This is a cross-cultural collection: some of the stories are very American in feel and some very Indian, both in terms of their cultural elements and settings, USA and the regions around Delhi. I really loved the intimate, day-to-day details and rhythms of the different lives portrayed here. There’s little cultural crossover within individual stories—I was wondering whether this reflected a conscious choice to keep them separate, or something else?
Great observation. It was not my intention to keep the Indian and American cultures separate. What happened was that a majority of the stories started in the setting I imagined for them and just ended there without a cultural intersection. But some stories in the collection do highlight a cultural cross-over. In The Wind Of Your Life and All That Was Me Is Gone, the main characters are Indian women who have migrated to the USA and are adapting to the American culture. In their new lives on the foreign soil, they learn a little, lose a little, or a lot.
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