Up Sky Down Sky Middle Water

A collection of short fiction

and

Writers vs. Money:

Negotiating the field of Indian literature in English

Roanna Gonsalves

A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

School of the Arts and Media

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

University of New South Wales

March 2016

1

Abstract

The first part of this thesis is a collection of stories focussing on Indian Australian women. It reimagines the social and cultural trails between India and Australia that facilitate and limit many turns and returns. In refusing easy representations of Indians in Australia, this collection investigates the tensions and spillages in the lived reality of Indian Australian women engaging with contemporary Australia. These fictional renderings of my observations as an Indian-Australian writer upon the ethnic communities with which I am affiliated in Australia, are in a dialogic and complementary relationship with the second part of this thesis: a research dissertation on the Indian literary communities I am connected with as part of the Indian diaspora in Australia.

This research dissertation investigates how writers of English language literature survive in post-millennial India. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis, this study mobilises the conceptual tools provided by Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework and Bernard Lahire’s specification of it to examine the unique features of the literary field in India and how they impact on writers’ practice. This study found that while writers across the world face conflicting demands in their pursuit of a literary career and their need for economic survival, the specificities of the Indian literary field present unique challenges to Indian writers in English. These features include rapid growth fettered by uncertainty, a sense of entanglement between the field’s autonomous and heteronomous dimensions and between local and multinational publishers, and writers’ struggles regarding support infrastructure and the position of the English language in India. The writers in this study often adopt a range of survival strategies to negotiate this field, as they develop a sense of themselves as writers, navigate the path to publication, and aim for different kinds of success, while needing to earn a living from work other than writing fiction. This inherent plurality of the writing life enables and constrains writers as they make varying degrees of investments in the literary as well as the extra-literary aspects of their lives. By examining various facets of the conflicted relationship writers have with money as they negotiate the specificities of the Indian literary field, this dissertation provides a new understanding of the ways in which Indian writers tackle the challenges to their survival in the twenty-first century.

4 Acknowledgements

It took a “village” to raise this thesis.

I express my deepest gratitude to my supervisors, Anne Brewster and Janet Chan, for guidance, generosity, and faith, throughout the entire PhD process. Their astute feedback and suggestions helped separate the chaff from the grain. Their patient engagement with innumerable drafts made this thesis much stronger. I am indebted to them both.

I express my thanks to all the participants in my study, for their time and their trust. They will remain unidentified to ensure confidentiality but I am grateful to each and every one of them. I am also thankful to Meenakshi Bharat, Frederick Noronha, and Kurt Bento for their graciousness in facilitating the fieldwork.

I am grateful to Kerry Thomas, Bill Ashcroft, Ramaswami Harindranath, and Dorottya Fabian for engagement with my Annual Review submissions, for their time and their invaluable insights that have enriched my dissertation. The broader UNSW creative and scholarly community were a source of inspiration, support, and encouragement, and I thank them all, especially Stephen Muecke and Su Goldfish. I thank Reza, Lizzie, Tanya, Lisa, Helen, Gaby, Chris, Camilla, Suma, and especially Sameera for solidarity, sugar treats, and ways to reboot the brain.

I thank Jackie Bailey, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, and Benedito Ferrão, for being generous readers and luminous interlocutors, and for letting me pick their fine minds from time to time; Laetitia Nanquette, Nayana Bibile, Sharon Rundle, Sukhmani Khorana, and Rowan Payton for enlightening conversations that provided much-needed clarity; Sabeen, Leela, Rowena, Janice, Jyoti, Andrea Rosario, Sakina, Bek, for friendship and reality checks; Celine, Sharmila, Sanjay, Babush, Yvonne, Nina, the extended Couto family, Neil, Vyona for love and care in Goa, Nirmal, Kavitha, Gayle, Mathew, Sonia, Brett, Frank, Judy, for being our heart family, for laughter, big and small kindnesses during this adventure; my uncle Fr. William Athaide for the value he places on education and my uncle Fr. Ozy Gonsalves SJ for helping me clear the decks for ‘spirit work’; my cousin Dr. Christina Furtado for leading the way; my sister Racquel, Diago, Raphael and Rio, for priceless help and merriment; my aunty Helen and my aunty Theresa for their affection, and faultless advice on money, fashion, and life in general.

5

For professional development opportunities, I thank Tejaswini Niranjana, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, and the staff at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore; Arshia Sattar, DW Gibson, and Rahul Soni of Sangam House, India; Professor Prafulla Kar and Shreyasee Datta at the Forum on Contemporary Theory workshops at Goa University, Anja Schwarz, Lars Eckstein, and Dirk Wiemann at the Minor Cosmopolitanisms Summer School in Potsdam. I am also grateful for vital support received from Varuna, The Writers’ House in Katoomba. I thank the organisers and participants of the seminars and conferences where I presented my work and received valuable comments: the Australian Association of Writing Programs conferences, the seminar series at the School of the Arts and Media, the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, Canberra, the Association for the Study of Australian Literature conferences, the Literary Networks conference, the European Sociological Association conference, the Journey of the Book conference in Pune, the Moving Ideas Symposium, the Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia Symposium on The Idea of the Literary Review, the Indian Association for the Study of Australia conferences, the Cultural Studies Association of Australia conference, the Scenes of Reading symposium at the University of Sydney, the Australia India Literatures International Forum at the State Library of New South Wales.

This PhD could not have been undertaken without crucial funding provided by the Australian Postgraduate Award 2011-15, a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Top Up Grant for Top Ranked Applicants 2011-2014, Graduate Research School PRSS funding to present a paper at the European Sociological Association conference in 2013, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences external research funding to conduct fieldwork in Frankfurt and India in 2012, and the Prime Minster’s Outgoing Australia Asia Endeavour Award 2013-14. I also thank Andrew Murphie, Elizabeth McMahon, Collin Chua, Paul Dawson, Stephanie Bishop, Josh Dubrau, and especially Anne Brewster (again) for the opportunities to teach and to learn in Creative Writing and Media Studies courses. I am grateful for a FASS Postgrad workspace where most of this thesis was written. I thank Janet Chan again, in her role as my boss for many years. For her idea and support to present a paper at my first AAWP conference in 2007, for her rigour, and her inspiring scholarly and creative practice, I am forever thankful.

I acknowledge the most important people in my life, without whose sacrifices this entire PhD process would have remained a figment of my imagination: my parents Rose and Richard Gonsalves for their unquestioning, rock solid support at great cost to themselves that enabled me to stay the course; and the world’s best children, my precious Kirk and Jadyn, for understanding, for joy and for love. I dedicate this thesis to them.

6

Up Sky Down Sky Middle Water

A collection of short fiction

By

Roanna Gonsalves

7

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... 4

Acknowledgements ...... 5

Introduction: Trails of Breadcrumbs ...... 9

References ...... 14

Full Face ...... 16

The Skit...... 54

Christmas 2012 ...... 66

CIA (Australia) ...... 73

Trending and Friending ...... 106

The Teller In The Tale ...... 115

At Cavana ...... 143

In The Beginning Was The Word ...... 153

Up Sky Down Sky Middle Water ...... 176

The Dignity of Labour...... 184

Cutting Corners...... 220

8 Introduction: Trails of Breadcrumbs1

Indians and Australians have been connecting with each other through trails of various kinds across land and sea, from a time before the constitution of nation states.

A quick glance at a map of South Asia and the Indian Ocean evokes the cleaving of the ancient supercontinents Pangea, and then Gondwanaland, and the geological trails they left in their slow yet steady wake. A specular figuration of these vestigial, well- worn routes between India and Australia reveal them as trails of breadcrumbs that enable Indian Australians to turn to and return to, both homes. These paths, crossings, and histories remind us that Australia has always been in an Asian century (see

Chakraborty, 2012; Ghosh, 2011 for discussions of various aspects of Australia's position in Asia; Gonsalves, 2014a; Walker & Sobocinska, 2012). Yet, far from this being the lived truth experienced by Indians in Australia, these trails of breadcrumbs are fettered by various constraints.

In providing a conceptual background to my collection of short fiction Up Sky Down

Sky Middle Water, this short essay works with Suvendrini Perera’s exposition of the construction of Australia as insular territory of island-continent, that violently collapses geographical and racial identity, as our “foundational forgettings” (Perera,

2009: 12). It wonders about what I call ‘foundational rememberings’. In remembering those early crossings via a land route that now lies submerged in the Indian Ocean, via the Indonesian archipelago, and the Malay Road (Blair & Hall, 2013), or via possible linguistic criss-crossings between India’s Andaman Islands, Austronesia, and

Australia, as noted in the work of Anweta Abbi (Abbi, 2006, 2013, 2014) and Juliette

1 This brief essay is an edited version of a book chapter that has already been published. See (Gonsalves, 2016).

9 Blevins (Blevins, 2007) which provides a socio-linguistic perspective on possible migration and reverse migration between the oceanic Andaman Islands of India, and

Austronesia around 50,000 ybp., I attempt to articulate the enabling yet constraining contemporary position of being an Indian Australian in contemporary Australia. This

I realize, is only one of many possible intersubjective positions, one in which I recognize my own position as a first generation migrant woman in a settler colony where indigenous sovereignity has never been ceded. I therefore write in the first person in this essay and in many stories in Up Sky Down Sky Middle Water, following on from the work of Anne Brewster. She notes, in her extensive work in whiteness studies, that “the vernacular styles and expressions of the first-person which evoke the micro politics of the racialised quotidian might allow us to track the intersubjectivity and intercorporeality of whiteness” (Brewster, 2009: 6). In discussing indigenous- settler relations in Kim Scott’s That Deadman Dance, Brewster conceptualizes such intersubjectivity as “a zone of mutual respect, curiosity, improvisation and exchange – which attests to the continuing connectivity of indigenous and non-indigenous people” (Brewster, 2011: 63). In a similar vein, the first person point of view might also allow for an acknowledgement of my own positions as a tertiary-educated, urban,

English-speaking culturally Catholic migrant woman, and those of many of my characters, as beneficiaries of whiteness and the white Christian settler state, while at the same time acknowledging the intersubjective complications of “sharing” the nation-state with indigenous and non-indigenous people, including with those that

Brewster calls “Anglo-Celtic creole” (Brewster, 2009: 2) in Australia.

Trails usually mark a spatial path. They ensconce motile histories, link space and time,

10 and enable many returns. The trails between India and Australia destabilize boundaries of various kinds, and chart a struggle over geography, which is also a struggle over belonging. These struggles are reflected in the contemporary history of

Indians in Australia, whether through the negotiation of violence and everyday racism against Indian students (Gonsalves, 2010), or the negotiation of mainstream

Australian media reportage of India through what Sukhmani Khorana conceptualizes as “the prism of the orientalist scholar” (Khorana, 2012, 2014) or through resisting and/or enabling the neoliberalist agendas of both countries as evidenced by the recent feting of the Indian Prime Minster in Australia (Gonsalves, 2014b), or, as Mridula

Nath Chakraborty points out, through a reconfiguration of the idea of neighbourhood

(Chakraborty, 2012). These struggles occur in part because, the Australian nationalist imaginary, as Suvendrini Perera tells us, “is predicated on the construct of the island continent…a monadic landmass at once severed from its surroundings and protected against them by encircling oceans” (Perera, 2009: 18). It therefore excises itself geographically, racially, and culturally, from its Asian environment.

My own crossings between Mumbai and Sydney, although between two urban centres whose middle classes swear in the same four letter English words, store leftover rice in the same Tupperware containers, watch the same American sitcoms, and buy the same single malt whisky at duty free shops on their way to Disneylands of one kind or another, still reflects a struggle with geography and belonging. As a middle-class

English-language speaker and writer I move from a position of relative privilege in

India to one who is, for the most part, excised from the Australian national imaginary, there yet not there, like the trails of breadcrumbs that are submerged and concealed by the sea that surrounds the construct of the island- continent.

11 Below I briefly interrogate the idea of what it means to be “Australian” using an extract from my short story The Skit. The characters in this story don't see themselves as Australian, and some don't even see the First Peoples of their adopted country as

Australian.

Sanjay inhaled sharply again, but Roslyn said, “You know me, I don’t beat around the bushes. The play is great, you are a great writer. But when you talk about the

Student Welfare Officer, he’s Australian?”

“Yes”, said Lynette.

“A proper Australian?”

“Yes”, said Lynette.

“White?”, asked Roslyn.

“Proper Australians are blacker than us”, said Sushma.

“White, white”, said Lynette.

“Like John Greenaway,” said Roslyn. “We don’t want to offend John

Greenaway. He’s also Australian. He’s also in a position of power. He should

be here anytime now. What if he thinks you had him in mind?” (Gonsalves,

2014c).

The complications of intersubjectivity in this story are in close proximity to aspirations of whiteness as the first generation Indian migrant characters seek to breach the boundaries between raced and unraced, and legitimize themselves as they reap the benefits of a model minority, whose language, English, is isomorphic with the language of the White nation. There is an amnesia, a cultural forgetting of the

12 trails of breadcrumbs between India and Australia. The characters in The Skit refuse to engage in “thinking the nation not as the subject but through the subject”

(Cooppan, 2009: 54). Rather, the White nation is the insular subject, a gift of colonial desiring (Perera, 2009: 37) that is fetishized and coveted by Lynette, herself a beneficiary of the White nation as well as its disregarded other.

It is through the continual excavation of these trails of breadcrumbs, a symbolic panning and mining of an Australia that has always been troped with Asia, that we may begin to understand our place as Indians who are also Australians. My collection

Up Sky Down Sky Middle Water attempts to make a cultural contribution in this direction.

13 References

Abbi, Anvita. (2006). Endangered Languages of the Andaman Islands (Vol. 64). Munich: Lincom Europa München. Abbi, Anvita. (2013). A Grammar of the Great Andamanese Language: An Ethnolinguistic Study. Leiden: Brill. Abbi, Anvita. (2014). Tracing the “Possible Human Language” in the speech of the early colonizers of South Asia and Identification of a New Language Family in the Andamans Paper presented at the Conference paper presented at 'Indo- Australian Relations: Retrospect and Prospects', the Seventh International Conference of the Indian Association for the Study of Australia. 23-25 January Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. Blair, Sandy, & Hall, Nicholas. (2013). Travelling the ‘Malay Road’: Recognising the heritage significance of the Macassan maritime trade route. In M. Clark & S. K. May (Eds.), Macassan History and Heritage: Journeys, Encounters and Influences. Canberra, Australia: Australian National University E Press. Blevins, Juliette. (2007). A Long Lost Sister of Proto-Austronesian?: Proto-Ongan, Mother of Jarawa and Onge of the Andaman Islands. Oceanic Linguistics, 46(1), 154-198. Brewster, Anne. (2009). Teaching The Tracker in Germany: A journal of whiteness. In B. Baird & D. W. Riggs (Eds.), The Racial Politics of Bodies, Nations and Knowledges. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Brewster, Anne. (2011). Whiteness and Indigenous Sovereignty in Kim Scott’s That Deadman Dance. Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia, 2(2), 60-71. Chakraborty, Mridula. (2012). There Goes the Neighbourhood!: The Indian- Subcontinental in the Asian/Australian literary precinct. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 12(2), 1-11. Cooppan, Vilashini. (2009). Worlds Within: National Narratives and Global Connections in Postcolonial Writing. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Ghosh, Devleena. (2011). Under the Radar of Empire: Unregulated Travel in the Indian Ocean. Journal of Social History, 45(2), 497-514. Gonsalves, Roanna. (2010). Doosra: The life and times of an Indian student in Australia (Broadcast on Radio National, Australian Broadcasting Corporation). ABC Radio National. Retrieved 4 June, 2010, from http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/360/doosra-the-life-and-times- of-an-indian-student-in/3117374 Gonsalves, Roanna. (2014a). Modi in Oz: Diaspora, Tweets, and a PM of Science? Retrieved 21 December, 2014 Gonsalves, Roanna. (2014b). Modi in Oz: Turning Water into Mines. Retrieved 21 December, 2014, from http://peril.com.au/featured/modi-in-oz-turning-water- into-mines-part-three/ Gonsalves, Roanna. (2014c). The Skit. Retrieved 1 July, 2014, from http://mascarareview.com/the-skit-by-roanna-gonsalves/ Gonsalves, Roanna. (2016). Trails of Breadcrumbs: On Being Indian and Australian. In S. Sareen, S. Pal, G. J. V. Prasad & M. Bharat (Eds.), Indo Australian Connections: Retrospect and Prospects. New Delhi: Pinnacle Learning.

14 Khorana, Sukhmani. (2012). Orientalising the emerging media capitals: The age on Indian TV's' hysteria'. Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy(145), 39. Khorana, Sukhmani. (2014). From ‘De-wogged’Migrants to ‘Rabble Rousers’: Mapping the Indian Diaspora in Australia. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 35(3), 250-264. Perera, Suvendrini. (2009). Australia and the Insular Imagination: Beaches, Borders, Boats, Bodies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Walker, David, & Sobocinska, Agnieszka. (2012). Introduction: Australia's Asia. In D. Walker & A. Sobocinska (Eds.), Australia's Asia: From Yellow Peril to Asian Century. Crawley, Western Australia: University of Western Australia Press.

15 Full Face

I broke up with my boyfriend because he was repeatedly unfaithful to me. So I left Bombay and got myself a job as a copywriter in Dubai. I was restless there, surrounded by real gold, fake snow, and men who looked but would not leap. One day

I met a man in Café Eucalypt on Sheikh Zayed Road. He was kneeling behind a table, tying his shoelaces. I was running late for a meeting with my uncle Joe and I rushed to the counter to get my flat white. Before I knew it, I fell on top of the man, and heard the heave of his body insisting on an explanation.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, in the scree of that afternoon.

But the second I looked at him, I was not sorry. I was light as an epiphany. His eyes were open upon me and in his gaze I saw a meadow of daffodils offering respite from a blissless solitude. Beside the lake, beneath the trees, the place it seemed was open to consideration. Wordsworth would not have approved. But I held my breath for the future.

“It’s ok, don’t worry. I’m Anil by the way,” he was saying, as far as I can remember.

Anil was the Middle East Sales Rep for Juno Appliances, a company making air conditioners and air purifiers in Bombay. It was his first time in that café. Not being a coffee man, he had ordered tea and was waiting for it to arrive when I set in motion, inadvertently I must insist, events that would force our hands.

Anil and I met a few times for Mass, for tea, and for dinner. In the air of permissiveness in Dubai where trees could be uprooted from one end of the world and transplanted on its main roads like so many livers, where the laws of our homelands were loosened, and love and sex were twins mistaken for each other, we realised,

16 separately, that we were weary of the chase. I was a woman who needed a bra. He was a man who put his mouth where his money was. It seemed logical to disarm and ride along together.

We got married in Bombay as befits tax free Gulf money: our wedding invitations came not from David and Company but were designed by the art director in my agency, billed separately to my personal account. We overlooked our parish choirs who suggested Ruth’s Song Wherever you go I shall go for the Nuptials hymn, and chose instead to hire a five-piece live band to perform Joan Baez’s Forever

Young in the crypt of Don Bosco’s Basilica in Matunga. A thousand guests came to our reception at Willingdon Catholic Gymkhana in Santacruz and showered us with biodegradable confetti, made from recycled waxing strips discarded by the beauty parlours in Bandra, and sterilised by a charity working with street kids. We paid for my uncle Joe and his wife Aunty Marilyn’s tickets, Dubai-Bombay return, because I really wanted him to raise the Toast. For our honeymoon we didn’t even consider an

Indian destination, choosing Turkey instead. There, we restlessly drank tea in a café overlooking the Bosphorous, waiting to get back to the blue hotel and its sheets, the hum of grasshoppers in our ears.

Soon we both felt we should move on from Dubai and its silos and its visa expectations that must always be met. I wanted to stand atop a wooden box in a park and make change happen. I assumed that Anil shared my zeal. After all, we had both been set on fire by the grass roots Obama campaign.

Anil had often said at parties that Indians should stop having children and focus instead on bettering their own prospects, should live in the present rather than the future, should clean up their act. In general I agreed with what he said. After all I left Bombay to escape not only the mushroom cloud of a failed relationship, but also

17 the swarming multitudes that had long outstripped the available loaves and fish. I didn't think he meant that we ourselves shouldn’t have children. It’s not what I thought at all.

I had heard that Australia had the colour bar but everyone spoke English, and that itself was good enough. None of this habibi habibi that goes on in Dubai, and none of the Hindi-Marathi we were forced to learn in school in Bombay. Once, at

Café Eucalypt I heard one of the Indian customers demanding a serviette with his latte.

Cathy, busy frothing milk behind the counter, said, “Mate. Just help yourself. There’s some in that corner over there.” And I was sold, then and there, in that unpretentious café with fresh sprigs of eucalyptus in a vase near the cash register, gleaming in a different desert, far from home.

Aunty Marilyn warned me that it was hard to get a visa to Australia. She knew many at the bank who had tried and failed, many years ago. Yes, things had changed since then, with Australian call centres in India and all. But still, she said, they were afraid that Indians would take away their jobs. On the other hand, and when we were alone, Uncle Joe said, “Go and see for yourself, I’ll ask Gloria if you can stay with her.”

I knew that entwined with my Uncle Joe’s concern about my accommodation in a foreign country was also the urge to be close again to Gloria. It was true that

Uncle Joe and Aunty Marilyn had just celebrated their Silver Jubilee in a flurry of

Prayers of the Faithful, pashmina stoles, and a PowerPoint presentation about their twenty-five years of wedded bliss, complete with zigzag transitions from one slide to another. Their daughter, my cousin, Bella who also worked in a bank in Dubai, prepared it as a surprise for them. Aunty Marilyn told me that Gloria and her husband

Tony celebrated their Silver Jubilee the previous year, by going on a second

18 honeymoon to one of those banana republics that surround Australia. Their son Scott didn't go with them because he worked for the government in Canberra. They were all friends on Facebook - Gloria, Tony, Aunty Marilyn, Uncle Joe - and were the first to like each other’s posts. But I could sense a current in Uncle Joe’s voice, suddenly loose, when he spoke of Gloria.

Anil considered Canada but the thought of all that naturally cold and purified air put him off. He agreed to try Australia. Anil’s job as a salesman was not on the

Occupations In Demand List, but copywriters were welcome and so we got our

Permanent Residency Visas in six months time. Aunty Marilyn ground some shacuti masala, sealed the aromatic powder in a plastic bag and stuck a very professional looking label on it with a fictitious website and email address, saying “Chilli powder.

Nut free! Gluten free! Organic!” She even managed to paste a picture of a chilli plant on the top left of the label. The day before Anil and I left, in Uncle Joe’s presence, she handed me the shacuti masala, finely ground yet unmistakable in its defiance, made with her own hands, for a woman her husband had once loved.

Aunty Marilyn was a higher-up in the Bank of Dubai, and kept getting promoted higher and higher every three years. But I suspected that being first in line for work promotions could never heal the wound of being second in line for love. If twenty-five years of marriage had taught her anything about her husband, it was that he still nursed a fondness for the stylish Aussie. He married Marilyn only after he realised that Gloria had gone for good, there was no beating around the bush with that fact. Yet, here she was, the wife, sending with the homemade shacuti masala a hidden message that Gloria was just another fragment of the past. “Tell her she and Tony should make a visit here soon. They’re welcome anytime to my house,” she said to me.

19 Gloria had visited Mumbai one Christmas when I was a mere schoolgirl, and

Uncle Joe and Aunty Marilyn had not yet left for Dubai. It was her first trip back after migrating to Australia. I can’t remember much of what she said then but I distinctly remember the two-pack of tea towels with a print of the Australian flag she presented to Aunty Marilyn, tied with red curling ribbon with a clip-on koala clinging to the bow. Her freshly manicured red nails anointed this gift with glamour, with intelligence, that soared out of reach of our drab two bedroom, hall, kitchen flat close to the grunt of the train station.

“Throw away your kitchen cloths Marilyn, this is what true blue Aussies use,” she announced. And then she laughed, exuding refinement with every lilt in her voice, with every gesture of those perfect hands, with every crossing and uncrossing of her stilettoed Sydney legs. Her knees were not scarred like ours. Gloria’s voice transgressed with confidence, presumed triumph, as Aunty Marilyn stood there squirming with a bowl of wafers in her hands, not knowing whether to go around the room with the bowl or put it down on the centre table. There was a slight pause of confusion before all the adults laughed along with Gloria, without really understanding what they were laughing about, including Aunty Marilyn whose laugh came out as a high pitched shriek. It was the first time we had ever heard of tea towels.

In my childish mind they conjured a particular English elegance gleaned from reading too much Enid Blyton, of dainty teacups and cucumber sandwiches, and frilled-up men and women wiping their mouths, discretely.

When I rolled her words in my head again and again, I realised that these tea towels were actually to be used to wipe dishes. I wasn’t sure if Gloria was serious or just teasing. After all, not only did the tea towels look so pristine, as if they were meant for the sanctity of altars rather than the residual grease of stainless steel pots,

20 but they had a country’s flag on them, a sacred symbol for us living in an India that had clawed out its independence, tri-colour proudly aflutter, only a generation ago.

I can’t recollect Aunty Marilyn ever using those tea towels, but I was hooked by Gloria. To me, she was not an Indian anymore, but had evolved into a foreigner, and therefore was a self-actualized being. She had an insider’s intimacy with

Australia, and could spout their shortcut words with ease. True. Blue. Aussies.

Separately, those words were rivers flowing in different directions. But when Gloria said them together in one breath, they were a magical spring from which all that was good and right in this world originated.

I bought an expensive hand-embroidered red kurta and new black pants to wear on the flight to Sydney. I chose them in the hope that they would attract admiring glances in a western country. But when we arrived at the airport and I first saw Gloria and Tony waiting for us in the Arrivals lounge, I realised that I looked like a hippie. I was no match for Gloria in her silk leopard print blouse and matching wedge heels, her tan handbag, and her gaze like a queen.

The minute she spotted me she waved gracefully, the red on her nails flashing at me like beacons across the arrivals lounge, taking me back instantly to the time when she gave Aunty Marilyn the tea towels. When we drew close she embraced me warmly. Then, as we drew away from each other, she looked at me and said

“Welcome to Sydney, so lovely to see you! You are a picture of your Uncle Joe!”

I felt calm then, submitting myself to her power. This gossamer welcome was a sign that I would feel at home in Australia, with the certainty of her toned body hugging mine, her shiny hair, smelling so Australian. I felt the need to say something, to nail that moment with words that would be remembered. Something like, “Mon semblable, ma soeur!” I wanted her to admire my appropriately and cleverly adapted

21 references to Baudelaire via T.S. Eliot. But I controlled the wave of exhilaration welling up inside me, calming myself down with the thought that I must not seem over eager and desperate to these sophisticated Aussies who used to be Indian. So I blurted out, “You look as beautiful as the last time I saw you, twenty years ago, in

Bombay.”

“Oh thank you darling!”

I should have left it at that but I said like a supplicant, “Your skin, it’s

flawless!” She said, “Oh thank you darling, you’re very sweet.”

“No really,” I said, “your hair, your eyebrows, so beautiful.”

She didn't return my compliments, just collected my praise like a paycheck, and examined my face. She said, “I’ll introduce you to Sheetal, my beautician. She’ll be good for you. She has very soft hands.”

Soon I would realise that I had no way of telling the human from the non human from the inhuman in this country where birds cry like babies, where Prime

Ministers in power are swallowed up by oceans and deputies, and where 40,000 year old living cultures have been fossilized into flora and fauna in the space of two centuries. But that first day at the airport, as Gloria linked my arm in hers, I felt safely anchored to the airport bitumen that used to be red earth.

“And this handsome young man must be your better half?” She said, holding her hand out to Anil, and then her cheek to him to kiss. I struggled with my trolley, which seemed to have a wheel out of joint.

“Tony will take that,” she said, and her husband followed her instructions and took the trolley from my hands. As we walked to the car, I was conscious of the cab drivers, the coffee cart attendant, the security guards, and numerous people pushing trolleys all looking at us, or more accurately, looking at Gloria. Tony walked beside

22 us, pushing the trolley, so much at ease with the attention his wife commanded from perfect strangers. Such a self-assured man, I thought. They were so secure, accepting the patterns that shaped their lives. Gloria walked on, filling up, it seemed, as if each glance directed at her energised her, like double shots of espresso.

In the car as Tony navigated the Sydney traffic, trifling compared to the density of horn and brake in Mumbai and Dubai. Gloria said we were so so lucky to be living in Australia now, “It’s the quality of life here. You just can’t compare it to

Bombay. I haven’t been to Dubai, but I’m telling you, this is the safest place on earth.

Everywhere you go in the world there are racists. What do you think the Hindus are?

How many Christians have they murdered, you tell me!”

“True. Although that’s more about religion than anything else, not really race…” I said.

It was as if she had not heard me.

“They kill catholics but they all flock to our catholic schools. At least here in

Australia everyone is equal. This is a Christian country.”

Years later I would find an Aboriginal shell midden in my rented backyard near the Cooks River, the ancient compost of lives lived before the land was fleshed with whiteness, before it was quartered with Christianity, refusing to fade away. But at that moment in the car, the weight of this country was not yet upon me.

“There are racists everywhere,” Gloria was saying, “Now, you tell me, you are in Australia, you’ve seen the people at the airport, on the street. Are you scared?

Do you feel threatened? ”

Although I was a touch alert to the smugness in her voice, this self-defense didn’t bother me. In fact I agreed with it. I had chosen to migrate here after all. I wanted some of her shine to rub off on me. I wanted to learn from her, how to carry

23 myself, how to do my hair, what perfume to use for work and what for love, how to create something of lasting value in this new world.

I knew she worked in the immigration department. I’d built her up to be an intellectual, part of the avant-garde of Sydney, working from the inside for an overthrow of capitalistic, neo-liberal governments, and the patriarchal, secretive

Catholic Church, a modern day female Shiva, destroying if only to renew with splendour. But I was surprised when I found out that she worked not in policy or management but as a client services officer, answering phone calls from the general public about contact details and forms and the quickest way to get into Australia.

At the very least, after all the talk about the quality of life in Australia, I expected sophistication: ylang ylang in the air, a red leather love seat under signed and framed posters of Marx, or at least of a minor local revolutionary, with a garden full of wonton orchids framed by a French window. Instead, her house smelled of artificial lavender air freshener, possibly freshly sprayed in an attempt to mask the unmaskable smell of fish curry. Instead of a red leather love seat, the living room was dominated by a sofa set with flowery upholstery under a framed picture of the Sacred

Heart of Jesus, high up on the peach wall, clearly demarcating the saviour and the saved.

“Really expensive furniture, you know, Australia is the most expensive country to live in,” she said. “See, that sofa? It’s from the big furniture shop we passed on the way back from the airport, did you see it? Quite exclusive. The Indians around here usually go for the cheap stuff from Fantastic Furniture. But no, I put my foot down. I told Tony, better to buy good quality that will last.”

The back door was flanked by two large peach-coloured pots full of maroon flowers made of silk, and fern fronds made of plastic. They all looked so real I had to

24 touch them to make sure they were not. “They look real, don’t they?” said Gloria with satisfaction, as she led me outside. By then it had dawned on me that she was just another catholic Bombayite transplanted into Australia, still a sheep following a shepherd into a paradise that didn't exist. Only the colour of her aspirations had changed.

In accordance with these realisations, I expected the back garden to be tame with roses and a curry leaf tree. It exceeded my expectations in all its domestic glory.

Gloria pointed to the backyard completely paved in green granite. “See how vibrant it looks! Green creates tranquility. You thought it was real grass for a second, didn’t you?” she said with a gratifying smile. As we went inside I couldn’t help being disappointed that I could very well have been walking into any old suburban Catholic home in Mumbai, such was the abundance of predictability, the absence of possibility.

