it is my friend Sheila’s shirt. So there.
With Prahlad
Prahlad with guests
Imam Siddique
Group photo after event
What a short, strange trip it’s been. Strange to go back to a place so completely familiar after so long. I grew up in this great city. I have traveled most of it by foot – in school shoes and flip flops, in autorikshaws – dirty torn ones and pimped out ones with high treble music systems, in cars, in taxis, and in big red BEST buses.
The hugs of friends is always a beautiful thing, but after a decade indescribable. I saw the changes in them all – new lines on familiar faces, some gray in hair, and some hair gone altogether, some no wiser, some larger, some just as loud but not so sure, all as beautiful, and all changed in some way, like the city, with the city.
I don’t know who said “you can never go home again” – but I did, and am glad for it. Though everything is different, it is still the same. Most of all, I found, it is I who have changed, and reflected in the city that was once my home, and the people who were and still are my friends, I like those changes.
Write up in the Indian newspaper DNA…
Note: They got Umi’s mother’s name wrong… It should be Gauri Deshpande, not Shashi Deshpande. Umi is not related to Shashi Deshpande in any way other than as a friend and fellow writer.
Here’s what the paper artcile looks like…
DNA Article: Beyond the expected.
And here’s another image from the newspaper:
Prahlad Kakkar and Umi at the Mumbai Launch
More news and article updates as they occur. Get in touch if you spot anything, we’ll credit you of course.
In spite of my sisters’ objections, I wore the same shirt. Horrors. But I reminded them that I was a writer, not a model. Farrokh suggested all three of us sisters get bouffants but it was not doable at such short notice. Too bad.
Coming back to Bombay was like coming home but not recognizing it. Some things have changed: there is more traffic – much more because there are more people. There are more dogs, more dirt, more buildings, more shops, more money, more shit in the air, more noise, more smells, mostly unpleasant, and a lot less energy. It is more frantic and frenetic, but seemingly without purpose. I was warned but am still saddened by the decline of this once lovely city. Or maybe, as all memories, mine was flawed, or maybe I romanticized it over the last decade.
Farrokh was at the airport. This was in spite of our flight being very late. We had sat a long time on the tarmac in Delhi and then drove (?) for so long to get to the runway we thought maybe the pilot had decided to drive all the way to Bombay.
After delightful reunions and introductions with Farrokh we settled into life as his harem of three, and followed him about at a respectful distance, much to his alarm, and eventually amusement.
The launch event started with Prahlad’s speech about me at seventeen. I reminded him at some point that he would have to start talking about my book and not my breasts. He acquiesced somewhat reluctantly to my request, and talked a little about the book. Imam was there again, and wonderful again, and fielded questions from the large group of guests. It seemed large to me anyway. When it came to people asking about world peace we decided that the evening was over.
I signed a lot of copies. A person came up to me and asked me to sign his copy and I had the urge to snatch it away from him and say, “It’s not for you, you can’t have it” – and then realized, too late, that it wasn’t my book anymore – it was his, and anyone else’s who chose to read it. And that’s that and that’s all with A Pack of Lies.
Imam is not a long lost friend, because he was never lost. But to find him in Delhi at the very moment I needed exactly and precisely him was – yes I’m saying it – serendipity. He came, he took everything in hand, he made the launch a smooth, happy, easy experience for us all.
The evening was made full by the presence of friends and family – friends new and old, family full of delight and support. My mother-in-law surprised me to delight and nearly tears by reading passages from the book, ones that I would never have expected her to read. In her quiet, dignified way, she silenced the small crowd and moved some of them to tears. My sisters, Meithili and Aarti, read too. They were each very different and each infused my words with their own intensity. Imam read a particularly indiscreet passage, and the audience (maybe I imagined this) held its collective breath a little, but he stopped before it went too far into impropriety.
My own reading was short and not so sweet, and the questions Imam practically forced out of the audience wielding the mike like a light saber were probing and sometimes difficult to answer.
There was food and drink and a good time was had.
At the beginning of the evening before the guests arrived, Imam made us stand in a circle and hold hands. He asked us to close our eyes and be silent for a moment. Not my thing, this sort of thing – but I had trusted him with everything, so I indulged him. Or so I thought. I closed my eyes, and in the silence of the circle, went through the list of people who were not there this night. And suddenly, powerfully, as if she were holding my hand, my mother was there at the bottom of that list. She was there for a moment.
signing the first copy of A Pack of Lies!
saheli, imam, and me.
the readers
the dudes with unsold books