The only thing missing was Lynn Anderson singing Top of the world in the background. Once again, it was as if Gloria read my mind and played exactly that song on her home theatre system.

Anil said he was quite jetlagged and went off to sleep in Gloria’s guest room. I gave Gloria the shacuti masala and conveyed Aunty Marilyn’s wishes with as much theatrical aplomb as I could, flailing my arms about, going down on one knee, changing the tone and volume of my voice. Tony clapped and bowed and laughed so much, his laughter and mine intertwined and echoed through the house. Gloria took the packet as if a transaction had just been completed, or as if it was an absolution bestowed upon her by a lover she had once ditched. Then, almost as an afterthought, she began to thank me profusely and implored me to convey her gratitude to “Joey and Marilyn.” Without even looking at it properly or asking what exactly it was, she immediately put away the packet into an empty box on the bottom shelf of the pantry,

25 right at the back, behind the rice bags and the wheat flour bags, while instructing

Tony to turn on the kettle.

That night, with Anil still asleep, Tony opened a bottle of wine and began to fill three crystal glasses. The tiny slashed surfaces on their bowls caught the light from the faux crystal chandelier shining above us like a faux desert sun. Gloria had her phone in one hand. She put it down, took the bottle from Tony, and showed me the label.

“See, this is my favourite wine, Queen Adelaide shiraz, top-quality”. I looked at the picture of a Queen on the label, and summoned up the wonder that was required in my voice. “Oh wow, looks very high-class.” In different company I would have said this as a deliberate mockery of everything my Dubai colleagues and I despised even though we all worked in advertising. We considered ourselves writers, and knew that advertising was only a day job to pay the bills and keep the visa. But on this occasion I knew it would be taken seriously. In fact I sensed that such a response was expected and would be appreciated, soothing the insecurities of these people who after twenty years in this country, were still trying to fit in.

Gloria’s phone rang, but she clicked on ‘Ignore’.

“I only drink this wine. It’s really smooth,” she said. Knowing little about wine, I took a sip myself and said without thinking, hoping to impress, “Yeah, it’s really sweet. Reminds me of Rooh Afza.”

Tony chuckled. Gloria said, “What’s Rooh Afza?”

“It’s that red soft drink you get in Mumbai, you know, herbal, cools you down.”

26 “Oh, that! Our servant liked it, I remember.” She took another sip, then continued, “This is actually quite woodsy, taste it again.” I took another sip, slowly this time.

“I can almost taste the barrel that this wine was matured in,” she said, with sultry confidence.

“Yep. Only three bucks a bottle,” Tony said.

“It’s the only wine I will drink, Queen Adelaide,” Gloria said. “Really smooth on the palette!”

“Yeah, just like freshly waxed pussy,” Tony said, laughing loudly and looking straight at me as if for approval.

Such insolence could only be permitted in jest I thought, something that this

Aussie couple was used to, I supposed. So, not wanting to appear rude, nor give the impression that Mumbai and Dubai were prudish backwaters compared to Sydney, I laughed and looked straight back at him, expecting Gloria to be laughing the loudest.

But Gloria was silent and in that microsecond of looking back at Tony I was startled by the desire in his brazen eyes. It was not approval he wanted but collusion.

There was no mistaking that. I kept laughing, louder still, because it felt like the safest thing to do with my face, hoping it would openly show that I would have no part in any collusion, hoping it would mask my surprise, my pleasure, and my guilt. But you don’t get to be a woman like Gloria without being an expert masker yourself, and therefore an accurate detector of other maskers. Gloria turned ever so slightly away from Tony and towards me, crossed her legs, and in taking another sip took stock of the situation. Suddenly the peach walls, the exclusive flowery sofa set, the green granite in the backyard, all looked to me like stuffing for a hole that kept getting

27 bigger. Presiding over this abyss was the red heart of Jesus, possibly one last lick at a quickly receding salvation.

Gloria’s voice was breezy and sure, “So, tell me, you must like living in Dubai.

How is Joey doing?”

She meant to punish Tony with this question but I personally didn’t have a history with him that could justify any cruelty. So I provided a few generic details about Uncle Joe and Aunty Marilyn’s life together, and then decided to ask her upfront about job possibilities for myself and Anil.

‘Uncle Joe suggested I ask you for advice, being a higher up in the immigration department and all”, I tried to keep the tone light, respectful, a minion trying her luck in the durbar of a queen. But somehow it felt like I had suddenly become the queen. I could feel Tony’s eyes on me, poisoning the space between the three of us, sucking the air out of Gloria.

“Sure,” she said, taking another sip of her wine, trying hard to salvage some control, giving me power I did not expect nor want.

I dared not look at him again as we drank our wine. I didn’t trust my own attempts at artifice.

“Sure, I’ll talk to a few people at work, see what they say.”

Gloria picked at her phoned throughout the meal and soon enough it began to ring. This time she answered it. While she was on the phone, I tried to keep the conversation going with Tony, talking chiefly about the upcoming tour of the Indian cricket team to Australia. As soon as she put her phone down, I offered to do the washing up, as a way of offering my subordination, and also, I have to admit, as a way of using her own tea towels, objects that held a special place in my imagination.

28 “That’s Tony’s job. You go and have a rest sweetie, you must be soooo jetlagged,” she said.

* * *

The next day we drove to Katoomba to see the Three Sisters, petrified by a witchdoctor to protect them from men. Tony said he would find a spot to park, and

Anil said he would go along with him. So Gloria and I strolled along the edge of bushland and stopped at a flat spot under a large Moreton Bay fig tree. That’s when I realised the air was fired with Eucalypt, a fragrance that had travelled all the way to

Café Eucalypt in Dubai, and that I had only this minute managed to catch.

“Smells beautiful,” I said.

“It’s Dior, Got it on special at Myers.”

We stood for a moment on the flat spot, each admiring different smells. Then, with precise gestures, Gloria spread out a waterproof red chequered picnic blanket, working her way from left to right as she smoothed it out. I was used to straw mats or bright printed bed sheets thrown across the ground at picnics in Mumbai. But here it seemed like the wicker basket, the plastic plates, glasses and cutlery, and the red chequered waterproof mat must all be arranged just so, a ritual that must be followed or else a price of some sort would be paid.

We sat down in silence and suddenly I felt a presence behind me. I felt two strange hands cover my eyes. I was startled at first but then soon realised that the touch was friendly and warm. I began to think of old school friends I had recently connected with on Facebook who said they lived in Australia. “Maria!” I yelled louder and shriller than the situation warranted, unable to hold back my excitement

29 and anticipation. The hands fell away and Tony leaped forward into my field of vision, brushing my neck, back, and arms with his trailing fingertips.

“Can’t be a Maria with hands like these!” he replied laughing, holding his large workman’s palms open in front of my face for a second too long, as if presenting me with a crown. Then slowly, he retracted them, acknowledging that his gift would not be accepted.

I tried to make light of the matter by giggling like a pro. But I knew from

Gloria’s silence that she and I could never recover that first, prelapsarian moment at the airport. It became clear to me that it was not self assurance that allowed Tony to ignore the attention Gloria was getting that day at the airport, but indifference, the sum total of a marriage that had long past its prime. I prolonged my laughter for as long as I could, hoping to conceal these thoughts that thrilled me yet also made me sympathise. With Tony. And also, especially, with Gloria.

“Those cockatoos are so noisy today,” Gloria said, her own sure voice drowning out my high-pitched laughter.”

We had our picnic as we gazed out upon the old gigantic folds of earth, wind- dropped and breathing with life and ancient blue gums. Gloria passed the dessert around, a box of chocolates from Aldi’s.

Anil said, “These A-bor-iginals are like the SCSTs in India right? They have reservations here for jobs?”

“What’s SCST?” Gloria asked.

“Caste system. Hindu buggers,” Tony said.

“Don’t quote me on this,” Gloria said, lowering her voice, “but they get a lot from the government. You name it they get it. But still they are not happy.”

“Reservations, quotas, are needed where there is a power difference,” I said.

30 “Reservations are quite unfair if you ask me”, Anil said, “How would you like someone operating on your brain when he doesn't really know what he’s doing, and he became a doctor not because he was smart but because there was a spot reserved for him?”

“Come on! Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are not stupid. They can’t get to the top because the system is skewed against them.”

“But just answer my question. Would you like someone doing brain surgery on you without being properly qualified?”

“But they go through medical school right? They are properly qualified,” I said.

“But will they be the best?” Gloria said. “I agree with you Anil. Reservations, the quota system, they’re for the lazy ones who don't want to work, want everything spoon-fed.”

I jumped in. “It’s hard for women to get to the top too. Look at advertising as a case in point.”

“I prefer to be pro-active,” Gloria said.

I should have known better but all sense of obligation towards our hosts was leaving my body quickly. I judged her and I wanted to make it known.

“I wish I could be satisfied with being in customer service. But I want to make a difference and I’m prepared to fight the system if I have to,” I said.

The eerie stillness of the mountains in the late afternoon dropped between us like iron gates.

I had displayed my sharpened knives.

She closed the box of chocolates. “It gets dark really quickly in the Blue

Mountains. We better make a move,” she said with finality.

31 I wanted to take my words back.

I tried to be as subservient as possible as we packed up, as a gesture of apology.

“Don’t worry Gloria, I’ll pack everything away,” I said, avoiding looking directly at her.

“Oh it’s not a problem. You are the guests. I’ve done this a million times for a million people,” she said, refusing to look directly at me.

Gloria reversed exactly every action she had performed when we first got there. It seemed as if a ritual had just been completed, a duty undone, as if all that had just been said was being packed away, to be regurgitated in the future when the time was right.

Her phone kept ringing on the way home, and in between phone calls I tried to diffuse the awkwardness between us with chatter about the traffic, the immigration rules that kept changing every month, and the vicious, swooping birds. At dinner that night she finally said what I hoped she would say in the chirpiest of voices. “Sorry sweetie, I really have to be back at work, that’s what all these phone calls were about.

Someone’s off sick all of a sudden, so I have to go back, so very sorry! Was hoping to have the week off to settle you in. Tony has to go back to work too! Joey is going to be so mad at me.”

“Oh no, don’t worry. Anil and I can manage on our own. ”

“Oh, you’re a real darling aren’t you! Here, keep a house key so you can come and go as you please. So sorry we can’t take you around too much, I feel really bad.”

Anil woke up at 2 am, surfed the internet on his laptop, then went back to sleep in the morning, just as I was waking up. I could hear Gloria calling out my name.

32 There was an urgency in her voice that I couldn’t quite pin down in my semi-awake state. I jumped out of bed, worried that she was in pain.

“Everything ok Gloria?” I asked bursting into the living room.

There she was, every hair blow-dried in place, fishnet stockings making a statement, red shoes that matched her red handbag. There was another woman in the room with her.

“This is Sheetal. She’s the best beautician in the whole of Sydney,” Gloria said.

I was immediately conscious of my nipples showing through my too tight t- shirt, the crust in my eyes, the dried up drool around my lips, my breath bilious. I breathed in through my mouth, hoping that the air I was inhaling would freshen my exhale.

“I was worried you had hurt yourself or something,” I said to Gloria.

Her laugh was a snort and she said, “Don't be silly. You can get your eyebrows done today. For free. I’ve already paid. I have to rush off to work.”

Then she turned around to Sheetal and said, “Very sorry Sheetal, I thought I would be home today.”

“No worries, no worries,” Sheetal said. “I will do eyebrows for her, threading

I will do. Full face if you want I will do.”

‘Will you? Thank you darling. She really needs it, just come from India.

Thanks for helping us out. I’ll phone you and make another appointment. So sorry I couldn't inform you in time today,” Gloria said,

After Gloria had left for work, I excused myself to get showered, brushed, and properly dressed. Then I came back to the living room where Sheetal had spread out a large wicker picnic basket, which she had transformed into a beautician’s carry case.

33 It contained a tub of wax, a little heater in which to heat the wax, wads of starched waxing strips, a bottle of talcum powder, little bottles of lotions, various spools of white thread, tweezers and scissors of different sizes, and a mirror I had seen in the

Ikea catalogue online. Then I noticed Sheetal for the first time. She was tall, with long hair like a waterfall, and Aryan skin. She wore a long-sleeved kurta with a stretchy churidaar and Nike running shoes. She had covered her bosom with a nylon dupatta.

Unmistakably Punjabi. Unmistakably pregnant.

“Come madam, come and sit, I’ll do eyebrows for you.”

I didn't particularly think my eyebrows needed to be done, I had them threaded just before we left Dubai. But I could not refuse her especially now that she already had the thread stretching from her left hand through her lips to her right hand, ready to reshape me for Australia.

I sat down on a dining chair she had already pulled out for me and tilted my head back against the top of the backrest. .

‘You are also from Bombay like Gloria?” she asked me through teeth clenching thread, as she ran her fingers over my eyebrows to get a feel of their shape.

“Yes” I said , “And you?”

It turned out she was from Delhi, from Lajpat Nagar to be precise, initially built as a colony for refugees after Partition.

“But now I am living close by” she said, “only seven minutes walk. My son is going to school in third standard. I am going walking to leave him in school every day, and for pick up also. In this condition I can’t do driving lessons.”

I heard the rustle of her kurta.

“You have been in Delhi?”

“Yes. I love the shops in Khan market.”

34 “Why you go to Khan market? Very expensive. Better is Sarojini Nagar market, or even Palika bazaar is best. Khan market is only for big big people.”

She examined my entire face, gently moving my head a little to the right and then a little to the left, to make better use of the summer sun streaming through the back door. The shock of her cool fingertips on my skin still warm from the hot shower

I just had, were like an introduction to the snakes and ladders of a different world.

“All my clients I call them to my home. Next time you come to my home. I will make tea for you, masala chai. Only for Gloria I come to her house. She is a very very kind client of mine.”

“Thank you Sheetal. Next time I will come to your home, no problem. Do you do leg waxing also?”

“Yes, everything I do. See, here I have all waxing material.” She held up a wad of waxing strips. “From India I brought. Now my mother is coming for delivery,

I asked her to bring more of waxing material. Demand is there for waxing, face, body, back, front, everything.”

“Face waxing?” I asked

“Yes. But I will say waxing is not good for face.”

“Really? Why?” I asked.

“Wax is very hot and face area is very delicate. One client in Delhi, her skin was very sensitive, she got a burn on her upper lip.”

“Oh” I said.

“Nothing happened to her. We put Burnol and she became alright. But after that I am telling all my clients that face area is too delicate for waxing. Uske ooper when we are pulling the wax from the face it is making the face skin very loose. In

35 old age you will see. The ladies who did face waxing in their young days, their skin is hanging.”

Instinctively I put my hands to my cheeks. She said, “For you I will say threading is best. You will get a nice shape also for your eyebrows.”

I let my neck muscles relax against the back of the chair. Sheetal took my hands and placed one above and one below my left eyebrow.

“Hold please.”

I did as required, stretching the skin of my brow as tight as I could to make it easier for Sheetal to begin threading.

“Thick or thin you like?”

“Just the same shape as now” I said.

“This shape doesn’t suit you. Makes your face look too healthy. I will do a good shape for you. Don’t worry, I will not make them pointy,” she said.

She worked on my eyebrows in silence because of the thread in her mouth.

After a few minutes of work, she held up a mirror to me.

“See in mirror, shape is ok?”

I took the mirror from her and examined my reflection.

“Oh yes, Very nice. Thank you Sheetal.”

“One minute. I will do massage. Then it is finished. If you want, facial I can do for you. Here air is very dry, so facial is a must for soft skin. Mini facial is only 30 minutes.”

I checked the time. It was highly likely that Anil would sleep for a few more hours. The last time I did a facial was just before my wedding.

“But Gloria has only paid for…”

36 “No worries no worries, she has paid in advance. I’ll do half price for you.

Welcome gift. Your first time in Australia.”

I smiled at her. “Thank you so much.”

“Nothing. Don't worry. Just sit back.”

In the next few minutes Sheetal cleaned my face with cotton balls dipped in a potion from her basket. Then she began to apply thick cream on my face. Her hands were very soft indeed, just as Gloria said, like the softest silk, absorbing all toxicity.

“I have put pack for you. After 15 minutes I will wash off. Then I will do cleaning with eucalyptus oil. Very very natural it is. Then I will do face massage.”

I tried to say thanks but was apprehensive of cracking the pack on my face. It had begun to dry and harden.

‘Hand massage you want while pack is drying? For free. I am just sitting. Why not I do hand massage for you? In this country air is dry. Hand massage is good for skin.”

I gave her a thumbs up.

She brought her chair closer to mine and lifting my left arm, she began to massage my hand. I felt the sluggishness of jetlag, the vestiges of Dubai, leaving my body as she kneaded her own version of Australia through my flexors and extensors.

The silence between us calmed me. Sheetal’s rhythmic compression technique on my arms with just the right amount of pressure, her scrimshaw work while waiting for the pack to dry, gave me permission to close my eyes and slowly fall asleep.

I drifted back into consciousness to see her smiling face, bringing me back to reality.

“Time to wash” she said.

“That was so relaxing,” I said, “Thank you.”

37 “No problem,” she said, and she began to wipe off the face pack with warm, wet towels.

She wiped my face dry and then handed me the mirror.

I was expecting to see newness, morning dew on awakening skin. Instead I looked old. It was as if the mask had not cleansed but mined, right down to bedrock.

My eyes closed involuntarily. My body let loose a shiver.

As she was packing up to leave I opened my wallet to pay her.

“Here, please take some money from me,” I said.

“No no, Gloria will be very angry with me. You are her guest.”

“Come on, please, you have done a lot of work.”

“No no, I cannot take money from you.”

“Please Sheetal, it’s only fair.”

“I cannot take money. But one thing you can do. I have a parcel for Gloria.

Please give it to her. She knows what to do.”

“Sure,” I said, “that’s no problem at all.”

She took out a small box from her basket that looked about the size of a block of Amul butter.

“Is it food? Should I keep it in the fridge?”

“It’s money. $2200 dollars. I have collected it from all my work. Gloria will do money transfer to my mother’s account in Delhi. She knows about it.”

“Oh,” I said, a little hesitant.

Sensing my apprehension, she said, “It’s ticket money for my mother to come here.”

“Sure sure, I’ll give it to Gloria,” I said.

38 “Like that there is no problem. My husband is very nice. He has no problem with sending money for my mother if I request. But I don't like to request him. He is working so hard in the shop and business is very down. He has many burdens on his head.”

“No problem Sheetal, I will tell Gloria.”

“Gloria is very very kind. She is the only client I can trust. I cannot drive otherwise I would do money transfer myself. Also in computers I am no good. Rate is good today. I checked. So please tell her to do today only. I also will text her. But you also tell her please. Tomorrow dollar rate will go up or not we don't know.”

“Okay, no problem” I said, taking the package from her hands. “I will keep it safe and give it to Gloria. I will phone her and tell her also.”

“Okay. You Bombay people are very kind. Chalo next time come to my house, masala chai I will give you,” she said, her basket now full again, ready to go.

When Gloria returned that evening I handed over the package to her.

“Poor Sheetal,” she said, ‘It’s the least I can do to help.”

She took the package from me and returned to her room.

Within a month Anil and I found work at a petrol station in Marrickville, near the city and so we moved into a share house. From there we earned enough money and goodwill to be able to rent on our own. We were lucky to find a house close to our petrol station workplace. But before we left Gloria and Tony’s house, I made an appointment with Sheetal to get my eyebrows threaded again.

She lived in a block of units full of South Asians, only a seven minute walk from Gloria’ house, but officially in the next suburb and a world away. The red brick

39 units on her street were like the terracotta warriors of China, protecting kin and country in a tomb-like colonised afterlife.

The security bell wasn't working and the entrance door to the building was held open by a stack of bricks. The moment I stepped across the threshold, I was hit by the smell of onions being sautéed, spices being roasted, the splattering of mustard oil. It was as if this block of units was trying to remind Australia of its blood ties to

South Asia, reminding a daughter it was time to come home.

I rang Sheetal’s doorbell. She welcomed me in. She ushered me into a bedroom and sat me down on an office chair.

“You can adjust,” she said, and I fumbled around for the levers to increase its height.

On the bed sat a woman in a salwar khameez and dupatta hanging loosely around her neck.

“My mother. Last week she came from India.”

Sheetal left the room.

I said, “Hello auntyji, Namaste.”

Her mother nodded at me. Then she took a deep breath and although her face was placid, tears began to trickle down from her eyes.

“Sab theek hai auntyji? Is everything ok aunty?

Her voice was calm and sure as she spoke to me in Hindi.

“Is it for this that we gave our daughter? Her arms so slender. She always covers them. Why? He has been hitting her every night. These carpets, these curtains hold her screams. At home our windows are always open.”

I was shocked into silence. She dabbed her eyes with a blue printed hankie.

40 “She didn't say a word to us, so far away, thinking we could only bear her happiness and not her pain.”

Sheetal came back into the room with two cups of masala chai. Sensing a shift in the temperature of the room, she hesitated a moment before giving me the tea.

“Mama, be quiet, don't annoy clients.”

“I’m so sorry to hear all this, Sheetal. If there is anything I or Gloria can do to help…

“Na na, no worries. You just relax. Full face threading you want today?”

“Yes please,” I said, my needs so hollow in the presence of this destruction.

“Very oily your face is today. Ek minute. One minute. I will bring towels to wipe.”

When she left the room again I turned to her mother.

“Do you know what his mother said to me when I told her what was going on?

She said, ‘That’s what men do. It’s normal. He hasn't killed her, has he? Then why are you complaining?’ That’s what his battered mother said to me.”

I wanted to hug her but knew that would be selfish. What she wanted was for the word to get out.

“We did not give our daughter for this.”

“Have you contacted the police, auntyji?”

She dabbed her eyes with her hankie again.

“From yesterday the police have AVO on him. He cannot come close to her.

But she needs his signature on the papers. And he is phoning me and telling to me he will not sign. Where will she go in this condition? She doesn’t even know how to drive.”

41 “I also don’t drive but if I can help in some way?” I knew I was making promises I didn't know how to keep.

“She needs the bond money back. The lawyers also want money. The lawyers don't understand her English. Also, she cannot understand them. Big people they are.

Their English is very good. Do you know any Indian lawyers? Do you know any

Punjabi lawyer in Australia? A lady Punjabi lawyer? At least her son he must give back to her.”

Sheetal returned to the room with warm, wet towels and wiped my face clean.

Her mother dabbed her eyes. Sheetal threaded my eyebrows in silence, her long sleeves brushing against my cheek like pleas for silence.

When she was done, she handed me a mirror.

“Shape is ok?”

In the mirror I saw her eyes steady upon me.

“Yes, very nice. Thank you so much.”

She massaged my forehead with her cool fingertips. They were like pricks to my conscience. To my eternal shame, I enjoyed the sensation, and waited until it past.

As I was leaving, Sheetal said, “Please if you can help me, come back again for waxing. I also do haircutting and body massage.”

I hugged her. But hugs were not what she needed. Her body was stiff against mine.

“Thank you Sheetal,” I said.

“Next time, come back for haircutting, and colour also.”

“I will,” I said, like Judas.

42 That evening I told Gloria about this. She said, “Yes. Poor Sheetal. She has been through a lot. I will forward some numbers to her. Legal Aid. Migrant Resource

Centre. Better not to get too involved. You know what these Punjabis are like. They take revenge.”

Anil and I were happy for a few months in our small home in Marrickville.

Our landlord was a Greek Australian man in his sixties who lived off the rental income from eight properties, and did all the repairs himself. He spent his days playing with his snakes and surfing the net for bargain properties by the Murray River in Albury. “That’s going to be the next boom town,” he said. He wanted to be the first to catch the wave.

We lived in a little weatherboard studio in his backyard, sloping down to the

Cooks River. It used to be a shed. When the wattles were in bloom, casting yellow pearls along the river and the bike path, I could forget about Anil.

“Plato was such a great philosopher,” he would say out aloud when hanging the washing on the line, pronouncing Plato as ‘plateau’. He hoped to impress our next-door neighbour, a Professor of Philosophy at Sydney University. Except our neighbour’s area of research was Aristotelian thought, and she had a regular column in the right wing publication The Quadrant. Even if Anil knew all this he wouldn't have cared. All he saw in his mirror was himself.

One morning he came home from a double shift at the petrol station and began to look at driving routes between Sydney and Adelaide along the Princes Highway and the Great Ocean Road.

“Planning a holiday for us?” I asked, about to beam with joy at this thoughtfulness.

43 “I’m buying a bike. Looking at routes. There is a biking group doing Sydney to Adelaide in May.”

“What about us?” I asked a big question, expecting an answer to reassure me about our world. I wanted to put down roots in this land, build something worth preserving for the generations yet to come.

“You’re working those days, I checked the roster. I’ll work double shifts and get time off.”

“That’s not what I meant at all,” I said.

He turned to look at me. There was incomprehension on his face. I wanted to build a bridge before we were too far gone for even our fingertips to touch.

I went over to him and sat on his lap. He licked my lips and sucked on my neck and slipped his hands into my pants.

“Just don't ask me for children,” he said when his mouth was off me.

I kissed him back, and now I see how he may have mistaken that bodily need for agreement.

That night he took care to make sure I came before he fell asleep. I should have been happy entwined in his arms. I looked back like Job’s wife, and wondered what would have happened had I not gone into Café Eucalypt that day in Dubai. I could feel we were both turning into pillars of salt, right before my wide-open eyes.

I found out I was pregnant the day after Anil left for his bike ride along the coast. When he got back, he said, “One more mouth to feed in this godforsaken country and we don't even have Permanent Residency.”

“Things will work out,” I said.

“I’m not really interested in being a father.”

44 “You won’t have anything to do. I’ll look after the baby. There will be no difference to your life.”

The screensaver came on and its light flickered across his face like an omen.

We were both still working at the petrol station. I had long given up hopes of finding work in advertising or journalism. I didn't have the Australian experience all employers asked for. And I didn't have the luxury of taking time off work to attend networking events in the city. I decided that I would enrol in a Masters of Education once the baby was born.

Things didn't quite turn out as planned.

The day my baby girl Shakti was born, Gloria came to visit in the hospital.

She sat herself down on the only chair in the room. I could tell she was trying to contain a swelling sorrow.

She brought presents and I knew a ritual must be completed before the heart of the matter was revealed.

“I had no time to shop. You know how busy it is with work and all, no servants to do things for us.”

“You can get household help here but you have to pay a decent wage.”

It was as if I had not spoken.

“Not so lucky here”, Gloria said, “have to do everything ourselves, as you have seen for yourself. Anyway, you know how busy it’s been. Had no time to shop at all. But here’s a little something for her, and for you.”

She opened the large plastic bag she was carrying. She had brought a giant plush koala for the baby, and of all things, a two pack of linen tea towels for me.

Whether she intended to mop me back into domesticity I couldn’t say for sure.

But her gift to me instantly took me back to those first tea towels she handed to Aunty

45 Marilyn with her red fingernails. These new ones looked expensive, a kookaburra on a gum tree printed on white linen instead of a picture of the Australian Flag, and a wooden tag engraved with a brand name instead of a clip-on koala. I wanted to share the memory with her, thinking it might give our conversation a more genial tone. So I said,

“Oh, how lovely! I remember when I first met you ...”

But when I looked at Gloria as I spoke, I saw that she had no memory of that time, neither a flicker of recognition of the past, nor a spark of anticipation of what I was going to say. There was no acknowledgement of the refrain that I was making this gift out to be. Just a cultivated stare of politeness, to signify that indeed she was now again the queen. I didn’t bother with continuing my sentence as planned. Instead,

I said what I thought she might like to hear. “You have such great taste. Thank you so much.”

“It’s the quality of life here, you see,” she said, satisfied.

I had not a clue in the world what she meant.

The nurse came in and asked, “Everything alright?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good. Ten more minutes before Vising Hours finishes.”

After the nurse left, Gloria said, “You must have seen the news?”

“No I haven’t,” I said, still groggy and nauseous from the epidural.

“You haven’t seen the news?”

“No,” I said, trying to attach Shakti to my breast.

“Sheetal’s husband. He burned her full face. Threw hot wax in her eyes and eucalyptus oil on her body and set her on fire. She went screaming outside. By the time the neighbours realised what was happening, she was charred. He had pierced

46 scissors into her hands. They were sticking out of her palms. It was all over the news.

The ambulance came and took her to hospital but she was dead on arrival. Her son was in school, thankfully. Not sure about the baby.”

“Oh my God!” I said.

“She was smelling of the Blue Mountains.”

I couldn’t feed my baby. Not after what Gloria had just said.

“I hope they catch that bloody bugger and hang him in jail, bloody Hindu terrorist”, Gloria said, beginning to sob, her tears running down her face onto her silk top. She was wearing waterproof foundation and waterproof eyeliner. When she wiped her eyes dry she looked as fresh as she always did.

“He ran away?”

“He’s absconding. Poor dear Sheetal. She had such soft hands.”

* * *

That year was hard.

I had stopped breastfeeding Shakti after a month because of issues with her latching on. My nipples were cracked, I had blocked ducts, and I hadn’t slept properly since her birth. I tried a plastic breast shield and that helped a little but Shakti was still cranky after she had drained both my breasts. I had no option but to start her on the bottle. She began to put on weight after that, and began to sleep longer. The deep burp that her full tummy produced after every bottle-feed was the sweetest, most gratifying sound I have ever heard.

The night Shakti went on to bottle-feeds full-time, I turned off the lights after tucking her into her cot. Then I let myself into our bed, and sank back into the

47 mattress. My milk ducts were still slightly blocked, my breasts still a little sore. I felt

Anil’s leg against mine. I began to stroke his thigh. I turned to him and put my mouth to his, my tongue finding his and tensing with pleasure for the first time since I got pregnant, as far as I could remember. He slid lower and his fingertips found my nipples.

I began to feel the wetness between my legs. I tensed my pelvic floor, hoping for an orgasm before Shakti woke up. I guided Anil’s hand down. His fingers found their place inside me. I pressed the heel of his hand down against me. I began to move as sensuously as I could manage. His mouth was at my breast. I heard him grunt softly.

He detached his mouth from my breast. I waited for him to latch on to the other one. I arched backwards, expecting to be electrified.

He sighed.

Then he said, “Deflated balloons.”

Looking back, I could say for sure that this was the moment the bottom fell out.

He withdrew his hand from me while I was still warm and reacting. His hands were wet with my desire. For months I replayed that moment over and over again. I wished I had been quicker than him, to yank him out of me before he could do it himself. He got out of bed and I heard him shower for a long time. I stayed still on the bed, listening for some portent in the debris of the night. All that came to mind was the hum of grasshoppers on our honeymoon in Turkey.

He came back into the room. By then I sensed that Shakti was stirring. So I gathered her in my arms, left the bedroom with him in it, and went in search of her bottle in the acrid, loosening night.

48 Two months later I showed him an ad for a job in Darwin. I wrote the application for him and he got the job. Anil moved there after we sorted out his financial contribution through the Child Support Agency. They said we could make a private arrangement or they could organise an official one. I said I didn't want to take any chances and would they please do it officially. Anil said I was cruel to treat him like a criminal, getting the government involved.

I said, “Grow up, bitch.”

I wouldn't have believed that I had said this myself if not for the reaction of pure horror and hate on his face.

Gloria rang me for the first time since her visit to the hospital when Shakti was born.

“Did Anil ever hit you?” she asked.

“No.”

“Did he use Fs and Bs on you?”

“No” I said.

“Then why on earth did you leave him? Such a decent man.”

Shakti began to cry and I had to cut short our conversation even though I knew

Gloria would think I was avoiding the issue.

The day Shakti began to crawl forward, Aunty Marilyn passed away at her desk. She had just received her letter of promotion, when she had a massive stroke and died without warning. In my first broken condolence phone call to Uncle Joe I insisted that he get away to Sydney. I would pay for his ticket, I said, but he wouldn’t hear of it. It took him a while to accept that leaving Dubai for however short a time, choosing pleasure, didn't mean he was being unfaithful to the memory of his wife.

49 His Facebook announcement about his trip to Sydney elicited over a hundred likes, and 31 comments wishing him well, saying this is exactly what Marilyn would have wanted for him, for life to go on. Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away to the next room. Gloria and Tony both liked his post and publicly invited him over to their house for dinner, through a Facebook post of their own.

Uncle Joe could only get time off work for two weeks. He planned to be here for Shakti’s first birthday. The day he arrived was the day Shakti began to walk unassisted. As I drove him home to my share house in Campsie, through the streets of

Tempe and Earlwood, he said, “This place is like a graveyard. Where are all the people?”

He spent the first week getting over his jetlag, and visiting the Blue Mountains and the Hunter Valley with tour groups. I had planned to drive him to both places on consecutive days. But Shakti was projectile vomiting and had diarrhea the night before the Blue Mountains trip. The only thing she could keep down was apple juice diluted to half strength with boiled water. With dried vomit on my hands I managed to make a last minute booking for both locations before I took Shakti to Emergency at the kids’ hospital.

He was exhausted when he got back from both trips and wanted to just walk around in the city by himself.

“What about going to see Gloria?” I asked him.

“When she invites me, I will go,” he said.

Gloria called him on the weekend and they spoke for an hour. After he had finished, he said, “She has invited us over for dinner on Friday. You and Shakti too.

She said she hadn’t seen the baby since the day she was born.”

50 On Friday morning, Uncle Joe woke up before dawn. I heard him because I was awake too, feeding Shakti. The first thing he did, before brushing his teeth, before even going to the toilet, was to iron the formal beige shirt and black trousers he brought along from Dubai. Later that morning he asked if I had any gift-wrapping paper. He had brought some glasswork cushion covers for Gloria and Tony and he wanted to wrap them up nicely. I gave him my best wrapping paper, handmade

Japanese Chiyogami, and the sun rose in his face.

“Do you think she’ll like the cushion covers?”

“I’m sure she will,” I said.

He carefully cut out a small piece. He began to fold the paper around the gift when the phone rang.

I answered. It was Gloria. She had to work late and had been called in to work tomorrow too, imagine that, working on a Saturday! Would we be free for lunch on

Sunday?

“Sorry Gloria,” I said, my voice the hardest hail. “Uncle Joe’s flight back home is tomorrow night.”

Later that night as Uncle Joe and I had dinner together while baby Shakti slept, he told me about the first time he saw Gloria. He was smiling as he spoke, but the charge had gone from his voice.

I decided I had to go back to Dubai for Aunty Marilyn’s first death anniversary Mass. I wanted to do it for Uncle Joe. Shakti was still under two and so I would save a little bit on her ticket. As we stood in the check-in queue, Shakti fell asleep in her sling against my breasts. I had just started reading again, The Moor’s

51 Last Sigh, and was completely engrossed in its convolutions. Suddenly, there was a commotion at the top of the queue. I looked up from my book. There were cops all over the area. They were handcuffing a man, an Indian man, and taking him away with them.

Shakti and I were allowed to board first. I asked for and was given a cup of coffee while the others were still boarding. That’s how I got to watch the news. That’s how I got to know that the man who had just been arrested at the airport was Sheetal’s husband, her murderer. Poor dear Sheetal.

The only person who would feel the same relief as I did, the same sense of justice achieved, was Gloria. I took out my phone. My gut reaction was to call her and cry. But then Shakti stirred, stretched, began to howl in her sling. The flight attendant said she needed to be put in the bassinet before take off. In my agitation I knocked the coffee over and spilled its entire contents onto the food tray. I tried to use the one single paper napkin I had to mop it up, but there was too much liquid there. I fumbled around in my handbag for more tissues, but found none. Then I remembered Gloria’s gift the day I became a mother. I had hastily stashed the tea towels, themselves given in haste, into the back pocket of my handbag just before we left home that day. Why?

I cannot say.

I retrieved them. Then, hesitating just for a second on account of the superior quality of the linen, I proceeded to mop up the spill. They were more than adequate to the task. After I had finished I held them both in one hand, a crumple of brown wetness where once there was a green gum tree. With the other hand I fished out the leak-proof vomit bag, stuffed the tea towels into them, sealed them tight, and put them into the net that held the inflight magazines and the emergency procedures card.

52 I meant to take them with me when we disembarked at Dubai airport. But in the rush to touch solid ground again, I forgot about them. I remembered only when, after scanning all the faces at Arrivals, all those touchstones that were not mine, I saw my uncle Joe.

53 The Skit

One November night in Sydney, Roslyn adjusted the dimmer on her new Ikea floor lamp. Her living room was full of the Bombay gang. They had gathered to meet

John Greenaway. He was Paul’s client, and the Director of the Australia India Festival of Culture, Social Harmony, and Business. Roslyn had been adjusting that dimmer every time she walked past the lamp, going brighter, going darker, until she was satisfied that the room looked cosy yet sophisticated, much like the cover of the Ikea catalogue itself.

Suddenly, Sushma clapped her hands and said, “Okay everyone, Lynette has written a skit. She’s going to read it out now.”

Roslyn, by then, was at the breakfast bar, arranging her beef roulade on brand new Belgian crystal. She had been saving up her last packet of Goan chorizo just for tonight’s beef roulade. She would welcome John with a plate full of this offering in her left hand. Her right hand she would leave free to place on his back and guide him in. When Sushma made this totally unexpected announcement, she said, “Er, Sushma, we’re expecting John any minute now.”

Paul said “He’ll be late, he just messaged.”

Sushma looked at Roslyn for permission to continue. Roslyn shrugged her shoulders.

Most of the Bombay gang were still on student visas, still drinking out of second hand glasses from Vinnies, and eating off melamine plates while waiting and waiting for their applications for Permanent Residency to be processed. Lynette was one of them. She was Paul’s neighbour from Bombay, now enrolled in an MBA at a

54 university in Sydney. Paul and Roslyn were the lucky ones. They came to Sydney not as students, but on a secondment from Paul’s multinational accounting firm. It was

Roslyn who convinced Paul that they should stay on, become Australian citizens, because it thrilled her to be anonymous yet striking in the undulating uniformity of

Sydney’s affluent lower North Shore.

In the background Elvis was booming through Paul’s new Bose speakers, You

Ain’t Nothin’ But A Hound Dog. Lisbert, an accounting student, had just stood up, stretched out his arms towards Lynette, about to ask her to jive. But when he heard

Sushma’s announcement he retracted his arms and sat down again.

“Oh,” said Paul, turning around. “A skit? You mean like a play? Didn’t know we had a Salman Rushdie in Sydney.”

“Salman Rushdie doesn’t write plays,” said Sanjay, another accounting student.

“Novels he writes.”

“Same thing yaar, for any kind of writing-viting you have to have a good command of the language,” said Paul.

“I always say, if you have the Queen’s English you have everything,” said Roslyn.

“If you can write novels, you can write plays,” said Paul. “Salman Rushdie, if he tries to write plays, again he will make millions, again he will get a fatwa, again he will marry a model…”

“But Paullie, do you really think novels are the same as skits?”

“C’mon, let’s hear it,” said Sushma. “She’s written it, let’s hear it!”

Lynette opened the embroidered cloth folder and lifted a few handwritten sheets of paper into the white light.

55 Lisbert turned down the volume and turned on the yellow house lights.

Lynette nodded ever so slightly, without taking her eyes off her script. She began to read.

“It was a dark November night …”

Suddenly Roslyn stood up.

Lynette stopped reading.

Roslyn said, “One sec Lynette, I’ll draw the curtains.”

When she was done she sat down again and flicked her hand indicating that Lynette could continue. So Lynette started again.

This was the first time she had ever read her writing aloud to anyone, let alone to a whole group of people. She faltered at the start, her tongue tripping on the opening lines of dialogue. But soon, she took the silence in the room for interest, and was encouraged.

The story was an amalgamation of many stories in the newspapers that year. A girl comes to Sydney on a student visa, attends a private college, and studies hairdressing. Like many others before her she has been promised Permanent

Residency in Australia, or PR, by her migration agent, by her private college, and by the man who stamped her visa. The fees are more than what was advertised in the brochure. When she complains to the Student Welfare Officer, he is very sympathetic, invites her to his house, and after a glass of Riesling, begins to kiss her. She initially resists like the good woman of Hindi films and convent schools. But he is cute and keen and accurate. She succumbs to the callings of her own body and his. However, in the throes of passion he says, “Call me Mountbatten.” Then, eyes closed, he breathlessly proceeds to call her a stinking curry muncher cunt. She is stunned. She runs away immediately and decides to lodge a complaint of sexual assault and racism

56 through the local courts. He contests the allegations and, playing on the latest cricket match fixing scandals between India and Australia, he counter alleges that she was attempting to buy him with sex. The story climaxes with a dramatic courtroom scene, and ends with the girl being deported and the Student Services Officer going scot-free.

Lynette finished reading.

There were brand new crystal glasses on the coffee table in front of Lynette.

The light from the floor lamp made them glow like compliments.

She asked, “So? Was it ok?”

Still, there was silence.

Then Roslyn said, “Oh my! That was, that was…. God! You poor thing, why didn’t you tell us you were going through all this!”

Lynette had imagined all kinds of feedback. For weeks she had practiced witty comebacks to questions about the dialogue, the sex scene in the story, the decision to reflect India through the broken mirrors of diasporic memory. But the assumption that the skit was autobiographical took her by surprise.

“No no, I didn’t go through any of this...”

Again, a silence full of pity and a collective Catholic ache to be helpful.

“Really! Nothing like this happened to me. Seriously.”

“You mean to say you made it all up?”

It’s…what’s it called…fiction or something?”

“Yes,” she said.

“So it’s not true then.” Roslyn got up and pulled the curtains back.

“No.”

57 Sushma’s eyes were red from the tears she was freely shedding. “Such a beautiful story!. You are so brave, I mean, the girl is so brave and … so….so…. Poor thing.”

Lisbert said, “Forget your MBA, you should take up writing. See J.K. Rowling, she’s rolling in cash. What will your MBA give you? Nothing compared to that!”

Paul, who had not even taken one sip of his whisky during the entire reading now drained his glass and said, “Lynette, Lynette! Who would have thought the little two year old girl I saw running around in her panties in Barfiwalla Building in

Byculla would one day write plays like Salman Rushdie!”

Sanjay inhaled sharply, but Paul ignored him and continued, “Superb! So proud of you, my girl! Didn’t know that students who come here suffer like that. So terrible that she was deported.”

Sushma said, “Shit yaar! What a heart-wrenching ending! Forget Hollywood!

Forget Bollywood! This is heaps better! You can start an Aussiewood all by yourself!”

Sanjay reached for the beef roulade and put a piece in his mouth. The only other time he had heard of beef and pork together was in relation to the bullets, smeared with the fat of the cow and the pig, that sowed the seeds for 1857, the First War of Indian

Independence.

“Nice bullets” he said, and gobbled up a second piece.

“Beef Roulade. High time you Hindu buggers learnt the proper names for Catholic food,” Roslyn said.

“Sorry. I was just…”

Sushma interrupted Sanjay. “It was so real what you wrote! So typical of men in power, they always abuse it, especially when there is a succulent and exotic thing in front of them.”

58 Sanjay said, “Lynette, give me your autograph now only yaar, when you become famous you’ll forget all of us.”

Sushma said, “This John Greenaway who is coming, read it to him, maybe he will…he will…requisition it, put an encumbrance on it, or whatever it is they do with plays, you know what I mean.”

Lynette said, “If John Greenaway likes it, then who knows, I’m ready to quit the

MBA and write full time.”

She looked at Paul and Roslyn. “It’s ok if I read it out to him, isn’t it?”

Paul poured himself another stiff drink. He was drinking scotch because he couldn’t find the feni, made by his uncle in Saligao, Goa. The minute you opened the bottle the aroma spread across the room, it was that good, the feni. He took a sip of his scotch and said, “Of course. Read it, read it, he’ll be very impressed. A female

Salman Rushdie in Sydney, he’ll be impressed. And my neighbor after all. Tell him you got it all from me!”

Sanjay inhaled sharply again, but Roslyn said, “You know me, I don’t beat around the bushes. The play is great, you are a great writer. But when you talk about the Student Welfare Officer, he’s Australian?”

“Yes,” said Lynette.

“A proper Australian?”

“Yes,” said Lynette.

“White?”, asked Roslyn.

“Proper Australians are blacker than us,” said Sushma.

“White, white,” said Lynette.

59 “Like John Greenaway,” said Roslyn. “We don’t want to offend John Greenaway.

He’s also Australian. He’s also in a position of power. He should be here anytime now. What if he thinks you had him in mind?”

“I didn’t…”

Paul added, “Poor fellow just got divorced.”

“Wife left him,” Roslyn interrupted, “Don’t want to offend him.”

“That’s true,” Lisbert said. “Don’t want John Greenaway to get the wrong impression about you.”

Lynette looked at him, pushed her hair behind her ears.

“Yes, better leave him alone,” Paul said, “Recently divorced…”

“Wife left him,” Roslyn interrupted again.

Lynette began to look through her manuscript.

“What if I make the Student Services Officer half white and half Aboriginal?”

“You mean like that newsreader on TV?” Sushma said.

“That way John Greenaway won’t be offended,” said Lynette.

“What if John Greenaway has Aboriginal blood too?” Lisbert asked.

“Arre baba, Sanjay said, “See, if Aboriginal people can be white, then white people can be Aboriginal, right or not what I am saying?” All Whites in this country have

Aboriginal blood in them.”

“You mean on them,” Sushma said.

“In them,” Roslyn corrected her. “Queen’s English.”

Sushma stayed silent. This was Roslyn’s house.

“You can’t make an Aboriginal character a perpetrator, even if he is only half

Aboriginal,” said Sanjay

“Who says?” said Lisbert.

60 “It’s just not done!”, Sushma said.

“It’s all politics…” said Lisbert.

“Arre! Forget politics-sholitics” said Sushma, turning to Lynette, “First the blacks will kill you. If you are still not dead then those Greens will eat you alive.”

“Greens? But they’re vegetarian.” said Lisbert.

“Doesn’t matter. For her they will make an exception.”

There was a pause. Then Roslyn said,

“You’ll just have to take out the Student Services Officer.”

Sanjay reached for the beef roulade and put a piece in his mouth.

Lynette said, “Take out the Student Services Officer? But…”

After he had swallowed the beef roulade, Sanjay said, “Lynette, one small thing, but I think I should mention it, don’t want you to get into trouble.”

Lynette turned towards him.

“In the court room scene, you actually mock the judge! That’s a bit risky, don’t you think?”

“Very risky,” Roslyn said.

“I mean, you’re a superb writer,” Sanjay continued. “What emotions you have captured! But why risk it? So many years, so much money you have spent here, lakhs and lakhs of rupees. Why risk your PR application being rejected?”

“That’s true,” Lisbert said. “You really deserve to get PR Lynette.”

“You have to make the judge look good,” Paul said.

“Just take out the judge,” Roslyn said.

“Take out the judge?”

“As long as it’s grammatically correct. Queen’s English.”

“But the judge is…”

61 “You don’t need to have all that drama in the court room. Just make her get a letter or something at the end, giving the details of the verdict. You can do the letter in capitals so we know it is different from the other parts of the story. Times New Roman.”

“But you can’t see Times New Roman on stage.”

“The point is this. It has to be the Queen’s English.”

Paul opened the showcase to look for the feni but he couldn’t see it. So he poured himself another scotch.

“Do you know John Greenaway’s wife?” he asked.

“Ex-wife,” Roslyn said.

“John Greenaway’s ex-wife. You know she’s some big shot Professor, femin...femin...

“Feminist,” said Roslyn.

“Feminist,” said Paul. “She was going on marches-farches when she was young.

Sharlene Connor I think her name is.”

“Oh! Sharlene Connor! I know her. She’s at our uni, right Sushma?” asked Lynette,

“In the Arts Faculty, Humanities Faculty, whatever it’s called.”

“She’s at your uni? You purposely made the victim into a man-hater? Because of

John Greenaway’s wife?” Paul asked.

“Ex-wife,” Roslyn said.

“She comes across as a man-hater?”

“No no,” said Lisbert.

“Yes, yes, very hateful,” Paul said.

“I didn’t know she was his wife!”

“But if John Greenaway hears the victim’s speech and he finds out which uni you are in, he will think that you are mocking him, that WE are mocking him!” said Paul.

62 Roslyn said, “You know I like you Lynette. Don’t get me wrong. But John

Greenaway is coming home to relax, get some comfort after his wife left him, eat some homemade vindaloo, not just curry from a Patak’s bottle or something.”

“I’m so sorry I…”

“He’s a great lover of Indian culture. He should be here anytime now. He’s going to support our Indian Catholic Association of Sydney. Now you will go home and go to sleep. Life will go on for you. But what about us? We are the ones who will be blamed. After all he is coming to our house. Your play mocks him in our house. He will think we are taking the mickey out from him. Even the Queen’s English cannot hide this fact.”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“No need to say sorry, it’s not like you’ve sinned or something.

“Thank you for...”

“I know you didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I didn’t.”

“And I know very well about metaphors and metonymy.”

“She is first rate in Grammar and Composition,” said Paul.

He’s Paul’s client, don’t forget that. You know what Gandhiji said. Customer is God.

So I say John Greenaway is God.”

He’s divorced, watch who you’re calling God” Paul said.

“Wife left him,” she reminded him, “not like it was his fault. You know what white women are like.”

Sanjay reached out for the beef roulade again and put another piece in his mouth. Just then a cock crowed. It was Paul’s phone. Roslyn reached across to the mantelpiece,

63 picked up her Japanese hand fan bought on a holiday in Boston last year, and began to fan herself quickly.

“Same as Indian women” Paul said as he put his phone on silent without even looking at it. Then he cleared his throat.

“If you want to be Salman Rushdie you should be prepared for a fatwa,” he said.

Lynette cracked her knuckles.

“But why a fatwa when you’ve spent so much, waited so long, worked so hard for permanent residency?” Lisbert said.

“A fatwa is not a good idea on a student visa,” said Sushma.

“Tear it up,” Lisbert whispered in her ear, holding his face close to hers for a moment longer than appropriate.

She turned her face to him and for the first time, looked into his eyes.

“I’m tearing it up,” she said.

She didn’t recoil when his hand squeezed hers.

Then she said loudly, “Don’t say anything to John Greenaway when he comes. About my skit.”

Sanjay found a napkin and wiped his oily hands clean.

A breeze of absolution blew across the room and recalibrated it.

Sushma hugged her.

Roslyn looked at the crystal plate and saw that there was only one piece of beef roulade left on it. She put the plate away in the oven.

Lisbert went across to the CD player and turned up the volume. By then the

CD had moved on to Love Me Tender. He held out his hand to Lynette. She took it.

They danced in front of everyone, not quite cheek to cheek, but there would be time for that.

64 Paul spotted the feni at the back of the showcase. He brought it out carefully, poured a neat peg for Roslyn, and presented it to her.

But she had already rewarded herself with Riesling. She turned off the houselights and sat in her favourite armchair, watching the pirouette of the Bombay gang. Crossing her legs, she held her brand new crystal goblet in her left hand. Her right hand she dangled over the armrest. She brought the wine to her lips. She breathed in the room unfurled before her. It was now enveloped only in white Ikea light.

65 Christmas 2012

At Christmas dinner, Martin Albuquerque, train guard on the Blue Mountains line, and head of the family, stood up to say the Grace Before Meals. Words didn’t come easily to him, but his wife Martha was a stickler for propriety, especially on feast days and family occasions. “Otherwise how are we different from the cats prowling the street?” she had asked on one such occasion when their daughter Christa said she didn’t want to do it. Martha was the pillar and post of St. Mary's church. If the altar cloths fell symmetrically on both sides of the altar, if the flowers arrangements called to mind the Ascension every Sunday, it was all because of her.

Martha saw Martin raise his right hand to his forehead, palm cupped, fingers extended, to make the Sign of the Cross. Christa stood between them, also ready to cross herself. The indelible smell of onion-chilli-garlic hung all around the family in the heat, whether from the cooking this morning or yesterday or last year, it was hard for Martha to tell. There were remotes for the TV and CD player arranged like cutlery by the sides of her plate. Near each plate was a glass, golden with scotch for Martin and herself, and with mango nectar for Christa. In the background, Jim Reeves sang

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. It was a Sydney Christmas day, striped with the

Southern sun. But the song was on repeat because Christmas is not proper without Jim

Reeves.

"The candle is not lit,” Martha said to Martin before his fingers touched his forehead.

66 "Oh,” he said, and went to the altar, matchbox in hand and lit the new candle

Martha had recently bought from the Piety Stall at church. Satisfied with the flame, she made The Sign of the Cross. He took this as a sign that he may return to the table.

When he got to his seat, Martha lifted the CD player remote on her left hand side, and muted the music. Jim Reeves was singing “…where the tree tops glisten/and children listen…” and even though Jim Reeves faded away to silence, Martha heard “…sleigh bells in the snow…” wafting through her head.

“Bless us O…” was as far as he got when Martha again motioned for him to stop. You can’t ask the Lord to bless the food if the food’s not on the table. She had been sick of chicken curry, sorpotel, chicken curry, sorpotel for Christmas every year.

So she prepared a spicy turkey this year, adding chilli and garam masala to one of the recipes from Masterchef. Martin looked at her. She flicked her head in the direction of the oven, not wanting to speak now that she had already made The Sign of the Cross.

He went to the oven, where the turkey, covered with foil, was being kept warm. He brought out the tray and placed it on the table, on a large stainless steel trivet. He managed to say The Grace Before Meals without stuttering, saying “thou” instead of

“your” because Martha said ‘thou’ was an ancient word suitable for an ancient religion practiced by a respectable family. When he was done and they all said

“Amen,” Martha lifted the foil and placed a carving knife and fork close to Martin.

"Where is the new set I bought?" he asked her as she picked up the CD remote and un-muted the music.

"We’ll keep it for New Years’ when Clement and all come for lunch,” she said.

"But we’re not having turkey for New Years."

“So what? We’ll use it for the salad if we have to, doesn’t matter,” she said.

67 Christa went to the candle and tried to extinguish the flame. As she bent her head, she used both her hands to hold her hair back behind her ears, to stop the strands from touching the fire. She took a deep breath but was gentle on the exhale, so as to prevent the liquid wax, pooled in the crater of the candle, from flying into her face.

“The turkey’s getting cold,” Martha called out.

“Coming,” Christa replied.

The first blow was light and inconsequential. She blew again and again, slowly increasing the intensity of the blows while moving her mouth closer to the candle. The flame flickered in the mirror of her face before it finally died. She let go of her hair, letting it fall loosely about her face and shoulders again. She went back to the table with the white smoke from the dead flame still hanging in the air.

“Tie up your hair,” Martha said.

Christa and Martha sat down. Martin remained standing, and picked up the carving knife and fork. When he first thrust his knife into the bird, the tray moved too with the force of his thrust. A large tongue of reddish-brown turkey masala juice landed on the white tablecloth.

“Now see what you’ve done!” Martha said to him.

Immediately Christa steadied the tray for him.

68 When he lifted the knife and fork off the turkey, Christa reached for the box of tissues, quickly pulled out a few, and dabbed the spill. The tissues were no match for the turkey masala juice, and they quickly disintegrated. Christa looked around and spotted a flyer lying on the sideboard. It had been pushed into Christa’s hands by one of the senior student volunteers as she walked past the Orientation Week stalls at her university a few days ago. It was about a play written by Eve Ensler. Christa remembered wondering what sort of parents would name their child after the first fallen woman. She placed the flyer on the spill but the paper was too glossy to be properly absorbent. By then Martha had already fetched the extra large microfiber sponge, which proved more than adequate to the task. Then Martha went to the fridge, brought out a lemon, cut it in half, and squeezed it over the stain.

"You should have put the anti-slip mat under it,” Martha said to Martin, and walked quickly to the kitchen to get it. He lifted the tray, taking care not to spill the juice, as Martha smoothed out the blue anti-slip mat under the trivet.

He began to carve the turkey, while Christa held the tray in position, his knife thrusting through the bird, forwards, backwards, in, out. Christa’s bracelet, too big for her wrist, was hanging too close to the meat.

Martin withdrew the knife and fork. Christa took off her bracelet and placed it next to her plate. Then she held the tray in place again and Martin resumed his carving. When he hit bone he just changed direction, and only stopped when he had three chunky portions, one for himself, one for Martha, and one for Christa.

"How you're cutting! Like a butcher you are!", said Martha. “Get some polish like the Masterchef men.”

Martin said nothing. He slowed down and lightened his grip on the carving knife and fork.

69 While they were eating, the phone rang.

“Answer it,” Martha said.

Christa handed him some tissues to wipe his greasy fingers. He reached out for the phone, alive by Martha’s plate.

“Hi Clement, yes yes, same to you, same to you, Merry Christmas, Merry

Christmas. Yes, yes, eating now, eating now…. Oh…. Which channel?”

Then, cradling the phone between his neck and the side of his head, he picked up both remotes, lowered the volume of the music, and turned on the TV. The news was on, and the newsreader had just cut to a clip from an Indian news network with an update on the Delhi Rape Case. Martin, Martha and Christa had all, separately, been following the coverage of this particular case over the last few days. They watched the whole clip with Clement on the other end on the line. When the newsreader cut to the weather, Martha turned off the TV. Martin resumed his phone conversation.

"Saw it, saw it. Rapes and murders everywhere. Not safe to walk on the streets anymore. Yes yes, I really thank the Holy Spirit for guiding me to migrate to

Australia. India is really going to the dogs."

Martha gestured to him to finish the conversation quickly. He put the phone down by her plate. Martha lifted the CD remote and raised the volume again. Jim

Reeves had moved on to Long Time Ago in Bethlehem. Martin began to roll his tongue around his teeth, with his mouth open, as he felt a shred of meat lodged between the canine and premolar on his left hand side. He walked to the cabinet where the toothpicks were kept, brought one out to the table, and proceeded to pick his teeth.

“Cover your mouth with your other hand,” Martha said to him. “Disgusting.”

70 When they had all finished eating, Martha said, “Clear the table properly.”

Christa took off the tablecloth and wiped the table clean with the microfiber sponge. Martha sat back in her chair with her head thrown over the backrest, looking up at the mistletoe stuck to the metal frame that held the light fittings. Mistletoe was a parasite in Australia, but this one was from America. It was plastic, given to them by

Clement when he returned from one of his work trips.

They all sat in the living room while Jim Reeves sang The Christmas Polka.

Martha began to look around for the remote.

“Let this song finish,” Martin said.

“You can hear it again tomorrow.” Martha said.

She found the remote and turned off the CD player. What you understand you can control.

Then the family prayed the rosary, all five decades of the Joyful Mysteries.

Martin waited until Christa had left the living room. Martha was sitting on the sofa, with the TV remote in her hands, watching the Masterchef episode she recorded last week.

“Do you want the lights off?” Martin asked her.

She didn’t answer him, didn’t look up at him. She just blinked in synch with the shot change on Masterchef, from a wide angle of the kitchen to a close-up of the chef’s spiced hands.

He turned off the lights, went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth. She could hear his paddy paw movements over the judge’s comments on TV as he went into the first bedroom and shut the door behind him. Christa was waiting for him there in the darkness. She had been waiting for him like this since she was, what, three years old.

He was still teaching her how to be hung up on her dad.

71

72 CIA (Australia)

When you’ve spent nights watching your little brother in pain, struggling to breathe, his lips turning blue while you hunted for the spacer and the puffer before the ambulance arrived, saying the Memorare non-stop, you end up wanting him to marry the best girl in the world. These are the thoughts I had as I sat on the upholstered train seats, the right cheek of my bum touching the left cheek of the bum of Gaby Fonseca.

She was telling me about her plans for the weekend, a movie with her mother and sister, and then dinner on Saturday night. As she spoke I imagined her in a white wedding dress, and my brother Kevin gazing lovingly upon her. We worked at the same kids’ hospital, Gaby and I, she as an anaesthetist and I as a receptionist at the front desk. She was slender with a gap between her legs. I needed to wear tights under skirts to stop the skin of my thighs from chaffing as they rubbed against each other.

She wore orange and magenta tops with mis-matched hand block printed skirts, carrying off sequins and tassles like titles. I wore black trousers and pastel tops from

Target or Big W to work every day, not wanting to draw attention to my ethnicity.

She had a promising career, headed for the top of the medical profession. I had only dreamed, as a child, of becoming a nurse. Everything about her was perfect for Kevin.

When I first migrated to Australia I used to smile at anyone who looked like an Indian. The aim was to establish a shared connection, as if to say, 'I understand.

We are two peas in a strange pod.’ I was desperate in those days for the particular solidarity you get only with those with whom you share a history, such as the memory of those first colour TVs blazing to life during the Asian Games in Delhi, when Appu was the mascot.

73 However one day at Central Station, as I was waiting for my train home, I noticed an Indian man looking at me. He looked about my age, and I smiled at him, and turned to look away. He smiled back eagerly and approached me. Maybe he was lost here in this cavernous, parsimonious place. He did the Namaste respectfully, to which I responded with a Namaste in return.

“You from India?” From his accent, I knew he was probably from the North.

“Yes,” I said, still smiling.

“You have your family here?”

“No,” I said

“Where you are coming from?” he asked.

“Bombay,” I said. I could count on the Bollywood effect.

“Oh, I have been in Bombay many times. I have seen Amitabh’s house.”

His shirt was the exact same shade as the last flash of blue in the twilight sky at that moment.

“Where are you from”, I asked, feeling obliged to be polite to this soul, floating on a surface of currents of trains and people.

“Dilli,” he said. “Near to Dilli.”

“ I’ve been to Delhi many times,” I said.

“Oh very nice, very nice to know,” he smiled as if he couldn't believe his luck.

“You have seen India Gate? Red Fort? Connaught Place?’

“Yes,” I said, “I love the shops on Janpath.”

“Oh ho Janpath! My brother is having a shop there!”

He extended his arm for a handshake.

74 “Very nice you have been in Janpath. Chalo next time you are going to Dilli you must go to my brother’s shop. Just tell him my name, bas. Hindi aati hain aap ko? You are speaking Hindi?”

I extended my arm and we shook hands.

“Haanji,” I said trying to sound as much like a Delhiite as I could but conscious of my Hindi, broken by Bombay.

“Kya baat hain!” he said.

“But Bambaiya Hindi, not pure like your Delhi Hindi.”

The loudspeaker blared “Please stand behind the yellow line.”

While our hands were still in each other’s grip, in that moment before withdrawal, I felt his little finger stroking my palm. At the same time he said,

“Bondee beach aaoge mere saath? Bahut maza aayega. Will you come with me to

Bondee beach? We will enjoy.”

I yanked my hand away and I could feel my face contorting with disgust.

“Oh sorry madam, sorry madam. I am new here. I am not knowing the way to beach.”

In Bombay I would have hit him with my umbrella or with my handbag. I would have created a scene in that patriarchal city that was finally looking in the mirror. But at Central Station in Sydney, although I felt defiled, I could not ignore the fact that he was a fellow Indian, the underclass of an immigrant underclass who didn't even know that Bondi was pronounced with an ‘ai’ at the end and not an “ee”. He was from a small town back home, still deciphering the whorls of power in the biggest city of an alien country.

“I’ll call the police you fuckwit. This is not India”, I said, looking straight into his eyes, adding “sala behenchod” for effect to make sure he understood. I

75 contemplated in that split second whether to yell louder to teach him a lesson in public.

“Sorry madam sorry madam. I am new in Australia. You are also from India like me. Sorry madam. Don't call the police. Police ko mat bulao. I won’t do like this way again.”

I heard the train approaching. The sound of its clatter, and the sheep’s bleat in his voice, broke my urge to expose him. Assuming there were police at Central station, what exactly would I tell them? All he had done was stroke my palm and ask me out.

Besides, I had experienced worse. My body turned slightly, magnanimously, away from him and towards the train slowing down by the platform. Out of the corner of my eye I saw his shoulders droop with relief.

“I am very very sorry madam,” he said. I heard the servility in his voice deferring to my privilege, grateful for my turning away. I should have intercepted this gasping to say this was not about class but about him as a man taking advantage of me as a woman. I should have said that he should not depend on other Indians to feel sorry for his filthy self and let him off the hook again. But those thoughts were just angry blobs then, not yet formed well enough in my head to be articulated effectively.

The train stopped and I turned my back to him, waiting for the doors to open. I could feel his presence recede. I didn't look back when I boarded the train. I knew he had dissolved into the throng. They all do, these men who count on the muddy consciences of women like me.

From that day on, every time I spotted, out of the corner of my eye, a male who looked remotely Indian, I immediately tensed up, my muscles becoming taut, my spine more erect, my desiccated gaze fixed upon a random point in the distance. I

76 would walk past the man as if he were nothing, an absence, while at the same time feeling his presence with every pore and orifice of my body.

On the other hand, my reaction to Indian women was lush. We were tributaries flowing out from the same source. I wore my heart in my smile and every single woman pumped back with empathy. But all that stopped one day in May after what happened with Gaby.

I got the job at the kids' hospital because of my previous experience in

Bombay. My dreams of becoming a nurse didn't work out. I didn't get high enough marks to do science and my parents couldn't afford a large donation to the college.

After my BA I did a secretarial course. I was lucky to get a job at Pfizer and worked my way up, eventually ending up as the Personal Assistant to the MD before I migrated to Australia. I enjoyed my job, partly because my boss was not a control freak, and partly because of the awesome reports I typed up for him about new medical research, just from listening to his conversations with the Research Director.

This totally fascinated the others in the office. A photographic memory and an eye for detail, that’s what they said I had.

My colleague, Caroline, at the kids’ hospital was a high school drop out but she gave the reception desk the Australian look. Maybe they thought that one ethnic out of two receptionists was more than enough. Having two ethnics at reception would have given the wrong idea, like we were a third world country, not Australia, especially because our hospital is on TV quite a lot and we have many foreign dignitaries visiting.

This is because the hospital is designed like a garden even on the inside. We have won the European Interior Landscape Award every year since we reopened after

77 renovations. Winning a European award is a huge deal in Australia. It’s like the school captain sharing her lunch with you, a nondescript kid in kindergarten.

Just across from my desk is a huge vertical garden with star jasmine and a waterfall. That's my view. It’s alive and energetic. It's better than any New York or

London view of palaces or famous statues. We have an outdoor canteen where you can pick your own herbs and sometimes fruit, depending on the season, and add it to your lunch. The cardiology department is in the centre of a thick green maze. The maze is outdoors of course, but at its heart is a kind of a two-storeyed house painted red, and all the cardiologists work here when they are not in theatre or on rounds in the wards. Our previous top boss was big on the effect of the symbolic upon well- being. Every staff circular would mention this. That's why the red house for cardiologists at the heart of a maze, and a canteen to nourish the body with fresh food, among other things. This is the reason it’s worth migrating to Australia. Your taxes go into worthwhile things that you can enjoy in the here and now. Let’s not talk about

India, where the taxes are eaten by politicians and bureaucrats like deep fried snacks with their drinks.

One day, the centralised air conditioning system for non-essential services stopped working in the middle of winter. The cardiology unit at the heart of the maze got so cold that the doctors had to sit with us in the room behind reception until it was fixed. There were many in-jokes about the cold-hearted hospital after this, but in general, the hospital is a nice place to work. All the walls, apart from the toilets and the theatres, are made of glass to symbolise transparency in medical practice and administration, and also to maximise the benefit of the Australian sun.

I had seen Gaby walk in and out of the hospital very often. She was always busy, always on the phone. All doctors at our hospital are like that. Even though I

78 observed her from my desk from Day One, we didn't really make eye contact until much later. And when we did the attraction was instant.

She was with the anaesthetic team, walking from the entrance at one end of the hospital to the theatres on the other side. It's terrible the kinds of diseases and conditions that kids suffer. And these doctors have to deal with them. I don't know how they cope. Even at the front desk, just dealing with parents who look like death and behave as if they’ll kill you if you don't tell them what they want to hear, is more than I can bear. That’s what parenthood does to you; your kids become an extension of yourself. Their pain is your pain and their failures become yours.

At times like these I thank God that I didn't get married and have children.

Although most of the time I keep wishing that my soul mate would tap me on the shoulder, kiss me and off we would go to live happily ever after. I know, that's silly but the brain is a powerful force and prayer is powerful, and who knows what the future holds.

For some time in the hospital, Norman Doige was the in-thing and staff were offered free tickets to his talk at some kind of event, writers’ festival or something like that. We were even given 20% off his book The Brain That Changes Itself. I didn't buy it because what does it say that the Bible doesn't say, really? Prayer by any other name, that’s what it is. The power of prayer, that’s what they call belief. But it’s no good believing in just about anything and praying to it. That’s why we have the

Catholic Church. Where are the Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist gods and holy men after they die? Only ours rose from the dead in flesh and blood.

I believe that the brain can also change those around you. I do meet all kinds of men at the front desk. They are mostly fathers, wild-eyed with exhaustion, or maybe even boredom, they don't give away much to me. There are also the male

79 doctors. But they tend to mix with the other doctors and sometimes the nurses. Still, I always do what the book The Secret suggests in a secular way, except I follow the ancient religious way. I thank and praise God (The Secret’s idea of gratitude) and I ask so that I may receive (The Secret’s idea of visualisation and belief in manifestation of desire). And I hope for the best.

When Gaby and I first made eye contact, she and her team were waiting on a phone call from the other kids' hospital on the rich side of Sydney. She was the one who came up to the desk and asked me to page her immediately if so and so doctor rang and asked for the anaesthetic team. I sensed she was in a hurry and didn't ask her too many questions. I just smiled at her and said the needful and she smiled back as if to say ‘I trust you’.

But the next time she walked into the hospital, she looked in my direction and came and said thank you to me for paging her. Sometimes when someone vaguely familiar approaches the desk I misjudge the amount of warmth or familiarity I should include in my tone of voice. This is because I can’t quite remember if I’ve had meaningful conversations with them before, or if it was just a quick spitting out of information, or even if they were a little rude to me. But with Gaby I remembered the shape and colour of our previous exchange immediately and very clearly.

The waterfall was quite noisy that day for some reason and we both had to speak loudly. Caroline, my colleague who is a high school drop out, was kind enough to handle the phone calls for me. I do the same for her when she has friends come over to chat. We have a good understanding, Caroline and I. The star jasmine had spread its fragrance. That is the best part of our hospital. It doesn’t smell like a hospital. It smells like what I imagine Wonderland would smell like if I were Alice, a mix of sweetness and decay at the same time.

80 "So where in India are you from?" I asked Gaby. With a surname like hers,

Fonseca, which was my mother’s maiden name, I knew she was either Goan or

Mangalorean or East Indian. I was even willing to bet she was from Bombay, either

Mahim, or Bandra. Those catholics came out earlier and their kids are now doctors in

Australian hospitals. But you can't really be so direct when speaking to someone for the first time, especially the second generation.

Gaby was second generation, she had an Aussie accent. First generations can’t fake that, no matter how hard they try, and believe me they do try. At first I used to think they were trying to become white by trying to pick up the Aussie accent and shed their Indian one like so much inconvenient baggage. But over the years I’ve begun to think that it’s about wanting to be accepted, and so acquiring almost unconsciously the sounds of those whose acceptance you crave.

Many of the young doctors who come here from India, they start out trying to say “No Worries” to me or to parents. But with their own regional accents, they end up saying something like “nyo-vrees.” It sounds ridiculous and not the best impression to give to parents wanting certainty. But slowly they learn to be more confident in their own skin, their speech is not as frantic, and they feel more comfortable saying “It’s alright”, or “Don’t worry”, something more organic to their own personalities and backgrounds.

Gaby said, “I was born here but my family are from Mumbai.”

Only someone who wasn't born and brought up in Bombay would call it

Mumbai.

“Oh really? Where?” I asked, pretending to sound surprised, although I quickly realised there was no need for pretense with her.

“Mahim.”

81 “Oh Mahim! Near St. Michael’s Church?”

“Near Victoria Church actually.”

Gaby pronounced Hindi and Konkani words with an Aussie accent. But this didn't create any distance between us. When I first got here the Aussie accent seemed like a waterfall unable to be captured as it rushed over a rocky precipice. But coming from her mouth it seemed like a lake of tranquility. I could hear the placid water soothe me as if I were swimming in alpine Tasmania. In her extended vowels I could hear the ripple of the surrounding mountains. In her dipthongs, I could hear the

Pacific Ocean kissing the edges of this continent.

It was she who said she would buy me lunch that afternoon.

“I’ve carried lunch. I always carry,” I said, “Nothing special, just some left over pasta. It’s to expensive to eat out, unlike in Bombay where street food is dirt cheap and also tasty.”

“Put that in the fridge, let’s go and have Thai, near the train station. My shout.”

I liked this off-the-cuff sense about her, and the perceptive way she recognised the hesitation behind my words, and overlooked it to draw me out into her light, rather than letting it create a wall between us. Must be good medical school training. Solid people skills. That’s what very few doctors have these days, even at the kids’ hospital where you would expect only the most charming and compassionate to be employed.

But no, I’ve seen some snooty ones from where I sit, old school they are, still believing they are the omniscient high priests of healing.

Caroline and I often discussed these things, but only in a confidential way, for both of our ears only. We were often the first point of contact at the hospital, its public face. We were also the arteries through which the hospital talked to itself in private. We had to trust each other in a job like that.

82 At lunch, I told Gaby about the CIA. I always introduced the CIA in a way that attracted the most interest.

“Are you part of the CIA?” I asked her.

“No I’m not” she said as if she knew that I was about to spring a surprise on her.

“I’m the Secretary of the CIA in Australia” I said, letting the corners of my lips pucker with a practiced cheekiness.

“Really?” she said with seriousness, as if I was telling her about a backache or a tummy upset. She may have thought I was a loony, like the many she had probably met in her years of practice. But to her credit not a shadow of condescension passed her eyes.

I waited a moment to deliver what has always had the effect of a punchline, as it was designed to do.

“CIA. Christian Indian Association, Australia Chapter”.

Unlike every other person to whom I had delivered this line, Gaby didn't even look stunned, not even for a moment. But she laughed out of kindness I think. I was grateful for that. I was quite sure she didn't find anything funny. That was devastating enough in public. It would have been worse if she had met my eagerness with an unimpressed stillness. That’s when the thought first formed about how she would be perfect for Kevin.

“My brother is also part of the CIA.”

“Oh really?” she said as she looked up at me. I knew that look of interest, cellular and elemental. I had often tried to hide it myself. But that is a look that cannot be hidden. I was encouraged when I saw this in her.

83 “He’ll be at our Christmas Dance on Boxing Day. I wanted to invite you but I wasn't sure if you had other plans.”

“Oh I’d love to come. No plans so far. I’ll put it in my diary.”

She took out her phone and her thumbs twitched and then went still.

“He’s an engineer with Qantas, was with British Airways before he migrated here.” I said, trying to impress her.

“My sister is an engineer too,” she said.

“Oh really? We both have siblings who are engineers,” I said, “Are your parents engineers, or doctors?”

“Dad’s a doctor, mum’s a nurse,” Gaby said. “They met at Bombay Hospital when they first started work.”

“I used to dream about becoming a nurse,” I said. ‘And now it’s too late”.

“It’s never too late,” Gaby said. “In this country, age is not an issue.”

“I’m too tired for study now. Plus all the practical training. I mean, I know some basic stuff because of my Pfizer experience, but I’ve never even been inside a single operating theatre.”

“Oh that’s easily done,” she said. “I can arrange for you to observe some routine procedures, shouldn’t be a problem.”

I felt rapturous, soluble in her kindness.

“Are you sure? You won’t get into trouble?”

She giggled, as if I had just said something so far beyond the realm of the possible. Then in a tone reserved for those who don't understand English very well, she said, “It’s up to our discretion whom to let in. As long as it’s not a complicated procedure. Something like a routine bronchoscopy or removal of tonsils, a low risk procedure should be fine. You’re just going to observe, should be fine.”

84 “That would be so…amazing,” I said.

“It’s nothing,” she said with her big bright eatable smile. The jacaranda blooms on the tree across from us, realistically in their last flush of life, seemed like they would live forever.

As we walked back to the hospital after lunch, Gaby and I firmed up plans for my informal internship under her tutelage in the operating theatres.

“The first Monday in the New Year should be fine,” she said. “If there is an emergency then of course, we’ll have to reschedule.”

“Oh yes of course”, I said with profuse gratitude. I wasn't thinking of the practicalities of getting time off the front desk, something I should have thought of first thing.

Gaby said, “Would 8 am be ok? I think we should start with one hour and then increase the time gradually. That way you can still make it back to your job at 9.”

A dark cloud moved over us, making the day as grey as the eyes of a German

SS Officer in a Holocaust film funded by Jews. But for me it didn't matter. I was touched by Gaby’s thoughtfulness, effectively doing my thinking for me.

She’s got my back, I thought.

The cold change in the air didn't matter. The drizzle of rain hitting us like premonitions didn't matter. The world was softer somehow, more amenable to my presence, finally moving at my pace. The distance to my desk seemed so short, the long afternoon hours to come, usually filled with unending yawns, seemed like fragments of a second. I was as an animal bride who couldn't wait to juice the wedding night before her.

85 Gaby came to the CIA Christmas Dance on Boxing Day. She looked like a model rather than a doctor, in her short strappy black dress and lace-up high heels. I was pleased she had taken the trouble to look extra nice for Kevin. I made sure she sat at our table and I introduced her to everyone. I paid particular attention to her face when I was about to introduce her to Kevin.

“This is my baby brother Kevin,” I said, knowing Kevin would hate me forever for calling him my baby brother yet again in public. But I said that to indicate to her how protective of him I felt, how much of a priority he was in my life, how he was dearer to me than life itself. I wanted to indicate to her that I was my brother’s keeper.

“Lovely to meet you,” she said, holding out her hand, smiling as if to a patient who had just walked in for his first appointment.

I felt then as I would feel two years later when I stepped into the Wedding

Cave at Jenolan Caves for the first time. The sudden drop in temperature and the puffs of darkness ahead combined to produce an effect of instability. I was unable to read what was up ahead of me. I didn't know what to expect. I did know, though, that parts of the cave were supposed to be solidly lit by the government.

“Lovely to meet you too,” Kevin said, and from the way he said it I could tell he would need his puffer sometime soon. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

They sat next to each other, and I hoped an intimacy would develop between them, or at least the geniality that leads to intimacy. These things can’t be forced and must be left to germinate on their own.

The band was playing Good Golly Miss Molly and I soon observed Kevin and

Gaby walking to the dance floor. I was then called to help Norma with counting the money from the ticket sales and so couldn't really observe their body language during

86 the jive session. I came back to our table just as the session ended, and lunch was announced. I observed Gaby and Kevin walking back together. There was no playful teasing or electric energy enveloping them. Instead they walked back quite fast, their faces wet with sweat, and my brother Kevin breathing hard. I knew he always carried a puffer in his pocket. I really wished he would get over the embarrassment of using it in public. He accompanied her to her chair, pulled it out for her. She turned to say thank you to him and he excused himself to go to the bathroom.

I wanted to shake him up and say “You don't need to hide your asthma from her, she’s a bloody pain specialist.” I had hoped they had discussed this by now.

When he came back, Kevin was breathing more easily. But Gaby had already gone to join the lunch queue along with the others at our table. Kevin and I went to join them.

We all came back with our plates and went back to our seats, except Gaby who went and sat next to Jeanne. It’s true, she and Jeanne were having a conversation, and it would have been rude for her to sit anywhere except next to Jeanne. But I watched Kevin hesitate for a moment and turn to talk to the person on his other side.

Well, love at first sight is a myth. It is better to start slow and stay steady. That was my hope for Kevin and Gaby that Boxing Day as the band began to play the soft soulful numbers that encouraged the post-lunch shedding of inhibitions.

Gaby and I were both on leave during the Christmas week and we didn't meet between the CIA dance and the first Monday in the New Year when I turned up in

Day Surgery as planned. One of the nurses, Vijayanti, whom I’ve met on and off through the informal Indian lunch group we have amongst hospital staff, gave me a set of theatre coverings that I put on: a blue gown, a blue shower cap to cover my hair, and blue shoe coverings.

87 At precisely 8 am Gaby emerged almost like the apparition of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes.

“Great to see you’ve got your theatre gear on,” she said.

“Happy New Year,” I said, oozing the eagerness and trepidation I felt.

Her shoulders dropped as if in apology.

“Happy New Year dearest,” she said and we hugged and I felt her nipples against mine.

Then she was paged and went away to the Day Surgery reception. When she returned she said, “I’m so sorry, there’s an emergency, tracheostomy case, I should have known better. It’s always extra busy just after the holidays.”

“Don't worry,” I said, quite relieved for some reason, as if this was a stay of execution and not the disappointing delay of a dream. “I can always come back next

Monday. I’m just downstairs, it’s no trouble at all.” I wasn't sure why I felt that way, knowing how much the idea of becoming a nurse had consumed me as a child.

“I’m really so sorry. Thank you for being such an accommodating person. At least you can have an early mark today if you start an hour before time?”

“Don't worry, it’s no problem at all. I’ll add it to my flexi-time. Can’t leave

Caroline on her own today.”

“You’re a trouper. We’ll try for the first Friday in Feb maybe? Things should settle down then? The end of the week is slightly better.”

“That would be awesome Gaby, thank you so very much for doing this.”

A month went by when all I saw of Gaby was just quick smiles and nods and waves as she rushed past reception.

88 On the first Friday of February I presented myself at 7:55 am and again

Vijayanti gave me the theatre gear. Gaby came out at 8:15.

“So sorry I’m late, the last procedure took longer than expected.”

It tuned out that again there was an emergency and I couldn't really start my informal internship that day. I totally understood, of course. The kids came first, that went without saying. Also, we wanted to keep this as low profile as possible.

Although Gaby had brushed off my concerns about the ethics of me as a non-medical, unauthorised, untrained staff member being present inside an operating theatre, I knew she was taking a huge risk for me, just so I could begin to dream again. That was worthy of loyalty and infinite patience.

“I think the afternoons are better. How about we aim for next Wednesday at 2 pm? In the middle of the week, when the electives usually get scheduled?”

“I really appreciate this, Gaby, can’t thank you enough.” I knew I was feeding the inequality between us by being so obsequious.

When I woke up the next Wednesday morning I was counting on Mother

Mary to see me through. It was, after all, the day of the Mahim Novenas. I knelt beside my bed and said the Memorare three times. Even though Gaby’s family were closer to Victoria Church, they wouldn't have been able to avoid the umbra of the

Wednesday Novenas, that groundswell of Marian devotion, at St. Michael’s. Even if they had never attended the services inside the church, which was highly unlikely, more than the hems of their garments would have been touched by the roadside vendors, poorer than church mice, competing with the roar and honk of ruthless traffic because their lives depended on it, selling anything that would sell: miniature wax

89 body parts as offerings for good health, curtains with see-through applique for special occasions, fresh lime soda, kiri-kaleji, jalebis, infertility potions, freedom.

I had asked to take the afternoon off, I had plenty of flexi-time accrued. I put on a low cut top, but then realised I would be wearing the theatre blues. I then understood why Gaby had dressed in a strappy black dress for the CIA dance. So I changed into my usual work clothes, and looked like I always did, knowing I would not turn heads but I would be neat and smelling of washing powder and giving off a sense that I could be counted upon.

Outside it was a classic Sydney storm, thundering like the Pharaoh’s chariots approaching the Red Sea, lightning to warn like Elijah himself. I turned up to work a little wet from the dash in the open air between the staff car park and the entrance to the hospital. But I always had a spare change of clothes and shoes in my bottom drawer. You had to, in a job like ours, being the public face of the hospital.

I answered the phones all morning. I put calls through between doctors and nurses and patients and dietitians, and stoma nurses and social workers and policemen.

I politely dealt with people ringing and ordering pizza and pretending they had the wrong number. I smiled as I calmed frantic parents attending Emergency for the first time. “Go right and Pathology is the first door on your left.” “Yes the Anglican

Minister is available. Her office is near the Meditation Marquee, go straight through those doors and you’ll see it on the far right.” “No I’m sorry, I can’t really get Dr

Alam for you. You need to be triaged first. Go and see the nurses there. They’ll look after you.” “Yes I understand.” “Yes I understand.” “Yes I understand.”

Time went by like the blush of youth and Caroline had brought me some home made pesto mixed in with her pasta but I just couldn't eat it and I apologised to her and she said, “I understand. Nerves nerves nerves. Think of the Japanese. Right

90 through the depression or recession whatever you want to call it, they kept selling

Toyotas.”

The waterfall shimmered in the afternoon light and sizzled through a lunch that couldn’t be eaten and a mind that was and wasn't looking forward to meeting an old dream head on.

“But what if I accidentally kill someone?”

Caroline laughed. “You’re not exactly doing the procedure yourself, are you?

The cutting open, the insertions, whatever it is they do up there. You’re just going to watch, maybe pass things around when asked. Just go in there and do what you’re supposed to do, whatever Gaby says, just follow her instructions. Don't get ahead of yourself, you’ll be fine.”

Years of listening in to the hospital talking to itself had given Caroline the skills to reassure me and I was grateful that moment for her counsel.

At 1:50 pm I went up to Day Surgery and said hello to the girls at the desk.

Vijayanti gave me a fresh set of theatre blues and I put them on. There were two children still waiting to be called into theatres, the adults around them harried and trying their best to be patient. One child, an eleven year old boy was slouched on a bean bag, red eyes on his iPad, too tired, too hungry to move. The other child, a girl of three was reading the last few pages of a book, her head against her mother’s side, her mother asleep. They were both covered from the waist down with a large quilted hand block printed rubia dyed sheet. It was a beautiful thing, calling to mind the craftswomen who had spent hours and days hand printing the sheet with wooden blocks under a fierce sun. It definitely had the Bombay Store finish.

91 The girl, her skin the colour of my skin, closed the book and straightened herself, moving off her mother’s body. Her mum opened her eyes as the weight lifted off her.

The first thing she saw was me, staring at her. I smiled. She must have thought I was the doctor.

“I’m Brooke’s mum. Brooke Fernandes. Is it our turn? Did you call her name?” she asked me hopefully, her body moving forward and upward as she began to rise.

She held on to the sheet that covered herself and her daughter. I heard the unmistakable voice-stopped plosives of a Bombay convent education. She probably went to St. Joseph’s or maybe Apostolic Carmel, I thought. I was willing to bet she was a Bandra girl, probably living near St. Peter’s.

“Sorry I’m not a doctor. No they haven’t called her name yet, not as far as I know,” I said.

“Oh. Sorry.” She said. Then after a pause to check for safety, continued. “It’s my first time in an Australian hospital. Not sure what to do. Didn't want to miss our turn.” As she spoke she lowered herself into her seat again. She smoothed out the sheet across her legs and her daughter Brooke’s legs.

The girl sighed and put her head against her mother’s side.

“Don't worry. I understand. It’s completely different in India.”

A smile of relief flooded her face.

“I know!” This came out possibly more exuberantly than she intended but I did truly understand. I did truly understand how the ground wobbles when you first arrive here and only begins to steady itself when you have wobbled with it for a while and then learnt to secure it with the toil of your own hands, and the untwisting of your own tongue.

92 “Don't worry, won’t be long,” I said, perhaps wanting to make it clear that we were on opposite sides of the hospital line. She was a client and I was the provider.

“Thank you so much,” she said. She tilted her own head back against the wall and closed her eyes again, as if grateful for the chance to live again in her dream.

I stood watching them. For a split second the mother and the daughter appeared beatific, the afternoon sun ignited the window at such an angle that it looked like their bodies were on fire and they had halos above their heads, just like the images in the Lives of Saints for Girls books I read as a child, especially like Saint

Catherine of Sienna.

I went back to the desk where Vijayanti was writing down some notes.

At 1:59 pm, Gaby appeared beaming.

“Alright my dear, you’re on!’ she said as she hugged me, her voice peppy and professional, her body tight against mine.

“Thanks so much Gaby,” I said, looking into her eyes, trying my best to convey my gratitude.

“Don't worry about it! Club foot repair is next on my list, but that’s ok, James said it was fine.”

“Dr James Milligan? Head Anaesthetist?”

“Yeah. You’re just watching. It’s kind of staff development.”

I wasn’t sure if this was meant to be a joke or not. So I just nodded my head with my eyes cast down to the ground like a thoughtful professional in the allied health sector, full of the gravitas the job demanded.

Before the patient came in, Gaby introduced me to Dr Milligan.

“This is the receptionist I was telling you about,” she said to him.

I extended my hand to him.

93 “Very nice to meet you Dr Milligan. Thank you so much.”

“Very nice to meet you too.” He said with a smile, and an English accent straight out of the BBC, taking my hand, shaking it firmly. He had yellow teeth but his smile was as broad as a belly laugh and had the effect of a muscle relaxant upon me. He took his job really seriously, it seemed.

“I’m sorry I have to rush off, I’ll see you in there.”

“Sure, thank you Dr. Milligan.”

“Just call me James.”

Maybe he didn't realise I was not technically allowed to be there. Maybe he didn't care. But his words offering familiarity where familiarity was not earned were like a passport authorising me into the operating theatre, with its urgent sounds, its lights of revelation, a grand stage where the most intimate details of the body were magnified on a daily basis.

I felt consecrated, a future allied health professional, a villager stepping into the bright lights of a new and wondrous city that would transform me into a worthy citizen. I made the Sign of the Cross as discretely as I could as I stepped over the threshold.

Gaby got me to wash my hands and put on sterile gloves. Then she showed me my spot from where I was meant to observe the proceedings.

“Stay close to me and ask me questions whenever you like.” Gaby said.

“Thank you so much.”

When they brought the patient in I was surprised to see little Brooke, the

Bandra-girl’s daughter. She was already asleep, the gas mask had done its job. The oxygen saturation probes had already been attached to her feet. There were other probes attached to her chest. They were all connected to a monitor near the bed.

94 “We’re giving her an epidural,” Gaby said to me.

“Oh.” I didn't realise epidurals were given to children. I thought they were only meant for caesarean operations. Such a village bumpkin.

It was as if Gaby read my thoughts.

“It’s routine for lower limb surgeries. It will numb her from the waist down.”

The shiny steel surfaces of the tables were sterile, I assumed. They were full of all kinds of instruments designed to pull and push and cut and shape a human body into an image of human perfection, to better what God had made. I found that thought quite blasphemous. But it came to me all the same.

I thought of the Bandra-girl outside, waiting for her daughter’s feet to turn out in her own likeness. She would never need the beautiful hand block printed sheet ever again. But what if God’s making was perfect in its imperfection? Try telling that to a mother who was forced to watch her child fall time and time again.

I had grown used to the beeps and pings around me. I was surprised at how my body melded into this space as if this is where I belonged, as if I were a fish who had finally been lowered back into the sea.

And then the water froze.

I was next to Gaby and this is the exact sequence of events that occurred as if in one tidal movement:

1. Gaby turned the patient over on her side.

2. I helped her do this.

3. She said thank you to me.

4. Then she bent a little to check the spine area.

5. She pointed to the table next to the bed.

95 6. There were two identical syringes with needles attached, filled with a

clear liquid.

7. I asked her Which one?

8. Don't worry , she said.

9. She straightened herselfI’ll and get turned it. towards the table.

10. She looked at the syringes and picked up one.

11. She turned towards the patient,

12. She inserted the needle into the patient

the back of Brooke Fernandes, daughter’s of back, the Bandra-girland injected waiting the liquid into

outside.

All these reflective surfaces in the operating theatre, the stainless steel clamps on the side of the bed, the chrome fittings at the top of the oxygen cylinders, the high definition flat screen displays, perhaps they are there so that staff are forced to face themselves before they face the world outside.

After Gaby straightened up, she suddenly went stiff. Brooke Fernandes was still on her side. No one moved her back into supine position. I didn't know whether they were meant to. But it felt like the universe had just inhaled and held its breath.

I glanced around the room. Everyone, the nurses, the other anaesthetists, the surgeons, the interns, the cleaning staff, they were all transfixed by Gaby. I turned my gaze to her. She was not still anymore, but was emptying out the drawers on the steel bedside table. She was flinging syringes, gauze, saline tubes, tubes of distilled water, catheters of various sizes, flinging them behind her, a feral woodcutter clearing a forest desperate for the salvation promised on the other side. There were beeps and

96 pings and flashing lights on various monitors and I had no idea whether all this was normal or strange.

Dr. James Milligan was by her side now. He held her arms and pulled her up and she just yielded to him and shaped her body in the way that he guided her.

“It’s probably local anaesthetic toxicity,” he was saying, still supporting her to make sure she could stand still, looking at the monitors but addressing the rest of the staff in the room.

Everyone looked suddenly tired and hopeless.

James and Gaby walked past me. Her arms bumped into me but neither she nor he turned around to apologise. I knew then that I had become transparent to them. There was nothing for me to do but to leave the theatre, the ground beneath me wobbly again and years to go before I knew what toil would steady it.

I didn't want to be the first to see the mother, the Bandra-girl. I wouldn’t know what to say to her. I didn't even know if there was anything to say. So I quickly removed the theatre blues and handed them to Vijayanti, picked up my handbag from under the reception desk, and walked out. However, I knew I was asking for trouble but as I passed by the waiting area I just had take a look at the Bandra-girl, I just had to see if she was still around. If we made eye contact I could just smile and walk away.

There was no obligation to have a conversation. But I would prefer it if she didn't see me looking at her. I looked out of the corner of my eye at first, and then turned my head fully to look properly. She was still asleep. The sheet was still around her lower body. There was no sunlight igniting her. This would have been racist coming from a white person, but since I’m not white I can say this, she looked quite charred. That’s how I would look too, I thought, if there was no sunlight around me.

97 I had the afternoon off and I spent it reading a book, Conversations with God. I ate dinner in silence.

I got a phone call from Gaby.

It was 11 pm and I was in the shower.

She called again as I was wiping myself dry. Then she called again just as I turned on the hairdryer.

My first thought was that she had had an accident. I was away from the hospital and so had not heard its thrum for a few hours. Otherwise I would have known why she was calling. I called her back and she answered even before the first ring had died out.

“I’m so sorry to ring you so late,” she said and I could hear the desperation in her voice, and yes, the voiced-plosives of the Bombay accent that was dormant in her blood.

“It’s ok Gaby. Is everything alright? Are you on the road? Are you ok?”

“No. I mean yes, I’m ok, but we need to talk.”

“Sure, I can come in early tomorrow if you like. I made some kulfi, will bring you some”.

“No. I mean. Please. James and I would really appreciate it if you came over to the hospital now.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“The little girl. The Indian girl”.

“Brooke,” I said.

“Yes. She died.”

98 I anticipated that something had gone wrong with the procedure. But I didn't expect the finality of death. The night grew darker than mortal sin and my heart felt as if it was being squeezed by a crown of thorns. The sound of the traffic from the highway close to my flat was a dirge. St. Michael where were you in this godforsaken country?

I felt then as the earth must feel when all joy has been sucked out of it and it cracks up with sorrow.

“Oh no!” I said, barely audible.

Gaby said, “I know.”

“Please come. Please. I’m begging. I really need your help.”

“Of course Gaby. Stay where you are. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

I tried to remember her address.

“I’m at the hospital.”

“You poor thing. It will take me an hour to get there.” I couldn't stop my voice from cracking.

“Take a cab. Just ring me when you get here and James will come out and pay for it.”

“Oh.”

“James says he’ll book the cab for you and pay for it online. Just text me your address. And come straight to James’s office. You have access right?” Her voice was perky now.

“Yes.”

“Thank you so so much.”

99 In the cab I couldn't stop crying. The thought of the mother and child, their Indian bodies ignited by the Australian sun, their momentary halos a premonition of what was to come, a reminder that you have to die first to be born into saintliness.

The relief in Gaby’s voice when I said I would come, was almost too much to bear.

I was glad I remembered the kulfi. She had once told me she loved kulfi, Indian ice- cream she called it. It was the least I could do to cheer her up a little.

We got to the hospital in 45 minutes because the roads were clear.

I knocked on James’ door and he opened it. He thrust out his hand and I took it, shaking it firmly.

Gaby was seated on the couch. I put the tub of kulfi down on the coffee table. She stood up and embraced me. In my arms she began to cry.

“Gaby and I are very grateful that you came at this hour” James said.

From the way he referred to himself and Gaby, I understood Gaby and Kevin’s sweaty but cold walk back from the dance floor at the CIA Christmas Dance. And then I understood why it had not been possible for Kevin to mention his asthma.

“I’m so sorry about this. It must be terrible as a doctor to face death like this,” I said, still holding her and stroking her head and back as if she were mine.

She disengaged herself from me and from the look on her face I knew that I was missing something.

“You don't know yet, do you?”

James spoke. “Tomorrow morning an investigation will be launched by the police and the hospital into why chlorhexidine rather than an anesthetic was administered as an epidural.”

I was compelled to reply because he looked directly into my eyes as he spoke, as if he were a lawyer on a TV show interrogating the prime suspect.

100 “James, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“You were there. You were asked to pass a syringe to the anaesthetist. Which one did you pass?”

Gaby waited for my reaction. She didn't speak up in my defense. I understood then that I was not transparent to them. I was raw and opaque. And they wanted me to be more opaque. I was crying and Gaby was crying. But our tears welled up from different springs. I was mourning for the loss of life and for the loss of friendship. She was trying to save her own skin.

I didn't know what to say. Was this the point of friendship between the classes? So that in case of trouble, the weak could take the fall for the strong?

“You were not meant to be there. You could get into serious trouble for deliberately breaching policy.”

“James. I was just an observer. I did nothing except help roll Brooke over on to her side. Ask Gaby if you don't believe me.”

What a stupid thing to say, as if he didn't already know the truth of what happenned. But no other thoughts and words formed in my head.

James appeared to calm down a little.

“Look. All you have to say is that you didn't know what you were doing and you passed the wrong syringe to Gaby.”

Again I felt wobbly. I thought of the Bandra-girl and her rubia sheet. She would never be able to see her daughter even fall over ever again. What a night she would have to tunnel through, what a mighty journey she would have to make through pain and a bloodied heart. And to think she was anxious not to miss her daughter’s name being called out for surgery. If only she knew, if only we all knew that it would

101 have been better for mother and daughter to sleep and dream all through that afternoon.

How I wish I had never had that cursed wish to one day become a bloody nurse.

I looked at James. In a different room, in a different time, I would have liked him and brought homemade fried rice to share with him at lunch.

But rigor mortis had already set in.

“I didn't pass any syringe to Gaby.” I said.

“You were going to.”

“Yes I was going to but I didn’t.”

I could see the condensation on the tub of kulfi lying there on the coffee table.

“Candy, I will not be allowed to practice if I am seen to be at fault.”

It was the first time she had said my name in a long time. She used my short name, Candy, not my full name, Candice, a stab at intimacy in this space of devastation.

“My career will be ruined. All my hard work, all my parents’ hard work. You know what it’s like. You and I, we’re both Indian.”

The decay of resentment was beginning to spread.

“But I didn't pass you any syringes. You know that Gaby.”

Although my voice was going softer I could feel that I was gaining strength.

James must have sensed this.

He said, “If you do this and you lose your job I will employ you in my private rooms at double your current wages.”

His hand was on the back of her neck, stroking it.

102 He said, “I will also pay your rent for as long as you work for me. Which can be until you retire.”

Then she stepped forward, so close until our nipples were touching. She looked straight into my eyes and said, “Whatever you ask. I will do.”

She knew what I wanted. I knew what she was offering. All I had to do was name my price, while my heart was breaking.

I heard the sound of a helicopter landing above us on the hospital helipad.

That must be the Newborn Emergency Transport Service. At the same time an ambulance pulled in to the driveway below us, its siren like a conscience begging the world to stop.

But the ground was firm beneath me now, firm and unyielding.

I stepped back away from her, and held her gaze.

I was finally tired of looking at her. I looked away and focussed on the tub of kulfi.

James thrust his free arm out towards me in anticipation of a handshake. This would have been the third time we shook hands in 24 hours.

I didn't even bother to look at him.

I picked up my tub of kulfi, opened the door and walked out of the office of the Head of Anaesthesia.

The next day, the next week the newspapers and TV and radio news bulletins and Facebook feeds and Twitter were all abuzz with the screaming headline “Indian doctor charged with negligence.” And various versions of this, depending on where on the sensationalism spectrum that particular media house sat.

I happened to catch one TV news segment where James was being interviewed in dark glasses. “We take our responsibility very seriously. An

103 investigation has been launched by the hospital,” he was saying with all the gravitas of a medical professional at the top of his game. The program cut to the Bandra girl.

I turned off the TV. I couldn’t bear to hear her speak.

Then on the weekend my brother Kevin called me. I was lying on the sofa with my feet up on the armrest.

“What happened to your friend? Terrible news.”

Through the window I could see into the flat in the building across the road. A woman was drying her hair, completely oblivious to the telecast of the Ashes series on the TV behind her.

“She was not really my friend,” I said, “Just a work colleague. You know how it is. When you see a fellow Indian at work you hang out together sometimes.”

“That’s not what you told me before the CIA Christmas Dance.”

The woman had finished drying her hair. She turned around and turned off the

TV. Then she left the room. The world was as quiet as the eye of a storm.

“I’m so glad you didn't get her number.”

The next moment I noticed Kevin’s breath get wheezy. Countless days and nights were contained in that single moment, all those years came back to me, those years spent dreading that he would die without me, without me giving him his puffer, without me restoring breath to his body.

“Have you got your puffer on you?”

“Yes of course,” he said through his wheezing, through the tightness in his chest getting tighter, his head getting lighter, his lips turning blue.

“You’re not your brother’s keeper anymore, you know,” he said.

104

105 Trending and Friending

He came from a long line of perfect pregnancies. They began with a craving for green mango pickle and ended with the cry of a boy. If there had been any falling out of line, he would not have known about it. It would have been perfectly dealt with, packed up and parcelled away into non-existence. So when she began to bleed on the very same day that the new Bose speakers were delivered he didn’t know what to make of it.

When the speakers were delivered, he was at home too. He signed the docket, and together he and she unpacked the box, in their Formal Lounge Room, bending low without bending their knees. Barcodes of sunlight fell through the half open wooden venetian blinds.

“This surround sound, multimedia, is taking us back to Homer”, she said.

“Homer Simpson?”

“You engineers are such philistines,” she said.

In his excitement to open the box, his elbow hit the maidenhair fern on its wrought iron stand next to the TV. The whole stand wobbled but he managed to steady it just in time. Some muddy water spilled out from the plate under the pot, however, and stained the beige carpet.

“Seriously Nitin, think about it. Back in the time of Homer, in ancient Greece, even before Homer actually, centuries before Homer, communication was multimedia before multimedia. Inscriptions on stone tablets...”

106 “Ya, Moses was constipated, that’s why God gave him two tablets.” The joke from an email forward doing the rounds at work never failed to tickle him.

She paused a moment.

“Inscriptions on stone tablets, dancing, singing around the fire, sound everywhere, surround sound! All multimedia. And now after the age of print, we have come full circle. We’re going forward by going backward.”

“From Homer the Greek to Homer the Simpson.”

“That’s not even grammatically correct,” she said.

“Who cares! It’s funny! I should have been a poet!”

Stirred by a newly awoken creative force, he suddenly noticed the shape of the muddy stain. It was a perfect map of Australia, including a tiny drop fallen off the bigger splash, just like Tasmania. He took a photo of it with his phone, and straightaway posted it on Facebook, on his own status as well as on the Global

Mangalorean Network page. He called it ‘Ancient creativity in unexpected places...my carpet’.

“See if it’s showing up on your notifications.”

She went to the Facebook app on her phone, and liked his post, and shared it on the Goa Gone Global page.

“I’m sick of friending all these people, they never bother to comment, or to like, just want to snoop around and see what other people are up to”, she said.

He lifted out one speaker at a time and held each one aloft. She kept clicking

107 photos with her phone camera. She selected a long shot in which he was cradling a speaker in each arm, and put this on Facebook, on her page. She called it ‘The new apples of our eyes...and ears!!!!!’

It was when she bent down and picked up the bubble wrap that had swaddled the speakers, and folded it away for later use, that the shooting pain began. She immediately went to her laptop and googled it. She went to the freezer, got out an ice pack and lay down on the sofa, with the icepack on her head. She was only six weeks into her pregnancy, six months in Australia, and six years married. She put them together. It was the devil’s number.

“Nitin” she called out, with this number on her mind.

“Yes,” he said, on his knees, connecting the speakers, his back to her. His breath had quickened and he could feel the excitement somewhere in the chest cavity.

He couldn’t wait to hear the legendary sound the speakers had promised to produce.

He had grown up wanting Bose speakers. For the first time in his life he could afford them.

“Did you know that Bose is an Indian guy? The guy who started the company?”

“Subhash Chandra Bose?” she said.

“No, D.K. Bose D.K. Bose What do you think?” he said mimicking the hit song from the movie Delhi Belly which had become a meme. Sometimes she really grated on him with her arty farty puns and figures of speech. She was living proof of the uselessness of a degree in English Literature.

She was in the toilet by then and had not heard the last retort. She found blood

108 on her underwear. She was glad they hadn’t told anyone the good news yet, except her parents in Goa and his in Mangalore, of course. She drank a glass of water and went back to Nitin who was looking for his Randy Travis CD. He had planned for days the exact song with which to bring his Boses into this world. When he felt her presence in the room he asked,

“Have you seen the Randy Travis CD? It was here last night!”

“There’s blood on my underwear.”

“Oh!” he said. He turned around to face her. “Lots? Or little?”

“Little.”

“What’s little? Is it an emergency or is it not? How much is little?” he asked.

This was so typical of her, he thought. She had no sense of number or proportion, no sense of geometry, physics, profit or loss.

“I don’t know. It’s a few specks okay. I don’t know.”

“Is it an emergency or is it not?”

“No. Not yet. I mean, I don’t think so..” His shoulders relaxed with relief.

He went to her, put his arms around her shoulder and kissed her middle parting. She took a photo of them. She would instagram it later.

“Want some water?”

He ushered her to the sofa and helped her spread herself out on it. She didn’t resist. The icepack had fallen by the side of the sofa. She picked it up, it was still cold.

She wiped it on her t-shirt, and put it on her forehead.

109 “Check the drawer, left side. The CD was there in the morning,” she called after him as he went into the kitchen to get her a glass of water.

“Where?” he called out from the kitchen.

“Left side, front.”

When he came back with the water she took off the icepack and sat up. He stroked her head from forehead to nape as gently as he could while checking the

Facebook app on his phone. She drank the water.

“That’s better,” she said as she handed the glass back to him. There was a little bit of water still left in the glass. He tipped it into the maidenhair pot and took it back to the kitchen. The barcodes of sunlight had disappeared. In their place was a weak leak of a once fiery sun.

She lay back into the sofa again, with the icepack on her forehead. She instagrammed the photo and posted it with the title ‘Lovey Dovey in Sydney’. From the kitchen he had already liked her post and commented on it. ‘I’m finally learning...not complaining!’

When he returned he couldn’t wait to turn on the system. But he asked, “Want to check the blood again?”

“No, it’s ok. Pain’s gone. Will check later.” He placed two cushions under her ankles.

“This will make your headache go away.”

“I don’t have a headache.”

110 “But you have an icepack on your head!”

“That’s because. It’s just to feel better.”

Sometimes he didn’t understand her, and especially now that she was pregnant.

He had to constantly expand his version of himself to accommodate her, more and more these days.

“You shouldn’t have said you’re finally learning. As if you’re a henpecked husband.”

“Come on! It’s just a comment.”

“Still. People read these things. You want those Mangie relatives of yours to think I’m dominating you in this foreign country?”

“Okay I’ll delete it.” He deleted the comment and added another one, ‘Best wife in the world!!!!”

He took a photo of the new speakers as they were set up, and posted them on

Facebook. ‘My new babies!!!!’

“How can you say such a thing?”

“Why? No one knows you’re pregnant!” he replied.

She shared the photo. Within a few minutes they both had 27 likes each and 13 comments.

“We’re trending on their newsfeeds must be”, she said.

He went back to his Boses.

At home she would have called her mother or an aunty or a neighbour’s wife.

111 But to do that from here, in his presence, would seem like an unravelling of trust, so tightly bound up like a bandage right now. She couldn’t bite the hand that fed her. So she checked Facebook. Her parents were not on Facebook. Her father still gave out his email address to people by saying ' martin2012 at the rate of gmail full stop com'.

When they first landed at Sydney airport, Nitin put his arm around her shoulder, his smiling body raring to go. He said, ‘We’ll face this country together”.

He already had a job. She didn’t. His future took shape right before his eyes as he stood there at the airport in his red and white and blue short sleeved t-shirt. It shimmered like the ocean that surrounded him on three sides, about to solidify into a house with a Formal Lounge Room and Bose speakers.

That evening she curled up on the sofa.

“Can take you to the doctor if you want to go,” he said as he connected the cables to the music system.

“Which doctor? It’s Saturday evening.”

“The medical centre is open 24 hours.”

“Imagine waiting there. This time of night they have only one doctor on call and the whole world waiting for an appointment.”

He turned around to face her. She put her phone down and looked at him.

“If you want I can drive you to the hospital. Emergency will be open.”

“Waiting in Emergency is another hassle,” she said.

“If you’re not in pain it’s a different matter.”

112 “We’ll see tomorrow,” she said.

“Later on, don’t say I didn’t do my duty.”

“I’m not in pain,” she said.

“Fine.”

When he was done he came back to the sofa, and sat down. She moved closer to him, put her head in his lap. He placed one palm on her forehead. He pressed ‘Play’ on the remote with his other hand, and tilted his head back, holding himself together as tightly as he could, saving himself for his Boses.

She tried to stay awake. But she was coming apart, floating towards the maidenhair fern. You cut it off and it keeps coming back, the maidenhair. She exhaled deeply. It was a soul cry. He mistook it for indigestion.

“Want some mint tea or something? Vova water?”

“No.”

Randy Travis sang “If I didn’t have you” and the Bose speakers came alive.

They changed his world with the purity of their cries. He closed his eyes and smiled.

Years later he would try to atone for his sins of omission by attending every healing service in Sydney, joining weekly prayer groups, starting prayer chains on

Facebook. They would both attend the Friday novena, and eat breakfast only after

Sunday morning Mass, in their efforts to conceive a child.

But that moment, as night began its mourning, Nitin opened his eyes and checked Facebook. He had 45 likes now, and 27 comments, all effusive. ‘Thank you

113 dudes!!! Sydney rocks!!!’ he commented at the bottom, while still cradling Nalini with his free hand.

Her head, knotted in ancient dream and ancient desire, bobbed up and down, forward, backward, as he tapped his feet gently to rock her to sleep. He cupped the palm of his free hand and placed it on her left temple, the pressure in his fingertips trying to keep her head in line with his knees. It was all he could do to stop it from falling out of his lap.

114 The Teller In The Tale

My mother came to me in the middle of the night, holding an Aldi catalogue.

We were awake for different reasons. She had blood that was always buzzing. I had a story to write.

It was Lent and still summer in Sydney. The occasional flap of giant wings to and from the mango tree in the neighbour’s backyard was the only break in the lead night. The low-tide smell of the river hastened a strange clarity. I finally felt like I knew what my characters were doing, and how they could be foils for each other. All

I needed to do was to commit the line of action to paper.

I read a lot of poetry that summer to take me back to those days before India became too small to hold my aspirations. Eunice De Souza had an ironic poem about enjoyment not needing an object. We are enjoying. That phrase stuck in my head as I experimented with various characters. A.K. Ramanujan had once said that a story is cathartic for the teller in the tale. I’d been trying different ways to work these two ideas into my story about a couple that wanted a child.

I began to sharpen my ‘Author Pencil’ bought from a bookshop that sold everything to feed the stationery fetish of writers. I had pinched a barrel sharpener from Luke’s pencil case so I wouldn’t have to stand at the bin while the pencil shavings fell off. I was focussed on the grating of wood on steel, a soothing soundtrack to my thoughts on character and rising action, when I suddenly heard my mother’s breath behind me.

I turned around, startled. There she was, in her flowery housecoat, holding the annotated Aldi catalogue towards me. Her forearms were the forearms of fisherfolk,

115 muscular and contoured like a coastline. Once, before I had children, I had hoped my arms would never ever turn out like that.

“Have you seen this worm farm?” she asked, pointing to a highlighted section of the catalogue. “It’s covered on the top and sides. We won’t get cockroaches, you can tell the landlord that.”

“You’re still awake?”

“It’s only $29.95. Better buy it soon. They run out of stock in no time.”

I resumed my sharpening. My friend Ros introduced me to the Author Pencil and ever since then I’d been a faithful customer whenever my Newstart Allowance permitted. I had decided long ago that I would write all except my final drafts, by long hand, in pencil. I found that this process brought the care that comes with the awareness of permanence. These marks I was making, these words I was writing, they were guaranteed immutability by graphite on paper.

A few months ago, when I said we should start growing our own veggies, mum misinterpreted the enthusiasm in my voice for urgency. She conveyed this to her friend Cynthia who suggested we use worm juice and worm castings from our very own worm farm to fertilise our future veggie patch. But with the final deadline for my

PhD approaching, this was the worst possible time to fall for Cynthia’s, and Aldi’s, temptations.

“I can buy it, you don't worry,” she said that night. “We can always return it if we want. I’ll keep the receipt.”

My pencil was a thick one, needing extra effort to sharpen.

“Luke and Mark have their Athletics Carnival tomorrow morning. We have to wake them up early,” I said, meaning that she should get some sleep and stop thinking about worm farms.

116 “When will you sleep?” She asked me instead.

“I have a deadline.”

I looked at her looking at me. All the times I had said to her, “I have a deadline,” came back to me in a wave of light and shadow, irritation and obligation.

Her eyes were honest and simple, always thinking of what she could do to alleviate my deadline pain without even knowing what sort of deadline I had. She just trusted that what I did, what I was striving for, had a meaning and purpose that were above her understanding.

But that night she asked me for the first time, “Is this for your PhD?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” she said, expecting me to reveal more.

“I have to write one final story.”

“Then write the best story you have inside you.”

I knew that this instruction was an implicit offering of time, putting up her body as collateral, promising to take care of the kids while I took care of my deadline.

I watched her turn away to immerse herself in the Aldi catalogue as a way of easing herself into dreams. As she walked towards her bedroom, I saw her bottom move under her housecoat, and her calves mirror the Mandovi River that held her grandmothers. Her shoulders drooped with a weight I didn't want to recognize.

My pencil sharp, I tried to write. Morning came. The sun rode slowly over

Sydney, her blood all over, inside me. She is my mother. My mother is from burning women who go nowhere but implode and spill themselves everywhere. Such is my line of descent.

I heard the giant wings flapping again.

117 When I was a child my mother comforted me with the only story she knew, of a woman cooped up in an apartment, heavy with many stories inside her. One day, unable to contain herself any longer she escaped to a forest and found herself in an old house. She told a story to the first wall of the house and no sooner had she finished than the wall came crashing down with the weight of the story. The woman was alarmed but felt much lighter. She did the same to the second and third and fourth walls. Each time the wall would crash with the weight of the story it had just been told. But the teller of the story, the woman herself, was much lighter with every telling. By the end she had lost all her excess weight and stood light and free amongst the ruins of the old house.

I never forgot that story, especially when through the PhD journey I saw myself putting on kilo after kilo until I stopped recognizing myself. I had come to value goodness over beauty. But when my clothes didn’t fit anymore, it was hard not to self-flagellate and to wish for the end of this long process. I later recognised her story as a classic folk-tale recorded by A.K. Ramanujan, probably carried by Eve’s

Weekly Magazine, which my mother read in the office library before her marriage. I called her a copycat then.

She and my father loathed each other. That hate, whipped through shouting every night, eventually turned into a practical arrangement and a lump inside their daughter’s soul. The practical arrangement involved a decision to live together to save face in society, though not as husband and wife. As for the lump in my soul, well, I thought I had excised it when I left home to be an airhostess.

My mother, who used to be a secretary at Johnson & Johnson, gave up her job when she married my father, a Cathay Pacific pilot with money, who didn't want a working wife. When I was born, my father, realizing that I looked like him and had

118 toes that turned outward the same way as his, became besotted with me. Although I only saw him a couple of times a month, between his international flights and his ever changing sleep routines, I returned the favour and would not tolerate a single word against him.

My mother pulsed with rage for the better part of my childhood, as she slowly discovered how much of a pilot my father was, giving her pubic lice and syphilis along with a monthly pay cheque. She realised that all she had given up for this marriage was for nothing more than a big fat zero. This rage ate her up even as she tried to veil it. “Never depend on a man”, she said to me a million times while combing my hair, tying my shoelaces, packing my lunch box for school and college through the years. She wanted me to become a doctor.

She herself came from an upper class Brahmin Catholic family in Goa, doctors on one side, pharmacists on the other, who had to start from scratch when they migrated to Bombay in the nineteen forties. Their family, like others of their class, had benefitted from bespoke relationships with the colonisers, speaking Portuguese,

English, Konkani, Marathi, and Hindi, fluently and without self-consciousness, with all the omniscience of a left hand that knew what the right hand was doing. So when he came to Bombay, my grandfather, based on his family pharmacy background in

Goa, found work as an accountant at Johnson & Johnson. When he died, jobs were offered to all his children.

My mother had always wanted her offspring to carry on the family trade in medicine, which had been left behind in Goa. But the hate that filled her insides, filled mine up too in a different way. I wanted to leave home as quickly as I could.

I applied in secret to join Cathay Pacific as a flight attendant. I went to the interviews and medical check-ups on the sly, using my father as a reference and a

119 collaborator, without letting her know. I waited for a letter from the company, but it didn’t come for weeks.

On the day I got my HSC results, I ran up the stairs of our apartment block, and rang the bell multiple times. She opened the door even before I finished ringing the bell. She had been waiting.

“How dare you,” she said, her face a pressure cooker about to go off.

“What?” I asked, surprised. Then I saw the letter with the Cathay Pacific logo open in her hands. I snatched it from her. I smiled at the news I read.

“You shouldn’t have opened a letter addressed to me.”

“Every breath I took since you were born was for educating you.” She began to shout through clenched teeth.

My father was not at home.

“All those years I put up with Doctor Da Gama and his tentacles were for you.”

“What?” I said. I hadn’t heard this before.

“Just so that one day he may be of use with medical school admissions.”

Her voice was uncontainable and scalding. Her body was just inches away from me but I felt the gap between us deep as a grave, widening and hardening, her eyes dry as a famished cow.

I took a deep breath full of righteousness.

“I topped the state,” I said, holding up my marksheet.

“What?”

She took the marksheet from me, wanting to see for herself. Then her body became a bad impressionist painting, all unfinished gestures and indecisive action, as she began to make the sign of the cross then shifted midway to turn towards the altar

120 and kneel then changing her mind again held her temples as if they would burst, then she widened her arms to embrace me.

But I stepped back.

She withdrew her arms. She knew she had been shown her place.

She read the marksheet again, head down, refusing to meet my eyes

“We have to start the admissions. Which medical college? They will all be calling you now, wanting you.” She began to smile. It was her achievement, more than mine.

“I’m not going to medical college.”

She looked up sharply at me.

“Unless you leave dad.”

It took a moment for her to realise what I was saying. Then she revealed herself as the pathetic wounded animal she had been all the years of my childhood.

“You’re talking shit, you ungrateful child.”

I looked up to see the shape of her mouth, only to be met with crazed eyes. I am ashamed now at the memory of that teenaged fire on my tongue. But that day I snatched the marksheet back from her. She let it go easily, for fear of ripping that precious piece of paper, I knew. It was time for me to give her a cool assessment of her parenting style. I sat on the sofa and crossed my legs like Miss Universe. Then I said in the voice of a judge,

“You poisoned my childhood with your smirks and your silences. You should have got a job or something. Released him from being responsible for you.”

She bent over me and tried to hit me across the face but I grabbed her arm and pushed her back with all the weight of the Seven Virtues of prudence, justice,

121 temperance, courage, faith, hope, and charity who were giving me the strength I didn't have before, making me stand up and tower over her forcefully.

The demon left her. She began to sob uncontrollably.

“You should have left him years ago”, I said and flicked my hair back.

I took the marksheet and the appointment letter and ran away to where I knew dad was staying for the night, to give him the good news that I would soon be his colleague.

I joined Cathay Pacific, did too many international flights of my own, moved to a shared room in Delhi at the house of a fellow flight attendant. Months passed.

Dad died when his heart gave way the first night he stayed home with mum that fractious year. I returned home for dad’s funeral. I paid for everything. I told mum, on the way back from the cemetery, that I was going to marry a pilot too, just a court wedding in Delhi, a private affair. I watched her face become a hole.

The pilot and I migrated to Australia when I became pregnant. Childcare was unaffordable and not practical, particularly with both of us doing international flights.

So I gave up my job.

After my first son Luke was born, Mum and I spoke with each other over the phone over the years. I would call her to ask about her health. She would ask about the children, first Luke, and then Mark. I would ask what she cooked. She would ask me the same. We would talk about the relatives in Bombay and the latest goings-on in the parish church around the corner from her. Then we would say our goodbyes. In this way, weekend by weekend, my mother and I swallowed our memories of each other, and concentrated on the here and the now. We came to a sort of agreement to be silent about the cold years between us, about that afternoon when I rejected medical school and a sterling career that would restore her name to follow in the

122 footsteps of my father and thus incinerate every ounce of her sacrifice, her toil to refashion me in another image over eighteen years.

Then one day I rang to tell her that my husband hadn’t come home for days and I knew he was on leave.

“Have you called the police?” she asked.

“I’m not worried about his safety,” I said, and through the phone line I knew her silence meant she understood me.

The next morning it was she who called me.

“I have the money. I can come to Australia and look after the kids. Go and complete your education.”

After all these years and all these phone calls, she still couldn’t help herself.

“Mum, I’m not you. You can't live your life through me.” There was no anger in my voice, just despair that she would still be carrying on like this in the 21st century.

“Do you know what I’m offering you?”

“Mum, please stop. I’m living a different life. I’m on a different continent. I’m

35 years old.”

“This is not about me, Rita. This is about you. Leave him. Now. Before it’s too late. For the kids.”

It was only after we disconnected that I understood what a big leap she was taking for me, across what debris she was willing to stride. I could feel an old ulcer beginning to burn again. But now it had to be salved with gratefulness.

After I left the pilot, my mother arrived and I got a part-time job as a receptionist at our local medical centre. I went back to university. Chekhov was a doctor and a writer. I was not Chekhov. I didn’t want to do medicine. But I wanted to write.

123 She didn’t ask me why I chose a Creative Writing degree. Time and age had tamed her. She simply trusted that I knew what I was doing and that eventually I would triumph and make her proud.

Mum learned to be Australian by copying me. I said we should go to the protest march against racism organised by our local MP. Mum said, ‘I was also thinking about that.”

After the protest march she made her weekly phone call to her older sister,

Superior General of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart Of Jesus in Bombay. Aunty

Doreen had changed her name to Sister Prema when she married Jesus. I once barged into the parlour of the convent after college, and said to her in fear, “I think God is calling me to be a nun.” I added, “but I don't want to be. And there’s nowhere I can hide from God.”

Aunty Doreen took me to the scullery where it was her turn to do the dishes.

“God will find you only if you want him to.”

In my relief I insisted that I would scrub every last fork and spoon until they shone brighter than a chalice, but Aunty Doreen edged me away from the sink and submerged her own hands in the grey dishwater.

“Hello, Mother Prema please, this is her sister from Australia.”

Mum always put on what she thought was her born-and-bred accent when she spoke to Indians, saying Aus-try-yer. The second syllable was copied from her

Lebanese friends from church. The third syllable was copied from Cynthia. Her accent receded into Indianness when Aunty Doreen came on the line.

“We went for a procession today,” Mum said, describing the protest march. “It was a good walk. The boys also walked. For more than five kilometers we walked, like from Bandra station to the Mount.”

124 Aunty Doreen may have asked what the procession was about.

“No, not organised by the church. But it was about peace.”

The fifteenth of August. Independence Day in India. But here in Sydney, the magpies were nesting and pecked at all that was shiny. I was on my way out to work when the cops rang.

“Are you the wife of Mr. Ronald Fernandes?”

I was going to explain that I used to be, I was not any more. But of course, the dullness of foregone conclusions in the caller’s voice made me say ‘Yes’.

“I’m sorry ma’am.” A pause that could only mean one thing. “We found your number on his phone under ‘Wife’. It was the last number he tried to call.”

When I called my mother, she said, “I will deal with the kids. You do what you need to do.”

At his funeral, a choir full of high-pitched Goans sang Konkani hymns, with harmonies that recalled green fecundity and the sip of sweet coconut, not the aridity of loss in the concrete jungles of Sydney. Mogal Jesu Yeo, they sang, as the altar server, slow in his fold and finish, compelled them to sing the fifth verse.

There he lay, my husband, strictly speaking, my ex. We had not slept together for years, as he drove himself to drama with all manner of men and women and song.

In the end he came back to me, or was brought back to me via a phone call. I couldn't bear to look at his face, with the lines of international flights mapped across it. I was hysterical with grief and relief.

I could have been happy with him. All I wanted was exhilaration, an orgasm once in a while, completing each other’s sentences at parties. I wanted these but

125 learned to live without them for so long that the sight of them in other couples instilled not jealousy but incredulousness that such things were actually possible.

She lived with me, my mother. I did not live with her. I tried to make that clear to Ros, my friend from uni, the first time I met her. Ros grew up in the posh

Eastern suburbs of Sydney. The fees she paid to her only son’s school were at least three times my annual income. But she insisted that she was just another student doing it tough. Every once in a while, however, I could see through the cracks in her veneer of street cred cool and t-shirts from Target.

She was doing a PhD about the representation of capitalist practices in contemporary Chinese novels. At our first meeting, at the Orientation talk for commencing Higher Degree Research students in our Faculty, as we chatted about our

PhD projects, the conversation moved to living arrangements.

“It must be hard, how do I put it, to forfeit your independence and go back to live at home.”

Anxious to deflect the shame she was flicking at me, I tried to explain that it was actually the other way around. I said that if I lived with my mother, I’d be living in her house. Instead, the rental lease was on my name. I paid the phone bills and the electricity and water bills. I tried to explain to Ros that assumptions about parents and adult children living together were different in different cultural contexts.

But Ros’s family was solid Sydney. She had grown up without need on her mind, her father being an investment banker and her mother the descendant of wool trading millionaires. My voice sounded like a whine. But it was she who beat me to an apology.

“I’m sorry I asked, I didn’t mean to...”

126 The conversation became about her.

“I’m always a bit of a luddite when it comes to, you know, multicultural stuff.

I’m very sorry.”

I knew to change the subject.

“It’s no big deal. We should have coffee sometime.”

We met for coffee on the Tuesday morning after the Orientation. When we got to the front of the coffee cart queue, I ordered a large flat white to keep me going through the day, and made sure to get my loyalty card stamped. Ros ordered a soy decaf. She didn't have a loyalty card. I was tempted to ask the barista to stamp my card twice, one of me and one for her, so I could get a free coffee faster. But Ros had already walked away to find a shady spot and the next customer was bouncing behind me.

We sat at one of the large tables under a red flame tree.

“You’re so lucky,” she said,

“Why lucky?” I asked.

“Oh, you know, your Creative Writing PhD, it’s so…liberating. Such freedom from traditional academic strictures.”

“It’s still work,” I said.

“I know, but you know what I mean. It’s not like what we have to do, spend months just thinking about the Literature Review and making an intellectual contribution.”

She took another sip of her decaffeinated drink.

“I wish we could, you know, just write, like a story or something, without needing to check and cross-check every word.”

127 I heard a roaring sound overhead and so I looked up. There was a plane in the sky. Its tail had the Cathay Pacific logo. I must have looked like I was ignoring her, because Ros immediately said,

“Not that I’m questioning your intelligence or anything.”

I was still looking up as the plane disappeared behind the clouds.

“Far from it.” Roz was saying.

I looked at her. I must have looked ashen, or at the very least, disoriented. She said, “Are you ok? I didn’t mean to offend you.”

We were still not yet close enough to let such words remain hanging without acknowledgement.

“Oh no no, I completely understand,” I said.

“It must be challenging, I can imagine, writing a story. What do you do if you quote someone else?”

“The whole point is to come up with language that is not clichéd, not someone else’s.”

She said, “I mean, I know these things take time. For example, some of these

Chinese writers spend years just on one novel. Completely the opposite of the efficiency of the Communist Party that we all marvel at.”

“Yes, Indian writers too”, I said.

By the end of that conversation I was completely discombobulated. Ros had chosen to spend years studying the words and ideas, the original intellectual contributions to the world that writers were making through their work. Yet she was so dismissive of the very process of making such work, the work that I was trying to do in my Creative Writing degree. What she thought was the tail was actually the dog.

128 Just as we stood up to go back to our workspaces, a lady walked up to us. As soon as Ros saw her she began to shriek with delight. They each offered one cheek for the other to kiss. They began to talk about each other’s husbands.

“Your husband crept up to me and grabbed me by the waist and pinched me!”

“No!! I’ve told him never to do that to other women.”

“Yes!! Just then, just as I was parking!!”

“Oh, let me introduce you, Sue-Ellen, this is Rita, my NEW friend. Isn’t she gorgeous?”

“Hello Rita, so nice to meet you. I LOVE India. I went there many years ago, to Goa and Kerala. The food was just divine! Oh! I can’t wait to go back!”

The hand thrust into mine was soft with weekly manicures. I sensed that a map was being drawn and a border being created beyond which I would never traverse. I was being shown my place. I looked up at the sky for the plane. It had vanished, probably already landed like a bombshell in someone’s bedroom.

That happened at the start of this whole process.

I was now nearing the end. Just one more story and I would be done.

Mum went to Luke and Mark’s Athletics Carnival, leaving me with time to deal with my deadline. She was an enthusiastic spectator in a way that I could never be, just as she had been at all my sports days at school in Bombay, She was still unsocialised in the ways of Australian Athletics Carnival etiquette. She clapped whenever Luke or Mark was at the starting lines, calling out their names loudly from across the field to ask if they wanted lunch from the canteen. That evening she got home with the boys, and with a brand new worm farm.

“Cynthia gave me a lift,” she said. “Do you think this will fit behind the shed?”

129 “It needs a dark, shady spot,” I said.

“When are we getting worms?” Mark asked.

“What will the worms eat?” Luke asked.

“Boys, come away from mum’s computer, she has a deadline,” said my mother.

Our home after school was gossamer and grunt as the childhood of my children played out while I wrote. I only caught glimpses of this childhood in the gaps between deadlines and I knew that one day I would regret it. But that one day seemed so far away as to be inconsequential.

That night, when mum and the kids were safely asleep, I rang Ros to tell her I was writing my mother’s story.

“So it’s going to be about your culture?.”

“Er, not really. Maybe…”

“I can’t bear to be with my mum for more than a few hours. Don't know how you can live under the same roof. You’re a saint.”

I knew these generalisations were an easy way out. But she was all I had, just one name to put on the Acknowledgements page of my PhD.

“Your whole PhD playing out right before your eyes. All you have to do is record it. I’m still trying to theorise my first chapter. It’s all Deleuze, Deleuze,

Deleuze. He sneezes and it’s 800 pages worth of rhizomes.”

“Good for you Ros,” I said. “Can I send it to you for feedback?”

When I said feedback what I really meant was unbridled praise.

“Sure. I’ll have a look. It will be with a Deleuzian lens, I have to say.”

“Thanks Ros. Much appreciated.”

“Hey! No worries!”

130 The next day, I dropped off the kids to school and came home. At home, the

TV was on when the radio was on, full of advertisements and Christian sermons, and the occasional Elvis special. Mum had already cooked and vacuumed and washed the menstrual stains off my pyjamas when, too tired, I had left the tampon in all night.

I asked, “Can I turn these off ?”

She shrugged as if to say it was entirely my choice.

“I thought I could interview you,” I said, unsure of my words and their effect.

“For what? I’m not a celebrity or anything.”

“For the story I am writing. For my deadline.”

She filled the kettle with water and turned it on.

“Would you like some tea?”

“Yes please mum.”

We sat down, my mother and I, in this strange and new attempt at intimacy. In five hours I would need to leave to pick up the kids. This was going to be hard. Over the years, in the crawl and quake of child-rearing, we managed to avoid a real conversation. I realised this was the first time we were face to face, naked before each other, since the day I chose to follow my father into a job at Cathay Pacific. I took a sip of the tea she poured me. It was so hot it burned my tongue.

“So what do you want to know?”

What I really wanted to say was “Couldn't you have given me a name with more character?” But this would fray the thin cord holding us together.

So I said again in my most neutral interviewer’s voice, as if I were asking whether she likes shower gel or soap, “Why did you name me Rita?”

“It’s a beautiful name. The name of a saint who…”

131 “I have always hated my name.” I felt the reflux of that shameful teenaged day, like so much bitter bile.

“I wanted to call you Agnishikha. Flames of Fire.”

“What?’

“But your father’s family wanted the name of a saint.”

Agnishikha. What I could have done with a name like that! What I could have become! Years spent in India begging to be taken seriously as Rita, a name that evoked immoral Christian women in Hindi films. I suppose it didn't really matter now that I was in Anglicised White Australia. Flames of Fire. She even remembered the meaning after all these years.

“So you just gave in to them?”

“He’s dead, they’re all dead.

“ But you’re alive. I’m alive.” She did not like the edge in my voice.

“No point talking about the past. It will be time to pick up the kids soon.” She got up to leave.

“Mum, it's only ten o’clock. What happened when you found out you were pregnant, with me?”

Outside the sun is gaining strength

She sighed and sat down.

“They wanted a boy, those Mangaloreans. Nothing new. I expected a big commotion when they first saw your private parts. From then on I knew it would be a tough fight.”

“What fight? You were always so snooty and haughty and full of pride whenever we went to Mangalore. You never even let me stay in their house. It was always a hotel.”

132 “Is that what you remember? Just the last time we visited them? You don’t remember the trips every year to their village?”

“No.”

“Seriously?”

“I remember the village but I remember staying in a hotel, and grandma saying you were cruel.”

She sipped her tea.

“You’re the one who came from money and medicine and all your Brahmin affectations in Goa.” I said. “Isn’t Goa their real homeland?”

“Why do you think they hated me, that family of cooks and deckhands on

P&O ships. I had something they could only dream about.”

Mum’s mobile rang. It was Cynthia.

The first Monday that mum was here she wanted to find her bearings in the city. It was Luke’s kindergarten orientation so I couldn't accompany her but I drew her a five-fingered map of Sydney with its bitumen veins trying to enclose it into a system.

“Get off at St. James Station, go past the cathedral to the Art Gallery. Go and see the art works there. Then walk down to the harbour through the Botanic Gardens.”

By the time the kids and I got home, after school and tennis lessons, heated by a fierce summer sun, all I wanted to do was put the kids to bed and drift into pleasure myself. Mum was home before us but I was running on empty and I didn’t really care whether she had had an easy time in the city or not. I drank the tea she gave me and got cracking with serving dinner. But mum’s voice was as shrill as a tourist.

“I met a very nice lady.”

133 “Oh sorry. Did you have a nice day? You didn’t get lost?”

“Sydney is very easy, everything has a name, buildings, streets, even the little paths around trees and plants in the Botanical Gardens.”

“It’s ‘Botanic’ Gardens,” I said.

“Her name is Cynthia.”

“Indian?”

“No, Australian.”

“At the Art Gallery?”

“No, at the Cathedral. It was 12 o’clock so I went in to say the Angelus. She was lighting candles, and I asked if she would help me find my way to the harbour.”

“So you didn’t go to the Art Gallery?”

“Of course I went. I had tea in their canteen.”

“It’s not a canteen. It’s a café.”

“The tea was tea-bag tea. So weak and cold.”

Luke needed to be showered; he was still too short to reach the taps. So I showered him and dressed him and then sat down to check Mark’s school bag. The teachers were always sending notes home. I knew a mountain of paper would build up before year’s end. Trouble was all that paper was already printed on both sides, their notes were that long. I couldn't even use them for mind maps or scene breakdowns.

“Cynthia works at the Botanical Gardens,” mum said as I tried to figure out the best place to store all this paper from the children’s school.

I was immediately interested.

“Can she give us free native plants?”

“I told her you were into growing potatoes and lettuce…”

134 “I’m not into growing potatoes and lettuce. I’m just interested in knowing the best way to do it.”

“No need to get angry every time I open my mouth.”

Mum and Cynthia became friends, or at least that was mum’s interpretation of their relationship. They would talk on the phone once in a while, and meet for the

Chrism Mass, or the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament in the city. Their faith was the glue that bound them. Mum was relieved she could speak complex English phrases with Cynthia rather than the slow and simple sentences she used with her ESL friends in her largely ESL church. Cynthia, for her part, seemed to use her rooted knowledge of Sydney to increase the upper hand she held over mum, a newcomer to the city, completely in her thrall.

“Cynthia said you get cheap fruits and vegetables at Paddy’s Markets in

Flemington.”

“Yes mum I know,”

“Cynthia said it’s quite a huge price difference between Paddy’s Markets and the supermarkets. She said to ask you to take me there one day. She said you even get freshly scraped coconut, there are some Indians selling stuff there, she said.”

“Mum, I didn’t arrive here yesterday. Why does Cynthia keep telling you what is common knowledge here? Does she think we’re stupid or something?”

“She’s only trying to help. There’s no need to cast aspersions.”

After mum finished talking with Cynthia on the phone, she said, “Cynthia said they just received a new shipment of worms.”

“At the Botanic Gardens?”

135 “She said she will keep some aside for us. I told her we bought the Aldi’s worm farm.”

“Okay, there’s no rush.”

“Did you check on the internet about the best spot for the worm farm?”

I realised she wanted to keep talking about the worms as a way to avoid talking about herself. But my deadline was fast approaching. I had one more week to finish my story.

I drained my mug of tea.

“What about all the parties in Bombay, when I was a child, when they would crack jokes about drunk Goans? You used to laugh along with them.”

“You were not the first born, you know.”

“You’ve told me about the miscarriage.”

“There was a baby. Another girl after you.”

I heard wings flapping past the mango tree.

An old memory of plunder rose up within me.

I was ten, in the middle of my first periods, when my mother dragged me off to Goa in the heat of the night. She hired a cab, so extravagant, to take us from

Bombay, through the winding Western Ghats to her mother’s house in Badem. Her unmarried surgeon sister Aunty Millie took me into the upstairs washing room, where the servants had prepared hot water on the stove for me. She scrubbed me clean, watched the water run red between my legs, then gave me hot soup in a darkened room. There Aunty Millie held me as we watched my mother go to pieces. I was angry with her for uprooting me from home on the day before dad was meant to return from a flight.

“Take her away,” mum said, “let her sleep with her grandmother.”

136 But Aunty Millie held me tighter.

“Let her listen, this is her story too.”

Mum had brought a shoebox with her. In the shoe box, was my baby sister. Or the mix of skin and dead organs that would have become my baby sister.

“Mother-in-law said the baby was cursed, my womb was cursed. And Johnny said nothing on the phone.”

The baby was eased into the river that flowed behind the house.

I caught snatches of conversation as I drifted into sleep in Aunty Millie’s lap.

“Little angel is with her great grandmothers now.”

“The river flows with the blood of our women.”

I listened but without any sympathy. I learned from very early on that in matters of the heart between my parents, I must take sides. I had long since chosen the side of my father.

“How did we go back to Bombay after that?”

By ‘how’ I really meant ‘why’ and mum caught these words under my words.

“You had piano lessons, and grammar tuitions, inter-school athletics coming up.”

That morning at the kitchen table, I saw that the abyss between us was really of my own creation. For her it was hardly an abyss. It was life itself. Her sense of identity had been whittled away until all she had left was my future. That’s how she saw it. That’s how I saw what she saw, now, for the first time.

There was a box of tissues. I reached out for them, trying to buy time before I gave in to my urge to hug her.

She stood up.

137 “I have to go and see Cynthia”

I said, “Okay mum.” My voice was quickly cracking. But if mum noticed, she didn’t show it.

She went to the toilet, gathered her bag, refilled her little water bottle, and left.

The next week was a blur of coffee and indigestion, more notes from the school, cravings for chilli chips and ice cream. In between school drop-offs and pick- ups, tennis lessons, and showers, I wrote so much that I ran out of ‘Author Pencils’. I rang Ros to ask, beg, if she would buy me a couple more. I asked if she would post them to me. I’d reimburse her, directly into her bank account. She didn’t even recognise the name of my suburb when I told her.

“Don't worry about it. Take it as an early graduation gift from me.”

“Thanks Ros, that’s so generous of you” I said to her. I was glad she didn't ask about my story. She had my pencils hand delivered by the courier company her husband owned.

When the courier rang our doorbell, I left my desk to answer the door and sign for the parcel. As I walked back in I noticed mum sitting at the table, a mound of shredded paper in front of her.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for the Aldi’s receipt. The lid of the worm farm doesn’t fit. Need to exchange it.”

“But why are you tearing up everything into such tiny pieces?”

“Cynthia said people can get your personal details from your receipts. Some ethnics are desperate. They can hack into your bank account with the information they find on such pieces of paper. It’s called identity theft, Cynthia said. She said I should ask you to do the same.”

138 I had no space in my head to engage with this political colouring-in competition.

I went back to my desk and to my writing.

* * *

It is the day of the deadline. I have finished writing the story. My hands, my wrists, are a knot of pain. My neck is stitched into a stiff capital C. The muscles in my back are all caught up in snarls.

I go for a walk along the river to put some distance between the work and me, to help me see the trees in the woods, so to speak, before I begin to type up the manuscript onto my laptop. I have an hour before I have to pick up the kids from school.

From the main road, the Cooks River is a shiny wrench, revealing itself now and again, when I drive past. But now, from the foreshore itself, the river is a surge of the heart that buoys my spirits. It is a handcrafted silver necklace in the sun. It is an intestine showing off its importance in the grand scheme of a fully working body. Its breath of memory at low tide, its mangroves that hide and hold a universe, I notice all of this as if for the first time. I feel lighter, just like the woman in the folk tale recorded by Ramanujan. I walk slowly, breathing the dankness as deeply as I can, feeling my lungs fill up, letting myself relax after a task that I thought was beyond me.

I am enjoying. For the first time, I am enjoying.

139 I pick up the kids and go home. I give them screens to buy myself time to type up my final draft in peace.

I am light hearted and lightweight, and full of light. All manner of metaphors relating to light come to me and demand that I record them in the Notes App on my phone.

I hand over the iPads to Luke and Mark. They squeal in delight at this unexpected grace.

“Do you have a deadline, mum?” Mark asks cannily.

“Yes” I say.

“But you look happy,” Luke says.

My head is full of the climax of my story. There is no space for ludic conversation.

“Only one hour,” I say to them in my sternest voice. But they and I know it will be much longer.

I turn on my laptop. It needs updates and a restart. I click all the right buttons and go looking for my manuscript while the updates are in progress.

My manuscript is not where I left it.

“Mum,” my voice is shrill with impatience and dread as I run through the house. I check the paper shredder. It is empty now.

“Mum,” I scream louder, busting open the backdoor.

She is standing at the worm farm with her back to me.

The worm farm is warm as Christmas, and honest in its intention.

I see her there, and the thought of what she has done is heavy like a Boeing

747 on my heart. I struggle to breathe.

140 I want to hit something, to hurt someone physically. The old ulcer begins to burn like an ancient sun. I am a crazed, revved up engine.

Instead, I scream a soul scream, ‘Mum!”

I take a step towards her, banging the screen door shut behind me as hard as I can.

But it’s too late.

The story has been told. Now the worms are eating it. Soon the story will feed the potatoes and the lettuce, when I get around to planting them. For now, the neighbour’s mango tree will be its beneficiary.

The weight on my heart is about to crush me.

Then mum turns to look at me.

There is freedom in her face and the walls lying in ruins about her. She walks towards me, looking straight into my eyes.

But I feel the clench of her fist. I look at what she is holding.

“I made a bed for the worms,” she says, “with all those school notes and receipts.”

I see she is gripping my manuscript.

There is pride in her voice, and vindication, and her body is weightless from a job well done.

I see her fingers holding our story, they are unfurling now as she hands it to me.

“Type it up,” she says, “make sure you don't put apostrophes on the wrong

‘its’. All those expensive tuitions for nothing.”

In the shrinking space between us there is a sky opening up and the past is cut up with cubist understanding with the husbands and fathers we had both once loved

141 and I see her without tears eyes dry like a survivor and I retch with shame for doubting her purpose for once thinking she was bovine as I gulp with pride at the seeds from which I was sprung for she is a god who is above all understanding and I am melting in the breath of this mother of mine.

The wind carries that the smell of the amniotic river to the space between my mother and me.

Her arms are so close to me now. So so close.

They are as wide as the river that held her grandmothers, that held a daughter who was yet to be.

All is liquid air and rich composted soil.

From this, newness will be fashioned.

I am sure of it.

I do not step back.

142 At Cavana

She went home with a man she met at Cavana. The bike ride was sweet, laced with letting go. It was a surprise that she went with him at all. But Cavana is a place of promise and forgetting. Of moons that sweeten skies with roguish light.

Her evening began when she got out of the rickshaw. The entrance to Cavana was a glowing yellow bauble with the night darkening deeply behind it. Full of the kind of men who used to dance at her fingertips, Cavana was a jewel in the fetid night, glistening with the sweat of the lonely, the brave, and the free.

Her phone rang just as the lights at the entrance sucked her over the threshold.

It was her lawyer, Alice Da Cunha. She walked back out to the road again, away from the noise of the band. Alice said they must go for the adultery angle too. The phone bills with incoming and outgoing calls to and from the Philippines and Fiji, the sms messages from all over the city, the overseas trips with bite marks as souvenirs, all these were ammunition, she said.

Initially, Sunita had been reluctant. Talk of sex belonged to bedrooms with thick curtains and soft sheets, not to the glare and snigger of a public court. But she had lived her married life in various permutations of a tripartite disagreement. It became easy to find her wellspring of courage.

Yes, she replied, she had scans and photographs on a USB-drive at home.

This is what it was about: sole custody of the children, and enough to see them through to American universities.

“Thank you Advocate Alice, I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

143 This was her first night out since the court appearances began to brutalise her three years ago. The Family Court, the High Court, Section 489A of the Indian Penal

Code: she wanted just for one moment to turn her back on them and embrace the night and all its etceteras. She had made preparations, with a Brazilian under her skirt, and eyes unleashed with new mascara. She went straight to the Ladies, touched up her lipstick, walked to the bar.

“Hi Sunita”, an old friend Jimmy called out to her.

The band started with a bang.

Palalalalala Bamba…

Jimmy pulled her to the floor and they began to jive, leaning in, leaning out, loosening up.

They danced on, through Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, through Johnny Be

Good, through Cecilia. At Joanna Give Me Hope another of Jimmy’s friends sprang into them and Jimmy changed partners with the graceful smile of someone used to plenty.

Sunita, back at the bar, held her gin and tonic, and prospected the field before her. Men walked up and down past her to get their drinks. She tried making eye contact with some of them. They looked at her and smiled at her, but there was no promise in lip or lash. She smiled back like the platonic friend she didn’t want to be.

No one bumped into her, not even accidentally. Streams of restless grace and high expectations were still the call of the hour.

Her phone rang. She stepped out into the courtyard to take the call. The fairy lights in the courtyard separated ragged reality and the edges of a dream, protecting each from each.

It was her mother saying her children were crying for her.

144 “Let them watch TV,” she shot back, knowing it would buy her infinite time.

She stepped back into the thrum of Cavana, gin in her limbs, aching for release. Jimmy was dancing with yet another friend, smiling his smile of munificence, keeping his women happy. Her place at the bar was taken. She went there anyway and stood near one of the bar stools, watching the dancing couples float freely past her.

Suddenly, the power went out. The crooner was cut off in mid –screech.

“I wanna hold your haaaaaaa…”

She shifted her weight in space, searching for a nook of comfort with which to deal with the dark. She felt herself fit into another body and as she turned around to apologise the lights came back on.

“Sorry,” they both said.

Then she suddenly recognized the face before her. It was him from long ago, from a time before mountains when the earth was flat and hers for the taking.

They had known each other as teenagers and young adults - same parish, same youth group, different levels of bad taste. He had loved her, usually in his imagination, occasionally with his arms creeping upwards from her waist at Christmas dances, always in his pants. She had known there was a current there but didn’t much care for it.

Now it was twenty years on, after hair thinned with children, a neck fattened with hypothyroidism, and a pen-drive full of backups of important evidence in the fight of her life. That sort of recklessness only belonged to old photos of her in low cut dresses with highty-flighty hemlines.

But he didn’t recognize her and she had to explain.

“Jerry? It’s me, Sunita.”

“Sorry?”

145 “From the youth group. St Peter’s Parish. How are you?”

“Sunita! My God! You look so different!”

“You too!”

He was married, had cash, had kids. He was alone at the bar, on work, he said, attending a conference, interminable with team building games, and women with their own agendas. They talked at the bar with an ease that comes with having nothing to lose. But reality still licked, baying for blood. Theirs was a connection that could only be made when past one’s prime.

They talked of the old days, the dances. He remembered what she was wearing the last time he saw her. Her old pride was completely out of place here. His tone, on the other hand, assumed abundance. His eyes commanded attention, called forth the twirling of hair. She felt grateful, basked in his gaze upon her, tried to stop it from showing on her face.

She licked salt, gulped Tequila shots, sucked lime, one by one by one. The shots were affirmations, signals, prayers for courage to be what she was not. All around them were the rituals of request, refusal, acceptance, blessed by the band. All around them eyes locked, bodies knotted, to be unraveled only in the dead of morning.

The crooner mounted the bar, singing Dum Maro Dum. She was followed by women new to freedom, gyrating to some different time on the wooden tabletop, as if trying to fast forward to impossible tomorrows. A man leered under their skirts, two men raised their glasses to them, three men mimicked their moves from down below on the dance floor.

Through all of this, Jerry and Sunita maintained a distance. When he handed her the Tequila shots, he was careful to release the glass as soon as she had hold of it.

146 She, for her part, made sure to take the glass from him without their fingers touching.

The night lay bald before them.

A few more numbers and then the band began to pack up.

“Two more shots,” he asked at the bar.

“Not for me, can’t do it any more,” she said.

“Just one more.”

“No no, please!” she laughed.

“My wife hates Tequila.”

She signaled to the barman for water.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“Jacinta, my wife, she hates Tequila.”

“Oh. Sorry. I thought you were talking about the conference.”

“Aah! Wish I didn’t have to go there tomorrow.”

She drank the water in such a way that some of it accidentally streamed down her chin.

She grinned.

“Sorry,” she said.

He took out his handkerchief and offered it to her.

One of her hands was sticky with salt and lime. With the other she was holding the glass of water. She didn’t take the handkerchief.

Instead, she stretched her neck, tilting her chin towards his outstretched arm.

He scrunched up the handkerchief, and with one long stroke, wiped off the stream on her skin.

“Sir we are closing,” the bar man was telling someone else.

147 She was flattered that he got his keys out of his pocket, and his helmet from the bar without taking his eyes off her.

“Feel like a cup of tea?”

“Where?”

“At my hotel.”

“I need to go home. Kids were crying a little while ago.”

“Jacinta lets the kids watch TV when she needs some peace of mind.”

“I already told my mum what to do.”

“So, tea then?”

“I really should go home.”

“It’s been twenty years since I saw you.”

She smiled at him.

“If you have tulsi tea laced with lemon and mint,” she said.

“If you don’t mind my bike,” he said.

“But…”

“I always carry a spare helmet, for emergencies,” he said.

She got on the bike, her hands on her thighs. She twisted a little until her feet were on the footrests, and her body away from his.

It began to drizzle.

“It’s just around the corner,” he said.

She said, “I like getting wet,” and immediately said, “I mean, I like this rain.”

All she remembered about courting were snippets from trashy movies.

He had one gloved hand on the handle. With the other he patted her shin.

“Not too cold for you?”

148 “I’m fine. This is great,” she said, the leather of the bikie glove bold on her bare leg.

As he went over a pothole, he lifted himself a little and pushed his spine backwards into her. The bump from the pothole propelled her forward into him.

“Jacinta has her own bike,” he said.

“Oh”.

The rain stopped.

At the hotel, his phone rang in the lift.

“Hi,” his voice suddenly steely bullets. “Yes, yes, fine, fine. They’re sleeping?

Good. Yes. Busy. Out at some bar somewhere, these guys wanted to drink. Yup. Yup.

Will call tomorrow. Me too. Oh. It’s in the top drawer, left hand side. In Jessie’s swimming bag. Fine. Fine. Yes, that’s on the pen-drive. Yup. Yup. I’ll leave the TV on to keep me company. Yup. I’ll use a blanket. Talk tomorrow. Bye. Bye. Talk tomorrow. Bye. Me too. Yup. Yup.”

When he disconnected, he looked at her. Noticing the movement of his head she turned to meet his gaze. The cabin of the lift suddenly seemed too small. He raised his eyebrows. They both smiled at each other.

In his room she sat on the couch while he used the bathroom.

When he came out he was still dressed.

Then she went in to dry herself, her hair. When she came out she was still dressed too.

“My tea?” she asked.

He sat on the bed and looked at her.

“You want sugar or honey in your tea?”

“Which has less calories?”

149 “There was a great video I saw about honey.”

He brought out his tablet.

“Oh, here it is, come see this,” he beckoned her.

She walked over to the bed, sat next to him, peered in.

They surfed the net for a few minutes, the glow of the screen like an invitation.

Then each tried to scroll down at the same time and their fingers touched.

He turned off the tablet and they looked at each other, so close. The world and all available options constricted around them. There was nothing to do but to kiss.

When he began to pull down her underwear, she said, “We have to stop.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re married.”

“Since when has that...”

“You said your wife hates Tequila.”

He unfastened her bra.

She waited a few seconds. Then she twisted her arm to reach his hands on her back, and held on to his fingers.

“Why didn’t we do this twenty years ago?”

“I was shy then,” he said, after a minute. “I didn’t have the courage. You wouldn’t even look at me.”

She let go of his fingers. He pulled her down onto the pillows. Then he turned off the lights.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Why are you doing this?”

She stopped her own busy hands for a second.

“You’re the one who’s married.”

150 “I want to make you happy.”

“And what of Jacinta who hates Tequila?”

“I cannot bear to be alone after 6 o’clock in the evening.”

She summoned up every foot and fleck of self-control she possessed and held fast onto his hands, onto hers.

It felt like an eternity. The continents had just moved into the shape of a tripartite disagreement.

“I can’t do this to Jacinta,” she said.

She felt him recede into himself.

They lay there on the bed.

Time passed. Time cooled.

She got up and went to the bathroom. She pulled down her underwear and put her fingers into herself. She put one leg up on the toilet seat. She gyrated, pressing down on all the right places, increasing the pressure when pressure was due. There were screams coming out of her but she stuffed her other hand into her mouth to mute them. Another minute, a few shudders, and she was done. Her fingers were webbed with relief.

She pulled the flush, knowing he would hear it. Next year she would be in

Sydney. Nobody knew her there. She would go to the Mardi Gras parade. And to the after party. And someone would take her home.

She straightened up and went back outside.

He turned to look at her. There was wonder in his eyes. And yes there was pity too. But she didn't care. She stood in front of the TV and watched a senseless show for a few minutes.

After a while she said,

151 “You promised tea.”

They drank tea together, without sugar, without honey.

Then he got up and walked to the door, picking up his keys and helmets on the way. She tapped his shoulder. He turned around. She embraced him. They held each other, his hand on the back of her head, her head on his chest.

He dropped her back to Cavana, that’s what she had asked him to do, their bodies decent and distant from each other. After she had waved him goodbye, and he had honked his own farewells, she stood outside Cavana, that sheath that held all that was luminous, all that could sate, all that could slake.

Its lights were off now.

A rickshaw went past her. She called out to the driver. He stopped. He was on his way home, he said, wife, kids, were waiting for him. She got into the rickshaw.

She promised double the fare.

152 In The Beginning Was The Word

Five years to the day since she stopped being a Catholic, Angelina D’Costa walks into St. Mary’s Church. She is divorced, childless, and dressed in red. Not just any red, but a silk halter neck, cut from her grandmother’s wedding sari. There is a tear on the side near her right ribs, a fray actually, tired kanjeevaram silk giving way.

But when Angie checked herself out in the mirror earlier that day, she couldn’t really see the fray, especially if she kept her right hand close to her body. It was the halter that really caught the eye.

St. Mary’s is neo-gothic, nouveau riche, and full of new migrants who are making their fortunes in IT and orthodontics. But the sins of the church are old. And her dress is blood. She wears it to remember the children, wanting to be wanted, bled, broken and hushed up. She wears it to remind the church, and its representative Father

Bob, of their unoriginal sins that will never be washed away. She also wears it to fortify herself for the battle ahead, red for confidence and to arrest attention, as the local chapter of Toastmasters Inc. has suggested.

She walks through the open glass doors of St. Mary’s Church. She is slow as a feline, slow as a fiery sun. She is hungry, engaging her core, shoulders thrown back like there’s no tomorrow. The first person she sees is Bibiana Cabral, or Bibi, smug like cheese in a rat-trap.

Bibi walks up to Angelina. They embrace.

Bibi says, “This is your home, Angie.”

“Bibi…”

“Family comes first, Angie. This is your faith family. Here. In this country where no one else cares about you.”

153 Angie recognises this cat o’nine tails that Bibi is fond of using. Before she can reply, the organist begins to play the opening bars of the Entrance Hymn, To everyone who thirsts, come to the water. It is not yet time for Mass to begin. The organist is merely rehearsing. But the staccato notes are startling and demand respect from these former choirgirls. Bibi and Angie turn towards the pews. Bibi walks a few steps ahead, as if she’s wriggling her foot into an old comfortable shoe. Angie falls back. Then watching Bibi squeeze into a pew on the right, finds a seat across the aisle on the left hand side.

Last week, Angie, had lunch at Bibi and Martin’s home. It was their seventeenth wedding anniversary, and they were having a big party as usual. As

Angie drove to their place, inner Sydney’s streets, tight with terraces and potted urban farms on slivers of balconies, exhaled into the outskirts, into the land of walk-in wardrobes, Impala kitchens and backyards big enough for a full cricket pitch.

Angie had wished she were in bed with her laptop instead, looking up antique furniture from the Third World. They were all the rage among the academics in the

School of Migrant and Refugee Studies, especially Professor Victoria Burton, or

Vicky, who despite family tragedy, is an icon of style and sophistication. Angie was only the admin officer of the school, but she saw the birthday gifts Vicky gave her friends, handcrafted by the underprivileged sections of the BRICS nations proactively bettering their status in life. She saw the dining table made from recycled Indian railway sleepers prominent on Vicky’s screen saver. She saw her bare white walls, save for the large canvas of bright Indigenous art, bought legitimately from an art centre in the Northern Kimberley. She saw the organic heirloom tomatoes she brought for lunch. And they were good. They were not just good, they were the stuff of a good life, a life that she wanted to lead.

154 Bibi and Martin’s home, on the other hand, was a series of exclamation marks: a glass dining table with faux crystal legs, a glass show cases full of flowery crockery, and an entertainment unit the colour of tea with not enough milk in it. Angie was glad for the journey she had made. This laboured showiness of migrants was to be understood and accepted as one understands and accepts one’s teenaged embarrassments. She had moved on, into the effortless chic of one who believed that less is more. It came from accepting that we were all equals, Angie knew, from rejecting the class system, supporting the disempowered, and only buying gifts that were Fair Trade.

“Oh hello strainger!” Bibi welcomed Angie with her fake Aussie accent and fake Aussie vocabulary, a tinkling falsetto that, every time it was uttered, edged their friendship closer to its fin de siècle. Martin kissed her on both cheeks, his hand finding the curve of her waist and squeezing it, like all men who knew she was divorced, using her body to reassure himself that he still had platform. Bibi and Angie had gone to the local parish school together in Bombay. Bibi went on to do

Commerce at St. Andrew’s College, and Angie did English at St Xavier’s College.

But the harmony of Bibi’s soprano and Angie’s alto in the parish choir thrilled the congregation and provided a patina of camaraderie that the two girls mistook for the real McCoy. Angie’s shrugged off her deepest suspicions that they were two radii of different circles. They kept in touch after they got married, Bibi to the slightly more mature Martin, and Angie to her college boyfriend who turned out to wax and wane like the moon except, she found out soon enough, he was orbiting other earths. When

Bibi and Martin migrated to Australia, they urged Angie, recently divorced, to put in her papers for Permanent Residency.

155 “It’s a Christian country”, Bibi said to Angie when she rang to wish her for her birthday. “No Hindus burning churches and raping nuns. The Catholic church is strong.” Then, through the crackle of the phone line and with the self-assuredness of an accountant keeping track, she said, “They even have support groups for divorcees.”

Angie had tired of being pitied by Indians used to hiding their dirty linen, and longed to find a different tribe. Still, she ignored the edge in Bibi’s words, and began to consider Australia, that Pacific continent pretending to be Atlantic.

It was Bibi and Martin who picked up Angie from the airport and offered her a roof for the first six months. The first week she was in their home, Bibi bought a new quilt cover from a lifestyle store. It had pink and blue flowers with orange leaves.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Bibi said as she took it out of its packaging. Angie was about to say “Yes it is” but the ghastliness of the colour scheme gave her pause and in that split second of hesitation the air around them turned to dry ice. Angie could not see its contrails but she believed they existed, and were spreading.

Two months later, Angie put her indigo block printed t-shirt into the wash, not realising it was full of the school uniforms of Bibi’s daughters. When the white uniforms came out stained, Bibi said to Angie, holding the hopeless blouses and PE tops as evidence, “Next time, if you don't mind, just ask about the load.”

“I’m so sorry Bibi, I’ll definitely check next time.”

Angie turned to go back to her room when Bibi said, “And…I’ve been meaning to tell you, I don't mean to be rude, but we always take out any hair from the shower drain.”

And with that, the bedbugs came crawling out and began to feast on newly available blood.

156 Every year they invited her over for their wedding anniversary. Perhaps they felt obliged, as she felt obliged to turn up. One year, Bibi asked Angie in front of her guests as they all sat eating a home made sticky date pudding, “It took you how long to get your PR, Angie?”

Angie said, “Four years.”

Bibi said, “Four years! You should have just come on a boat, like a refugee, would have been much faster.”

There were smirks from the guests at the galling injustice of it all, the paper work, the expensive paperwork, and the waiting, waiting, to get PR, and then the slow, sapping climb into respectable double garages and kitchen renovations, while the refugees just turned up on a beach and got the dole.

Angie was shocked by this stinging conversation, the biting red ants roaming around it. It was the complete opposite of the pure and shining advocacy for refugee rights in the School of Migrant and Refugee Studies.

“Come on! Refugees flee persecution, that’s why they come on boats”, she said.

“You and your big talk from the university. Why don't they flee to a Muslim country? Like Dubai or Saudi? Why do they come here?” That’s what Bibi said. And

Angie heard the whip in her voice, the crack of its deliberate swing. Angie stopped calling Bibi after that, and in turn was henceforth ignored, except for the anniversary invitations.

At Bibi and Martin’s house on their seventeenth wedding anniversary, Angie prepared to step out of her present comfort zone into one from her past.

“Congratulations!” she said as she handed Martin an envelope with a Coles-

Myers Gift Card. She gave Bibi a large bouquet of flowers. It had a glorious Gymea

157 Lily, surrounded by stems of red Kangaroo Paw, grey-green Eucalypt, and a few fronds of ancient tree fern. The whole bouquet was wrapped in brown paper and tied with jute string. These were the flowers of the earth of Australia. They were a symbol, even if an exaggerated one, of the charity that Bibi and Martin had provided her when she first arrived. She would not take that away from them.

“You shouldn’t have!” Bibi said, “Now I have to find a vase big enough for this.”

As Angie walked into the party, towards Larissa and Lucas and their children, she saw a white candle in a frosted glass container on the coffee table. She didn't need to inhale deeply. She knew, from those first six months, that the smell was Clean

Linen. She had grown up with candles as a part of novenas and funerals, and First

Holy Communion processions. Now, through the School of Migrant and Refugee

Studies, she had begun to appreciate the use of candles for carnal enhancement and to impress guests. But Clean Linen was such an easy bogan target. She herself preferred the exotic fragrance of Cinnamon, or Coconut and Lime.

Bibi came up to her and turned the candle around so the brand name faced

Angie.

Angie knew that Bibi expected a compliment about the candle. But the leap was impossibly large and Angie’s legs were wood.

“Would you like some help with lunch?” she asked instead.

The smoke from the Clean Linen candle exorcised any potential of redemption.

“You can take the mint chutney to the outside table in the backyard if you like”, Bibi said, “Everyone’s outside.”

“Sure”, said Angie.

158 In the Cabral backyard, Larissa and Lucas came up to her and hugged her. She had forgotten the children’s names and so she said, “How tall they’ve grown!”

Jeevan and Surekha were also there, with their twin girls, still asleep in a pram, as they had been when she last saw them a year ago in the same house. There were others whose names Angie didn't remember but whose faces she recognised from previous parties. Angie put the mint chutney down, but accidentally spilled some on the long wooden table.

Angie didn’t know that Bibi had been watching her, and so she was surprised when Bibi said, “Just a sec, I’ll fix it.”

“Don’t worry”, Angie called out to Bibi, “I’ve got some tissues here.” She fished out a packet of tissues from her handbag and mopped up the spill.

Just then Larissa said, ‘Hey Bibi, nice tomatoes.” Angie turned to look in the direction that Larissa indicated, and saw the new tomato vine growing in a pot.

“Are they Heirlooms?” Angie asked.

“They’re from Bunnings.” Bibi said. “We needed PVC pipes when fixing the new dishwasher. And these were on special, just near the exit. They’re very clever the way they place things, just near the check-out.”

“Impulse buying, that’s what it’s called”, said Larissa.

“So we thought, ‘let’s try growing tomatoes’.” Martin said.

“Supposed to be good for fatty deposits”, said Larissa.

“There was a show recently on the ABC, about Heirloom tomatoes” said

Angie.

“Didn't know heirlooms were tomatoes”, said Lucas.

“Must be moving down in life if you can only afford tomatoes as heirlooms.”

Martin said as he laughed rather loudly.

159 Angie realised, not to be rude, that the language of the School of Migrant and

Refugee Studies was like casting pearls before swine in the home of the Cabrals.

“You and your ABC”, Bibi said. “So much talking, talking talking.”

“They don't play any Country, no Jim Reeves, no Pat Boone, no Everly

Brothers. No point listening.” Martin said.

“Just today they were playing I’ll do my crying in the rain, That’s Everly

Brothers, isn’t it? Angie said. “They have a special country channel.”

“2CH has been our favourite, right from day one”, Bibi said.

“They play our type of music”, Martin said.

“Yesterday as I was cooking, it was such fun to sing along with Anne Murray,

Just a closer walk with thee, grant it Jesus is my plea, daily walking close to thee, let it be dear Lord, let it be…”

“It’s got a nice beat, can even jive to it”, Martin said.

“Martin.” Bibi said.

“It’s true, we used to play it with a Rock-n-Roll tempo for Mass in Bombay, in the choir.”

“You wouldn’t say that in front of Father Bob”, Bibi said.

“Hey your mint is from the church, isn’t it, Bibi?” Surekha asked.

“Yes, Father Bob himself gave us a small cutting. Years ago, remember

Martin? When we first moved here.”

“Too bad he couldn't make it today.” Martin said.

Jeevan turned to Angie and said, “Must be a long drive for you to get to our church. I don't blame you. Make it easy for yourself.”

And Larissa said, “The churches where you live are really beautiful, no? So many old wooden benches and fonts and alcoves that look just like caves.”

160 “Actually, I’m not sure what the churches are like around my area”, Angie said.

Surekha put the babies down. She said, “This plastic grass is so great for kids!

No insects. No weeds. No bindis.”

“It’s not plastic”, said Larissa. It’s called synthetic turf.”

Jeevan went up to Surekha and stroked her neck. “It’s hard for her”, he said, gesturing at the crawling twins. “One goes to sleep, the other wakes up. Don't know how they are both awake today at the same time.”

“They’re not walking yet?” Larissa asked Surekha.

“They’re quite heavy. Usually heavy babies walk much later. Difficult for them to bear their weight”, said Bibi.

Larissa said, “My kids walked at nine months. They were quite chubby, that didn't stop them. They also started talking quite early. Are the twins talking yet?”

“They babble”, Jeevan said.

“My kids were saying mama dada, abc at six months. Out of nappies by seven months.”

“In India kids learn faster. Here they treat them like the lowest common denominator. They don't push them enough. Even the maths they learn in Year 6 is what we learned in Year 1. My colleagues, you should see. I have to do all their spreadsheets for them”, Bibi said.

“I really hate our church”, Surekha said emphatically.”

Motherhood must make you bolder and braver, Angie thought, when you have everything to lose in some ways, and yet nothing to lose. Encouraged by Surekha’s declaration, she turned to Martin and said, “I’m surprised you invited Father Bob here.”

161 Bibi was stirring the rice, loosening up the lumps, making sure the peas were spread through evenly. She looked up defensively.

“Why?”

Angie said, “After all that’s...happened?”

Lucas crossed his legs, and arming himself with his whisky glass, leaned in.

“C’mon, you mean to say there’s no sin in other religions?” he said.

“That’s not what I…”

“No no no, just a minute, just a minute, you said you’re surprised” Lucas said smiling, intoning like Obama. “You look at every single religion, any institution, this sort of thing happens everywhere. At least the new Pope...”

“Pope Francis”, Larissa said.

“Pope Francis is trying to clean up the mess. Only we Catholics have the balls to admit we’re wrong and try and rectify the situation.”

A mob of crimson rosellas stained the sky momentarily.

“Look at Dominic Strauss Kahn. World Bank head.” Lucas said.

“IMF, not World Bank.” Larissa said.

“Even at the IMF this sort of thing goes on. Yet the media picks on the

Catholic Church. It’s a conspiracy. The Catholic Church is used to persecution, it’s nothing new. But right through the ages, the Rock of Ages has stood strong.”

Angie began to fold and unfold a paper napkin. “It’s about a breach of trust.

And the cover up. And the total lack of concern for the little children, the victims.

That’s the problem. In this very parish.”

“You think the World Bank didn't cover up all these years?” Lucas said.

“IMF”, Larissa said.

162 “IMF. You think they didn't cover up all these years? We have to forgive our priests, after all the sacrifices they make for us,” Lucas said.

Angie thought immediately of Vicky’s son who committed suicide last year.

He had been caught penetrating a student after the History lesson in a Catholic boarding school. It happened, Vicky told Angie, in the same room where he himself had been penetrated, seventy times seven, a generation ago, by two priests.

“Forgive? Try saying that to a mother whose child has been raped by a priest.

Forgiveness is not ours to offer.” Angie said.

“I really really hate our church”, Surekha said again.

Lucas’s phone rang and he got up to answer it.

“The post partum phase is very traumatic”, Jeevan said.

“It’s so bright. There’s no place to pray.” Surekha said. “I hate the bright lights of our church.”

“Mass is her time away from the kids”, Jeevan said, his voice full of sorrow,

“That’s why the babies are in day care. At least they are guaranteed to be taught the right behaviour according to the Australian way of life.”

Lucas came back with his phone in his shirt pocket like a reinforcement.

“Have you read the book A Fine Balance? You work in a university, you know about it, I’m sure”, Lucas said.

“It’s a book by that Parsi guy, migrated to Canada”, Larissa said. “Rohinton

Mistry.”

“Exactly. And he writes all about the priests of different religions and what they do to women”, Lucas said.

“I’ve read the book. He doesn't write about that!” Angie said.

163 “Every religion has bad apples and good apples. It’s an age-old conspiracy against the Church. Old wine in a new bottle.” Bibi said.

Lucas took a sip of his whisky and said, “I was a boarder at Don Bosco’s. I’ve seen with my own eyes how the priests would feed the poorest of the poor.”

“Ya. I’ve seen the nuns. Fighting for the children’s health in Kamathipura”,

Larissa said, “And Sister Sabina, she would take Dettol and soframycin to the jhopadpattis and clean the pus and blood from the wounds of those kids with her own two hands. No gloves, nothing.”

‘Let’s not throw out the babies with the bath waters.” Lucas said.

“Bath water”, Larissa said.

‘What?” Lucas looked at her puzzled.

“Bath water. Not bath waters. It’s not like the waters of the Red Sea.”

Lucas took a sip of his whisky in response.

The sun was bright that afternoon, and brighter still was Angie’s realisation that this argument was not about whether the Catholic Church had sinned or not. It was about different stories. The stories that she and people like Lucas told themselves about the paedophilia scandals were completely at odds with each other, Angie knew, like the Old and the New Testaments, like the all male priesthood of Mother Church.

Lucas poured himself another peg of scotch and clinked his glass with

Martin’s.

Surekha said, “My head hurts.”

“Would you like a cup of tea Surekha?” Bibi asked. “I’ll put on the kettle.

Some nice calming chamomile?”

“When one of them is sick, that’s it. No sleep. Of late both have been sick”,

Jeevan said.

164 “I’d love some tea, not chamomile. Strong, black tea”, Surekha said.

“I’ll leave the bag in the cup for you, don't worry.”

Angie knew she would cross a thick felt-tipped line if she said what she was thinking of saying, but she just couldn’t help herself. She thought of Vicky and her loose leaf first flush Darjeeling tea. She said to Bibi, knowing from her first six months that Bibi and Martin only used tea bags, “Do you have any loose leaf tea?”

Bibi stopped in her tracks on the threshold of the kitchen. She turned to Angie and said, “You mean tea leaves?”

“Yes”, Angie said.

Bibi took a deep breath. “When you have kids”, Bibi said slowly, “you want to reduce fuss. Tea bags work for me. Do tea bags work for you, Surekha?”

“Can you make mine with two tea bags please Bibi?” Surekha said.

“Yes of course” said Bibi and turned her back to Angie sitting in the sun.

But then she turned around again and faced Angie like the Book of

Revelations.

“Why don't you come to church next Sunday. Our church. See for yourself what you’re missing.”

Angie laughed humourlessly.

“Come and make your peace. Give your parents something to be happy about after…the divorce.”

There it was again, that cat o’nine tails that had long since lost its power.

“My parents are happy.”

“That’s not what they tell me. Prayer can move mountains, Angie. You’re all alone in this country. Don’t reject the only people who can help you.”

165 The help she needed was not in Bibi’s hands. Angie would have laughed out loud in Bibi’s face, but an old sense of propriety came back to reassert itself.

Then Bibi said, “Come and sing with us.”

Angie leaned back in her chair. She admitted the faint possibility that Bibi had only the best of intentions. But those felt-tipped lines contouring their friendship had thickened and calcified.

“I’ll come. But only to talk to Father Bob. To tell him he must resign.”

The twins began to wail.

Bibi sighed. “The church is not a university. Where do your loyalties lie?”

Angie stayed quiet. She saw the flies settle on the mouths of the beer bottles.

She thought of Vicky and her son.

Then she heard Lucas saying, “Lack of sleep when the kids are small is the number one cause of divorce.”

Angie looked at Lucas and saw him quickly avert his gaze.

“Two sugars please Bibi, thank you”, Surekha said. She picked up one baby and put her in the pram and strapped her up securely. Then she picked up the other one and strapped her in the pram too. The babies resisted this containment, kicking, wriggling, violently screaming. But Surekha turned the pram away and let their cries be fried by the sun. Angie would remember this tableau of Surekha with her back to her babies, as the beginning of Surekha’s unravelling. Two years later the news would be heavy with the story of a naked woman, a neglectful mother of twin girls, a migrant from India, who ran out of her house onto oncoming traffic and was killed instantly. Her shattered husband Jeevan would be interviewed by the cops and he would say he was returning to India where his family would bring up the girls. Angie would often recall this moment, the way the sun bounced off Surekha’s head, the way

166 the backdrop of the Western Sydney sky seemed like a weight too enormous for her shoulders. But at that moment, she heard Surekha say, “I hate the bright lights in our church”.

* * *

Father Bob was at the centre of things, so to speak. He had served side by side with the two paedophile priests at St. Mary’s, ten years ago, just before the cops arrested them. He would have been at St Stephen’s Boarding School for Boys, now discovered as a hotbed of sexual abuse in the seventies, threads of knowing and unknowing foisting themselves into a rope around his own neck. He was now the parish priest at St. Mary’s. Surely, if Father Bob had been a paedophile, he too would be rotting in jail by now, Angie thought to herself, finding it within her to assume innocence and give him the benefit of the doubt. But she knew very well the Edmund

Burke quote, The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. If all those who disagree with the church authorities leave the church, then who would make change happen? She thought of Vicky’s son, Vicky’s determined eyes as she told Angie why she was going on sabbatical, and she decided she had stayed silent for far too long. That’s when she set a Google alert for ‘The Tablet’ and

‘Broken Rites’. She turned her guilty silence into a speech for the next Toastmasters meeting. Of course, in the Table Topics session when she used the Edmund Burke quote, she replaced ‘good men’ with ‘good men and women’. She received feedback and praise for her technique. She felt properly prepared to ask Father Bob to resign in

167 good faith. She would then take the fight to the Bishop. From there, who knew, maybe next year in Rome, all the way to the Pope.

Her family had been catholic ever since the Portuguese and their progeny, crosses held up like cockroach spray, blitzed the Goan 16th century. Helped by

Albuquerque, hindered by the Zamorin, the whole jingbang of her newly casteless

Goan ancestors learned to genuflect before the Bishop on church steps while clinging to their mud idols behind the walls of their muddied homes. The caste system, like matter, could never be destroyed. It just changed form and hiding places, cropping up in matrimonial columns and private email lists, and led to her specifically marrying a

Goan Brahmin. To be fair, the divorce was mutually agreed upon, the only thing agreed upon in the entire marriage. It had nothing to do with the caste system. It had a lot to do with choirs. It had a little to do with ancient Catholic graves. But there was no point deliberating these details. They were of no consequence in St Mary’s Church.

It was sandstone on the outside, but desperately white on the inside. The only parishes that were currently solvent across the world owed their prosperity to the swell of catholics from the Pacific Islands, Africa, South Asia, East Asia, the Middle

East, South America. But, Angie thought, even if the church was being fuelled by

Third World tithes, it was still dressed up in First World vestments. Here she was in red, in the family home but banished to the guest room because she didn't have the family features.

Around the church were Sydney Red Gums, and jacarandas that blushed in

November according to the rules. Father Bob had planted mint when he first got here.

The mint had spread right around the perimeter of the church wherever it could find a foothold in which to take root. When it flowered, its petals were like the other lips of women, surrounding the church, refusing to be ignored, as if reminding the church

168 whence it came. Various priests and various parishioners had tried at various times to destroy the mint but its flowers were shameless and shed their seed like so many inhibitions. Every time a new priest was assigned to St Mary’s he organised a working bee to clean up the garden. The mint was pruned and in many cases uprooted.

But in a few weeks new shoots, and in a few more, new flowers would grow. By then the new priests were not so new and the stones stained by fallen mint flowers trampled underfoot by the devout going to Mass were overlooked for more pressing issues such as parish council meetings, births, deaths, and marriages.

Today in her red kanjeevaram halter-neck, sitting apart from Bibi, Angie hears the sounds of the Nigerian migrants choir rehearse Be not afraid. It immediately takes her back to the first time she heard that hymn. She thinks of her first Christmas Mass in Australia when Father Bob called her up to the altar and presented her to the parish community, as its newest migrant. ‘Be not afraid’, they sang to her then, in five voices, just like the Everly Brothers but with more heft, ‘I go before you always’, channelling the God of all things who never fails, channelling the catholic diaspora across space, across race, across time. She picked out Bibi’s voice then, stentorious but pure, through the comforting harmonies of the choir. Father Bob put his hands on her head and blessed her in public. She was grateful for this taking in. She took solace in the words of that hymn and sang it often through jobless desperation and many a wish for a happy new year to finally arrive.

Today, Angie’s halter clings to her body, as if it is one with her skin. As she sits and stands up again she is conscious that the thin fabric may stick in her bum crack. She smooths it discretely every time she stands. The Entrance hymn is being sung in the old call and response format. Angie hears Bibi’s high head voice as she joins in the response. But she does not turn to look at her.

169 She sits down for the First Reading from the Song of Songs. It is about love.

Yet it is laced so unmistakably with sex, as if specifically written to tease, or perhaps to comfort, the men who one day, emerging from the seminary, would not be allowed to be men. The Second Reading from the Book of Romans, is about forgiveness and the reader is droning on without thought for his audience. She stands up as the choir sings the Alleluia. But she refuses to sing.

The Gospel is from Matthew 19:4. “Let the little children come”. Father Bob reads it out, with dramatic pauses in the appropriate places. “And do not hinder them, for the kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.” She is struck by the insolence of it all, this choice of reading, this rarefied air that has filtered out reality.

She sits down with the others for the sermon. Father Bob ignores the pulpit.

He comes down from the altar to be amongst the congregation. He is a man of the people, he often says this of himself. Now everyone in the parish cannot help but describe him in such a way, with this phrase etched in parish stone through sufficient repetition in the Prayers of the Faithful and parish newsletters. Angelina sees how he milks a crowd still hung up on the resurrection, addressing old parishioners by name, telling a true crime story with a hook in the ending to make a point about God never abandoning the faithful. Maybe he has been to a few Toastmasters meetings himself, she thinks. It should be made compulsory for all Catholic priests.

He is a good performer with a genuine sparkle in his eyes. It is endearing, she will admit that. It has endeared him to a congregation battered by the scandals of past priests in whom they had once guilelessly confided. The people are grateful for saintliness in their priests, or at least a facade of it. She admits it has endeared him to her too as she thinks about the best way to broach the subject of his resignation when she confronts him after Mass.

170 Suddenly Father Bob spots her and quite unexpectedly calls her name.

“Angelina! How lovely to see you back here. Come up here, child!”

She is so surprised with herself, how she stands up and smiles, her body reacting like water that always returns to its course.

“Come Angelina. My dear brothers and sisters, this is Angelina, come back to us. I remember welcoming her one Christmas, her first Christmas in Australia.”

Angelina walks up to the centre of the church where Father Bob stands in control of the space. Her halter is tight around her neck. The heave of her breasts threatens to fray the silk in public. But she wills it to hold. It held for her grandmother after all.

He puts her arms around her bare shoulders. “Welcome back Angelina”, he is saying to her. His touch is warm on her skin and shepherdly. She nods at him. She keeps her right hand stuck to her side.

“Thank you Father”, she says.

Then she turns to acknowledge the beaming smiles of a congregation welcoming her back to the fold. She is acutely conscious of the squirming snake inside her that raises her heartbeat and makes her fingertips grow cold.

As she kneels for the Consecration, she rehearses her rhetorical questions.

“How can you live with yourself Father Bob, preaching virtue when your colleagues have committed the blackest of sins? The honourable thing to do is to resign, don't you think?” Her tone would have to be more conciliatory, less confrontational. It was to Father Bob’s credit that he looked at her eyes when he spoke to her, and not at her breasts.

The Nigerian migrant choir is singing the Holy Holy in Spanish. “Santos

Santos Santos” they strum, they drum, their silken, aching voices smoking up

171 yearning, smoking up sacrifice, smoking up lands of skeletal trees reaching up to pierce the skies. She looks at them while pretending to flick her hair back.

Two of the female singers wear printed skirts and matching headdresses.

Together they sing as one, with no doubt in their voices. The Africans are the only ones who seemed to be multiplying, Angie thinks, in the church as much as in the outside world. The Chinese are going backwards with their polluted cities and their communist corruption. As for the Indians, when every Indian household, rural, forest dwelling, and urban, had a TV set, they would stop having babies and that would be the end of the lucrative market. Perhaps the human race will end where it began, in

Africa.

As these thoughts flicker through her head, she suddenly catches herself singing aloud without restraint. It is a classic case of Pavlov’s dog. She immediately lowers her voice as she becomes conscious of the enthusiasm jumping inside it, betraying her most serious intentions. She looks out of the corner of her eye, for Bibi.

She sees that she is in full-throated communion with the choir.

And then, it is time for the Our Father.

The organist plays the opening bars and Angie feels herself losing her grip.

There are tears in her eyes. The last time there were tears, they were tears of relief, after her divorce. They have no place here in this church that she has rejected. She tries to blink them back. She tries to hold a tissue to her eyes, pretending to clean out a speck lodged inside one of them. And now her nose is running. A nosebleed has decided to erupt upon her. The last time she had a nosebleed was when she turned ten.

And she has run out of tissues.

She looks around helplessly and without meaning to, catches Bibi’s eye. First a look of incomprehension flashes across Bibi’s face, and then, before Bibi’s

172 expression changes, Angie in her desperation crosses the aisle as Bibi hands her a wad of thick, absorbent, tissues.

The choir sings,

Our Father who art, who art in Hea- Ven

Hallowed be thy Na-ame

The words they are singing resound around her as much as inside her. They cut to her core with their elemental urging to forgive and be forgiven. This is all the restoration that anyone will ever need. No one is more surprised than Angelina herself, as she comes suddenly to this realisation. She cannot help but sing along with them, along with Bibi. She sings the difficult high notes through her head, and changes octaves with the easier low notes. They are more malleable, so she sings them with more inflection, making them her own. As the former choirgirls sing together again in harmony, Angie feels emptied, yet strangely, quite fulfilled. It is not a question of choice or of analysis. This is when Angie realises that our need is not merely for stories, but to retell stories in our own image and likeness, through word and through voice.

It is time to offer Peace.

She and Bibi embrace without looking at each other. That is all. There are no words.

They bow together before Communion. When Bibi steps out to join the

Communion line, taking a step back for Angie to join in in front of her, Angie cannot refuse. Angie knows that the cock has crowed three times, and each time she has found herself wanting.

After Mass she walks out quietly, head bowed in deference to the unconditional hope of the congregation contained within these stone walls. She has

173 put an old lid on a bottle effervescent with new rage. It would have to be uncorked another time.

Father Bob, his back to her, is conversing with a family, his head on the little girl’s head. This is her moment, she thinks.

And yet it isn’t.

She sees the girl’s parents, completely enthralled, smiling, basking under

Father Bob’s gaze.

She walks back to her car while Bibi is still in the Sacristy, helping out with something or the other, Angelina in blood red, wine red, head down, too stuffed to talk to anyone about the present, the future, or the past.

She sits in her car for an age, letting the sun stream through the windscreen and heat her face. When she finally finds the will to drive out of the car park, she unexpectedly sees Father Bob at the church gates. The earth underneath the gates is deep enough for mint to grow. Father Bob shuts the gates. He turns towards the road.

He notices the mint, and bends down to pluck a sprig. He brings them to his nose.

Angie watches him inhale deeply, dramatically. Then he turns and begins to cross the road.

Suddenly he trips, just as Angelina pulls up at the zebra crossing. She brakes hard, expecting him to fall flat on his face. But he manages to keep his balance, recovers quickly and begins to cross the road again, still holding on to the mint.

He looks at the car and sees Angelina, in red, at the wheel. His face beams with recognition, with relief. He waves to her, eyes twinkling, holding on to her gaze as if it is the Lord’s train that might help him get to the other side. She holds his gaze too, hoping his path will be smooth. When he is safely on the other side, he looks away, to focus on the pavement ahead of him, and the presbytery beyond.

174 She takes her foot off the brake and lets her car move forward slowly, away from the Church of St Mary, looking at it fade away in her rear-view mirror. To give is to receive, and to receive is to give, she thinks.

She sinks into her seat a little. She feels her dress fray as it rubs against the car upholstery. But something else is breaking inside her. And although the waters may part, and the curtains be torn at noon, and all manner of temples be destroyed and raised up, for the moment she knows a rock has dropped in her heart and is lying heavy at the bottom. It is herself she will have to forgive.

175 Up Sky Down Sky Middle Water

There were hardly any stops on that road to Madikeri. The road ran smooth over river, rock, and reed. Aisha was single, clocking time in a hurry. Aman had been married for centuries, he said, to a beautiful sprite he courted in palace extensions during college breaks.

Aisha and Aman met over cold beer and corn bhel in his city, new to her.

Conscious of her solidifying features, she always dressed leaving no stone unturned.

He was a looker who was recruiting for his company. She, eye on silver nests and golden babies, bank balance fast depleting, badly needed to be recruited. A start-up he said, getting online procurement and sales systems in place for the spice farms of

Coorg.

“We need a communications specialist, social media strategy, are you good with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram?” he asked.

It would be a foot in the door, connections, networking, payment a hundred times over in prestige and power.

“You have Australian experience. I can give you Indian experience,” he said.

“Your Prime Minister talks about an Asian century, right? When you go back to

Sydney, CEOs will be kissing your feet.”

Plans were made over ice cream laced with rum.

“My wife’s an expert, handles PR for Microsoft, travels to Ireland and Laos and Madrid all the time, but can’t mix business with pleasure, and pleasure with family”, he said as he paid the bill. She smiled, saw the photos he drew out lovingly

176 from his wallet and his mobile phone, his arms around his wife in a halter neck, her arms matching his in tone and splendour.

Tomorrow they would drive for six hours, across the border to the next state, to meet with an investor, an accountant, and a mutual friend. It will be a trial for both of us, he said. Yes, she agreed, then we can talk about hours and pay. We’ll see what we can work out in Madikeri, he said. A more permanent arrangement, she thought, hoping that by the end of the trip she would seal the deal.

She spent the night in his apartment so they could leave early. He offered her the master bedroom with the king sized bed so she would be comfortable. But she wouldn’t hear of it. She took the spare bedroom with the single mattress on the floor, surrounded by photos of marital bliss floating inside rods of metal frames. He said she could shut the door or leave it open whatever made her comfortable, gave her a bottle of water in a pink Tupperware bottle, and a cotton blanket to keep her warm. She said thank you and goodnight, choosing at that moment to believe in his munificence.

They started before the sun but after the traffic, and, choking on smog, decided to roll up the windows and turn on the air conditioner. He was driving and when her window wouldn’t go up he reached out with eyes on the road and one arm brushing her breasts to get to the window button on her side. She moved back to make more space for his arm. She looked out of the window. Green fields shored up mauve sugarcane in full flower. Red and yellow prayer flags hung by Buddhist refugees were being silenced by the sun.

For a while they drove in a hush of unfamiliarity, it was not yet twenty-four hours since they first met. Trucks carried tractors and cattle to births and deaths.

Water dripped from tankers on bitumen that didn’t need it. The sacred cores of ancient tree ferns dried up like wishful thinking.

177 Still silence as the road burped out men pissing on white washed walls and garbage heaps, and women carrying baskets of twisted sticks on heads that were used to sorrow.

She was thinking of things to say, words that might shape their memory of this first trip.

Suddenly he asked, What’s up sky down sky middle water?

It took her a few seconds to realise that this was a riddle.

The horizon? A lake? A bucket in the sun?

No he said to all, with glee.

The sun was hot through the windscreen and was making her light-headed.

He paused a moment.

Give up?

Yes, she said, I give up.

A coconut!

She, born in the inland north, was slow to get the reference. But she understood the suffocation bound in the metaphor.

What goes up and never comes down?

The taller it goes the shorter it grows?

What’s black and white and read all over?

On and on he went, riddle after riddle. It made her dizzy and she longed for something firm beneath her feet. She pretended to be delighted. She was not going to judge him when there was a job to be had.

At the tollgates he stopped and again his arm brushed her nipples as he stretched across to pay the attendant. Again she moved back. He looked at her, but

178 she was looking outside and only caught the tail end of his glance before he turned to face the windscreen again.

On the road he told her that bajra grains were yellow, that the state government had installed water pumps and water tanks in every village in the area, that this was progress, and that his wife’s favourite food was chilli crab curry. We’re both foodies, he said, we’ve gone to the ends of the earth just to taste the best caviar and khimchi and goat’s milk curd. Wild poinsettias erupted with giggles between field and road. Cows cut through the traffic as if it were nonsense.

They stopped for coffee at daybreak at a stainless steel restaurant where women took customers’ orders that men cooked and served. He sat opposite her and looked into her eyes from start to finish. I didn’t realise how beautiful you are, he said.

Thank you she said, remembering his wife with toned arms in the splendid photo. She took out her wallet to pay the bill but he held her hands fast with one palm and stared her down with a warning smile. If you want to work for me you do as I say, he joked with mock orders. He whipped out his own wallet with his other arm and left a generous tip. On the way out he walked behind her and guided her to the car with his arms on hers, his penis brushing now and then against her bottom. She began to walk a little faster, but the space between them stayed the same as he began to walk faster too.

Would you be open to working on your own in strange towns, travel and accommodation would be taken care of, he asked, still holding her.

She turned around to face him. She was a professional. But his brown eyes were piercing and direct in their gaze. It was useless to deny she enjoyed his touch and the confidence with which he was drowning her. Men in glass houses always throw the most stones.

179 As she came up for air, his breath was on her as hers was on him. She knew he could sense that she was tempted to let her guard down, to let him through and cavort with him as if they were gods on a riverbank. But she held fast as his fingers explored her arms, her shoulders, her neck, her back, the hooks on her bra.

She squirmed backwards and away.

He tried to unhook her bra and said, You’re so bloody attractive I can’t help myself.

Just then, a man walked past them on his way into the restaurant. That’s when he dropped his arms and raised his head. From the speed with which he changed his expression, she knew the moment was a temporary bauble, destined to be pricked at the fag end of newness.

In the car, he brushed her thigh whenever he changed gears. Once he braked suddenly to let a herd of goats cross the road. Then as he sped off he fondled her ears and ran his hands down her shoulders to the back edge of her armpits.

What are you doing boss?

You’re irresistible he said. How on earth am I going to get any work done with you around?

Come on boss, she said,

You have no idea what you’re doing to me, he said, eyes on the road full of spit and shit from humans and animals.

You’re married, she said.

He pulled over on the next deserted stretch and turned off the engine, and with it the news of Tarun Tejpal’s arrest.

You’re giving me a fucking hard on, I can’t drive any more.

Around them were electric pink bougainvillea like shivers down the spine.

180 This is inappropriate, she said, while revelling in a gaze she had missed for years.

You’re driving me crazy sitting next to me like that, he said.

Her face smiled even though her mind was telling it to be stern.

But you’re married, she said again.

I believe in having fun without cheating.

How does one do that, she asked.

My wife’s ok with this. As long as I go back to her when she returns from

Madrid. The wind snorted and a dried leaf fell on the windscreen.

She thought of the tilt of his wife’s grand head in that toned photo, her satisfied smile, submitting to his embrace. It suggested that there would be a scene.

It was stuffy in the car with the air conditioner off. Above them a mango tree was holding its breath for spring. He cupped her face in both his palms and she knew she wanted to believe him. But a temporary slip never leads to a permanent arrangement, she had long learned.

She looked straight into his softening eyes, summoning all her strength to match his greed with her thrift. He let his fingers drop down her neck slowly, to her collarbone, to her breasts, all the while holding her in his gaze. He made circles with his fingertips.

She waited a few seconds. Then she held on to his hands.

He disengaged from her grip and continued exploring her under her clothes.

A child came by with small garlands of jasmine and knocked on her window.

He bought some flowers and even though she resisted at first, his touch was gentle, and she let him put them in her hair. When he had finished with the flowers, he sucked on her neck as he arranged her hair on her shoulders.

181 Stop yaar, I want to work with you not sleep with you, she said, holding her body like a gift not yet given, knowing the balance of power had just shifted and the time for deference had passed.

The child knocked on the window again, asking for more money. He gave the child a few notes more.

Yes I know he said, you’re so gorgeous he said, no man could sit next to you and be a monk.

Please stop she said, knowing she was losing her sense of self as wholesome and reliable and that soon she wouldn’t care about loss and gain.

What sort of package are you looking at, he asked, base salary?

He had a way with words. He had his way with women. They were not her

ways. She wanted to say, please turn around and drive me back to the city or I

will have to call the police.

Except this was his car.

But this was her body.

But that was his startup.

But this was her break and run for a more permanent arrangement.

He began to kiss her as if she was already unwrapped.

She looked up at the sky. There were no fingers steaming through clouds, just a blank, open slate.

She plucked a bud of jasmine from the garland in her hair. She rubbed it on her neck and between her legs, those wonton legs that had made up their own mind.

He followed the scent of jasmine with his mouth and she shifted slightly to make herself more comfortable.

182 When they were done, she straightened up, placed his hands on the gear stick and turned his head to face the road.

In the grand and shady forest before them a coffee plant sneezed out the last of the pepper vine.

She took a deep breath as he started the car.

I’ll let you know in Madikeri, she said.

“What?” he asked her, with his custard eyes and his voice all tinkly.

“Base salary. I’ll let you know in Madikeri,” she said.

He turned off the engine. He stretched out to her and kissed her, his tongue alive again.

But she was reaching for the sky, arms cutting through the water, swimming and swimming in a direction of her choosing, towards an island whose shape she approved of, exactly.

183 The Dignity of Labour

It’s the first of May, Labour Day across the world. But here at the petrol station in Northbridge, it is as placid as the Queen of Patriarchs. It is nearly 11 pm and

Nina is about to finish her shift. Her phone has been ringing non-stop. She has turned it to ‘Silent’ but she knows it’s still ringing by the light emanating from it like a spectre.

Just as she raises her hand to press the key that will start the process of logging off, Sumeet calls out from the freezer room. He’s doing a double shift tonight, needs the cash to pay his student fees. He’s desperate for a smoke before the long night to come, and would Nina please manage for a few more minutes, he won’t be long, and don't worry about the rubbish bins, he’ll do them when it’s quiet later on. If she hangs around even for five more minutes she will be too late for the bus. But she cannot refuse him. He covered for her yesterday when her feet started to hurt again and she had to sit down. Hopefully there will be no more customers and Sumeet will be quick. She thinks of the Kangaroo Paw on her balcony. Yesterday she cut off its tongues. It is now travelling inward, deep into its heart. It will erupt with pleasure when the warm days come. This is what it says in the gardening magazine she has begun to read on her breaks.

From the petrol station in Northbridge, she has to catch the 222 bus to the city and then another bus back to Dee Why. It is like going from Sydney to Melbourne via

Mumbai, because there is no direct public transport. It often takes her two hours to get home.

184 She knew nothing of Dee Why and that’s partly why she said yes when

Suzanne suggested it to her at the hospital. Suzanne is her only friend. They met at the

Art Gallery of New South Wales. Nina had to visit it every month as part of her course. When Nina saw another brown skinned woman, so rare in the already rarefied air of the gallery, she immediately smiled. Suzanne said, “Let’s go grab a coffee, my shout.” Suzanne had migrated to Sydney only six years earlier but laboured to behave like a local.

Nina lives away from the expensive beach end of town, away from the white church with Italian Masses on Sundays, and away from the second hand bookshop with its rattan blinds and stained carpets and one whole shelf full of “Sub-continental

Lit.”

She doesn’t log out. She uses the feather duster to clean the dust off the

Chupachups display. The console beeps and it’s another godforsaken customer. Who on earth needs petrol at 11 pm? She puts the feather duster away, goes back behind the counter, and authorises the pump. She’ll have to serve this customer. There is no way she’ll make it to the bus stop on time. Plus she has to return those calls. Her feet have started to hurt again.

At first she had to force her feet into the closed-toe shoes, mandatory at the petrol station. She was used to open sandals in Bombay, because closed shoes meant sweaty feet, nothing to do with energy flow. In Sydney she wore woollen socks with her open sandals in winter. But when she was given the petrol station job, she was told that covered shoes were compulsory. She didn't resist this, especially after what had happened. She went to the shoe shop closest to the petrol station before she started her first shift and bought herself slip on boots, the ones that were ankle-high, that didn't need laces or velcro or anything that required extra effort, and were really

185 thick at the front to protect the toes. When she first tried on the trousers with the uniform shirt tucked in, she felt too exposed. So she pulled the shirt out and wore it like that from then on. She asked for a Size 16 jumper for the winter uniform, three sizes bigger than her usual size. She wanted to make sure it covered her tummy and bottom without clinging to her breasts or her hips. On the Badge Order Form, she put down her married surname, ‘Pinto’.

Suzanne said they had a high staff turnover at this particular petrol station, and no one would make the connection, so she need not worry. It was part of a large chain, and many people frequented it except when its prices were higher than the independent one a little further away up the road. Some customers were wary of hanky panky in the petrol, adulteration, things like that. Some technically minded ones asked about the exact difference between Ethanol, and Premium. She always gave them the company leaflet and told them to contact the Customer Service line.

She preferred to focus on stacking shelves, cleaning toilets, doing all the inside jobs.

She didn't know how to work the bowser, never having driven a car herself, and didn't even want to know. Technical issues confounded her; she had left it up to Deepak to drive, to fix things, to tell her when to stop and when to go. When she needed to use the dipstick to record the level of fuel in the underground reservoirs after a delivery, she always asked the tanker driver to double-check her reading. She didn't trust herself to be certain of the line where the dry part of the dipstick ended and the wet part began.

The night seeps through as she waits for the customer to finish filling up. It’s taking forever. She knows that at this very minute the 222 bus is pulling away from the bus stop and gathering speed towards the city. She could have tried to walk home, it would have taken her about an hour and a half if she walked fast, shorter than

186 waiting for buses. But not in the dark, not through Roseville Chase with forest on both sides, that would be stupid. And not with her feet in such a state. Suzanne had offered to pick her up and drop her home if she were stuck. It would be no trouble at all, she said. But Nina said she would manage, not to worry.

Earlier that evening at the petrol station, when both she and Sumeet had to serve the unending stream of customers, a woman came in to pay for the petrol she had just filled into her four-wheel drive.

“Hello!” she said as she handed over her card. “Pump Four.”

Nina said “Hello. Cheque, savings, or credit?”

“Credit please. It’s nice out there, isn’t it.”

“Yes it is,” Nina said, as she swiped the woman’s card and pressed the required buttons to activate the payment system. She was trying to expand her repertoire of phatic speech, something that didn’t come naturally to her. She had always depended on Deepak to make friends here in Sydney. He knew how to lasso an individual or a crowd with small talk, and take them wherever he wanted.

“A family business you’ve got here, eh?” the woman said as she waited for her transaction to be approved.

Nina said too quickly, “Oh no, I just work here.” She hoped Sumeet didn't think she was offended to be considered his wife or part of his family.

Sumeet smiled his customer-service smile and shrugged.

He said, still smiling, “We both look alike to you?”

The woman said, ‘Yes, remarkably similar features. And both of you have the most gorgeous skin!”

After the woman left, Sumeet said “Idiot woman doesn't know that to us all whites look alike too.”

187 It was the way he said ‘us’, including her in his circle of complicity, that made her think of Deepak as if he was beside her that very minute. In that moment she missed him again. She would be lying if she didn't admit that to herself.

While she waits for the lone customer to come in to pay, she is tempted to check her phone. Earlier in the shift, when the first calls came there was no way she could answer. She was alone at the till and the customers were relentless. There were already 35 missed calls, all from the same number, from Deepak. It was just the two of them together in this world. This thought is discombobulating.

Nina’s sister Sarita blamed Australia for all that had happened. After it was all over, Sarita said to her on the phone, “There are no morals in Western society. If you were with us in India, we could have all sat down and talked about things in a cool manner,” she said. “Things wouldn’t have gone this far.”

“What things?” she wanted to ask Sarita.

In her heart of hearts, she knew it all began even before they were married, in

India, when he first told her how old he was. But she said nothing to Sarita. She had only herself to blame. It was not an arranged marriage; she wasn't forced by anyone.

In fact, a week before the wedding, when they had an argument over the phone about the table pieces for the reception and she began to cry, her dad said, “Call it off. If you’re not happy, call it off.”

But that day, one week before the wedding, running late for her final trial with the tailor sowing her gown, she said to her dad, “The invitations have already been sent out. It’s ok dad, it’s alright.”

And so they were married, Nina and Deepak. Even on that day as she posed for the camera, she sensed the black hole in the centre of their relationship that would swallow her whole if she attempted to touch it. That black hole was a drain without a

188 grate. If you fell in, who knew what vermin would feast on your flesh? Who knew if you would ever be able to get out alive? She danced and smiled and ate the piece of cake Deepak fed her, as he looked into her eyes, just as the videographer instructed.

The dress itself cost her a whole year’s salary as a secretary.

The wedding night began after the bridesmaid and Best Man were dropped off in the wedding car, a vintage Ford Tourer that Deepak had bought for next to nothing in Nagpur, and had spent big money on its restoration. The Ford broke down just before they entered Deepak’s apartment block and the only way to get it to his car space was if they both got out and pushed. Since Deepak was the one who could drive, he started to push from the driver’s side, his hand manoeuvering the steering wheel through the window. Nina, left her bouquet in the backseat, and in her white gown, already sticky with dancing and the heat of the videographer’s light, was conscious that she had begun to sweat profusely with the effort of pushing an impossible weight from the back.

Nina and Deepak first met at the White Elephant stall, the highlight of her parish church fete. He was already at the stall as she approached it. She saw him, his back to her, and wondered who this newcomer was. From the hush of comic anticipation around him, Nina sensed that Deepak was telling a joke.

“What is the opposite of Progress?”

Deepak paused, took a deep breath.

Carmel Cardoso, the wife of the sacristan was behind the counter, soaking in all that Deepak was saying.

Her eyes said, “What? What?” although she was as silent as sin.

Deepak said, “…Congress!”

189 Carmel Cardoso and the others laughed their insides out, even before Deepak completed his sentence. Deepak himself laughed, and then began to sing a chorus he would continue after every joke, dancing as if doing the Punjabi bhangra.

Train me chananana chananana hoi-re

Train me chananana chananana hoi-re

Nina just stood there watching him. She had heard the joke before. But the way Deepak told it, it was as new as newborn flesh, and just as irresistible. Then he turned to look at her.

“What is your good name, madam?” he mocked the thick Maharashtrian accent of the local shopkeeper from where most parishioners bought their groceries, sending everyone into another round of laughter, as he held out his hand to her. She thrust her hand out, saying her name as coyly as she could manage, hoping her hand moisturizer had done as advertised.

The band was playing Hotel California as violently as they could. The motors of the Merry-Go-Round and the Giant Wheel, burdened with freshly fed children were grunting with resentment. All this faded into silence for her. But just as her fingers touched his palm, he immediately withdrew, and joined both hands in the

Namaste gesture.

“Pleased to meet you Madam Nina, I am your esteemed Deepak, son of

Deepak, grandson of Deepak and great grandson also of Deepak.”

More laughter from the small crowd. Her embarrassment at this retraction of his hand, must have shown on her face because he pointed to her grandly, underlining her shame, and laughed.

190 She forced herself to laugh too even though all the noises of the world were suddenly blasting holes into her eardrums.

Then as if in reparation, he looked down at her feet, freshly manicured in open-toed sandals, and said, “My goodness Nina! What pretty feet you have!”

Nina was enchanted.

“Have you eaten? I’m starving.” he said.

She was about to respond to the question she thought he asked but then realised he’d already moved on ahead of her. Still, she followed, her appetite increasing, her curiosity piqued, with every step.

They ate pan rolls, sannaas, sorpotel, and as they ate he talked and she listened.

She could sense the doors and windows of her body opening up to let him in. She could feel herself taking that huge but intimate step across his threshold, from observation into entanglement. In all the wisdom of her late teenaged years, there was one thing she needed to be sure about, one boundary she wanted to protect.

“How old are you, if I may ask?”

He swallowed the food in his mouth and said a moment later, “Twenty-four.

You?”

She said, ‘Eighteen.”

She had always believed that four years between husband and wife was the ideal age gap, but another two years didn’t make such a huge difference. That moment was like an exhale. She allowed her anchor to drop.

It was only years later when she had to submit both their Baptism certificates to the Parish Office when making arrangements for the Wedding Mass, that she checked his birthdate. He was actually twelve years older than her. This knowledge made her lose her train of thought in the Parish Office.

191 “Nina, sign here. Are you ok?” Father Manoj was saying.

Her instinct was to ring him and get some clarification. She tried his mobile but he didn’t answer. She remembered it was a Monday morning after all, and he would be busy at the Monday Briefing at work.

When they met that evening after work at the Udipi restaurant as usual, the last thing she wanted was a huge confrontation. The invitations had already been printed. After they had ordered, and the food arrived, she broke her dosa into smaller pieces and spoke with her eyes on her plate, as if the thought had just occurred to her.

“I thought you were just six years older than me.”

“Am I not?” he asked. She felt his eyes boring into her and she looked up at him, smiling to diffuse any awkwardness that might creep in.

“Your Baptism Certificate says you’re ten years older.”

“Can’t believe you’re worried about our ages! Where’s all your women’s lib feminism talk now?” he said and although his tone was warm and his smile glittered with pleasures to come, his eyes had the tenor of a Canadian winter. She knew this was something she could never bring up again.

She gathered up a piece of dosa with her fingers, dipped it in the sambhar, and held it to his mouth. He opened his mouth. She placed the dosa on his tongue, letting him flick his tongue over her fingertips.

Looking back, she knew that this was the moment when she allowed a river to break its banks and wreak its destruction while she just stood by watching.

They went to Paris for their honeymoon, on discounted tickets courtesy of one of his old friends. Paris, with its first world ripples, its first world light, all contained in their silos, not fulminating like India, made Nina think forever of that city as a

192 child’s pastel drawing. She saw The Louvre in the distance. While she was looking, he said, “I need to go to the toilet.”

There was a McDonald’s just two doors down, and he went in. She waited outside and looked again for The Louvre. But it was gone. Did she imagine it? Surely not. This was, after all, its home, this city of shapeliness and comeliness en plein air.

She knew where The Louvre was meant to be. But all her looking was in vain. She gave up and concentrated on the tourist guidebook they picked up for free at the airport.

They walked across the city past window displays that looked like fragments of a biennale. In one such window she saw a red shoe on a black velvet pedestal. It was open at the toes, with silk straps and a heel that was shaped as if by a calligrapher.

It was a shoe made for foreplay. She stopped to admire it.

“I’d love to try that on,” she said.

“We have a long way to go, come on,” he said.

A scooter screeched on the wrong side of the road.

They walked past cafes where the worldly wise watched the world, past clean parks, clean buses, clean streets around monuments they had learned about in history text books. It was their first trip outside of India. Life in Paris was life outside India.

Life outside India was irresistible.

The cheapest French food they could find were crepes made fresh at street- side stalls. They could only afford one between them, such was the value of the Indian rupee in those days. But they didn't care. This was the tastiest, most sophisticated food they had ever eaten. Later they filled themselves up with instant noodles in the

193 hostel kitchen. That night, after sex on a single bunk, she said, “I wish we didn't have to go back home.”

They had paid for the upper bunk too, so he moved there and said, “I remember seeing an ad in The Times of India about student visas for Australia.”

From that moment on, the idea took shape in her head that black holes can be filled by white spaces. She felt that they could somehow start afresh in Australia. He was the Area Sales Manager – Bombay Region, for a company that sold Japanese televisions. She knew that without an MBA, he was going nowhere at work. She knew she could be more than just a secretary. Working holiday visas were only available to countries that could not be construed as a threat to Australia. India, with its hordes waiting to get out, was therefore excluded. A student visa seemed like the best bet for adventurous Indian nationals with access to bank loans.

She had always wanted to paint. She was in awe of people who could distill the mess and impetuousness of life into a painterly stillness. Sometimes, in the middle of checking and rechecking the macros on a spreadsheet, she yearned to be such an arbiter of beauty. But she didn’t dare to think of herself as an artist, and so she never picked up a brush.

Back in India, when Deepak suggested she chose a course that would help her get a student visa, and he a spouse visa so he could work full-time, she chose a

Masters Degree in Arts Administration. The title ‘Arts Administrator’ seemed to her like a foreign thing that could only exist in glossy foreign magazines about multi- million dollar art auctions.

They visited the Australian Consulate to check out the Australian newspapers, get a feel for the jobs.

194 “Loads of Sales and Marketing jobs,” she said to him.

“And their population is much smaller than ours,” he said. “Put every single

Australian into Bombay and they’d still be short of our current population.”

“With your experience looks like they’ll be begging you to work for them,” she said.

Satisfied that they would fly into a future with money and as many crepes as they wanted to eat, they quit their jobs, booked their tickets, and paid the first installment of her fees.

The day they landed in Sydney, a cold front pulverised the state of New South

Wales with flash floods and hailstones, and blew it inside out it. The wind was so fierce that they couldn’t hold on to their trolleys, loaded with suitcases weighing 30 kgs each, and needed some help from the cab drivers at the Taxi Rank. They knew no one in Sydney. They booked two weeks’ accommodation in a share house off the

Internet, sure they would find something better once they had landed and got a feel for the place. They bought two newspapers at the airport to look at the classifieds. The newspapers disintegrated in the rain as they tried to save their trolleys from crashing into parked cars.

The next day Nina bought more newspapers. She circled all the jobs she thought she could do. The first number she decided to ring was that of You Tell Us, a market research company that needed people to go door to door and do surveys and interviews for various products. They asked her to come in for an interview, and impressed with her English, she got the job. It was only casual, she would get paid for every questionnaire she completed. But it was a start.

195 There were more jobs advertised that suited Deepak’s skill set and experience.

All of them required formal applications. He sent his cover letter and resume to every company on that list.

For the kind of fees she was paying, Nina expected a week full of classes from morning to night at full-time Masters’ level. However, she realised that Masters’

Degrees in Australia catered for those who were working day jobs. All classes were held in the evenings between 6 and 9 pm, and only three days a week. The rest of the time she was free to go door knocking for You Tell Us, while Deepak waited at home by his mobile phone.

The rejections started slowly, via email and post. One month later, he showed her his seventeenth rejection letter.

“They say I don't have Australian experience. How the fuck will I get

Australian experience if they don't give me a job?”

“We’ll just keep trying. Something will work out.”

“We? Don't say ‘We’. You don't get slaps on your face every day in your university. It’s full of ethnics anyway. Easy for you to say ‘something will work out’.”

One afternoon after a particularly hard survey run up and down the steep streets of Berowra, she bought some organic chocolate from the Oxfam shop on the way home, exactly like the one she saw on the dining table in the last house she visited.

At home, she brought it out to him on a wooden plate from Vinnies. He waved the chocolate away and said he had received the cruelest rejection of all.

“When I got the email saying I was not successful I rang them up and demanded to speak with the boss. They said he was in a meeting. So I went to the city, into their office and spoke to him directly.”

196 “Oh” she said.

“I begged of him to please reconsider. But he was so racist.”

“Not everyone is racist,” she said.

“It’s easy for you to say. They think Indian women are exotic. But Indian men! No white man will buy a car from an Indian man.”

She stayed silent.

“I begged, can you believe it? I said ‘I’ll do anything for you, just give me a

job. I even touched his feet.”

She stroked his back, intending to console.

He flapped her arm off him forcefully.

“But the fucking racist, cold hearted racist, he said there was nothing he could do. Fucking idiot probably hasn't even finished school. Threatened. That's what he was. Threatened.” He banged his fist repeatedly on the dining table.

He decided to take up a job stacking shelves at the local supermarket while waiting for interview calls. He’d come back with new words after every shift. One hot night he returned from his second shift and said to her, “You’re a skanky bitch. ”

She had never heard that term before. It was certainly not a Bombay term. She was about to ask what it meant. But he said, “I was doing so well in Bombay. Area Sales

Manager. These fuckers here have not even seen one tenth of the business we did.

And now I’m stacking shelves. I did this all for you.”

She was surprised at this revelation of what was festering inside him. She didn't agree at all. But the comfort zones in their relationship had changed shape, ever so slightly every day, until now when there were electric fences around what could and could not be said.

197 A few months passed. One night in April, she got home from classes to find that Deepak was not home. She tried ringing him but his mobile was switched off.

She called Suzanne, the only person she knew in Sydney who could be considered a friend. Later she would be chilled by the mirroring of it all. But that night she told

Suzanne she was worried, what if he had been in an accident? Suzanne said to give it another hour and then call her back.

To kill time she went to the computer. Her hand touched the mouse and the screen came alive to reveal Deepak’s email inbox. He had forgotten to log out.

However, it was not the email ID he usually used, but one she had never seen before: [email protected] . She was afraid of the unknown worlds she might find, and so she didn’t scroll through it. In any case the bell rang that minute and there was

Deepak with a bloody face and smashed gums.

“I got knocked down.”

“Where?”

“By a car. In the city.”

Deepak said the driver got away and the cops refused to do anything. They took a statement. They couldn't find any witnesses. It happened on a quiet street.

“Which street?” she asked as she sat down by the computer.

“You don't believe me? I fucking hate this country. The racist cops wouldn't even lift a finger to find the car. I gave up a sterling career to come here, all because of you. And you don't fucking believe me?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you.”

“What did you say then, you bitch?”

She wanted to say, “I just asked the name of the street. I just wanted to know where you were hit, to picture it in my head.”

198 But he was rushing to her with his arm raised.

She thought, if he touches me I will walk out immediately. “Lord have mercy,” she whispered to herself instinctively.

Something made him lower his arm. Whatever it was, she felt things click back into place, and the old borders re-forming before her. A second earlier she feared they wouldn't. She feared she would be lost in a new amorphous blackness with no place for a toehold, nowhere to steady herself. But now she felt the cogs turning again, oiled, dependable.

He enveloped her in a hug, and she let his weight sink into her relief.

In the bathroom she brought Dettol and cotton balls to wipe the blood off his forehead. He let her clean him up. She brought him warm salty water to rinse his mouth.

Then she went to her phone and messaged Suzanne to say Deepak was back, everything was ok.

From the bathroom, he was watching her.

“Who are you messaging?”

“Just Suzanne. She was worried about you.”

“No need to give her every little detail,” he said exasperated.

“I’m just saying you’re back.”

He spat blood out of his mouth.

When he was clean she said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok,” he said.

“Shall we go to a doctor?”

“What doctor at this time of night? Do you think I can drive in this state? This is what I left India for.” He threw his arms up in the air.

199 “We can always go back. It’s not too late.” She said.

“Go back where?”

“To India. To Bombay.”

“To Bombay? How can I show my face? Stacking shelves like a servant while my colleagues are running companies?”

The phone rang. It was her sister. By the time she finished her conversation he had shut down the computer, and gone to bed.

A few days later, on a job for You Tell Us, she knocked on the door of an

Indian house and both husband and wife were home. She recognised the husband from a newspaper photograph about a daring rescue mission in the Himalayas.

“Oh my God! You’re Major Peter Mendonca!”

He smiled, pleased at being recognised in a place where he had no history.

“All of us Catholics were so proud of you. You won the Param Vir Chakra right?”

“Just the Vir Chakra. Not as grand as the Param Vir Chakra.”

“Oh my God! Wow! What are you doing in Australia? Are you on duty here?”

“Please come in, sit down. This is my wife Pamela. Would you like a soft drink? Some apple juice? ”

It turned out that all of Major Peter Mendonca’s in-laws had migrated to

Australia in the 1980s. His wife was the only one left behind in India. So, after he retired from the Indian Army at 40, he and Pamela and their twin boys migrated to

Sydney. He went back to university and retrained as a Maths teacher so he could support himself and his family.

Nina was astounded. A decorated Indian military hero working as a Maths teacher in a Sydney school. There was pride in his past glory, but not a trace of

200 bitterness in his voice. All she could think of was the inspiration this would be for

Deepak.

When she got home, Deepak was lit by the computer screen. But she couldn't keep the excitement from her voice.

“Guess who I met today? Major Peter Mendonca!”

“Oh! The same Catholic guy, army man, who won the Param Vir Chakra?”

“Just the Vir Chakra. Not as grand as the Param Vir Chakra.”

“He’s here on duty?”

“No. You’ll never guess what he’s doing in Sydney.”

He turned back to the computer and resumed typing.

“Shooting a movie about his life?”

“Noooo! He’s a Maths teacher!”

He shut down a few windows and began to play a You Tube video.

“You’ve always wanted to be an engineer. Our uni has a great engineering degree.” She went closer to him, close enough to read the screen, but that was not her intention. He stood up so abruptly and pushed her away so hard that she was flung to the far wall where she hit her head.

He went to the kitchen and brought her an ice pack, but not before shutting down the computer, and collecting his keys.

There was no blood, but she could feel a lump rising. She took the ice pack and pressed it against her head. She stayed quiet. She just wanted to keep the peace.

“Go and fuck your Param Vir Chakra award winner and be happy,” he said as he left the house, slamming the door shut behind him.

201 Her head was a storm. But she knew he would come back because really, in this city with its skanky bitch underclass that spoke a language they both didn't understand, and a black tide corroding their confidence, they only had each other.

She tried his mobile. As she expected, it went straight to voicemail. She went to bed and lay down, holding the icepack to her lump. It was an accident, she knew.

He didn't really mean to hurt her. She should have approached the subject more logically instead of gushing about Major Peter Mendonca. And besides, where would she go? To whom would she turn? These questions had foregone conclusions. She didn't even trust herself any more. She wondered where he was, and what she herself should do now in this wild night. But he was a habit she could not conceive of breaking. Lying there on that second-hand futon from the Salvos warehouse in Tempe, she didn’t even go so far as weighing up her options. She was thinking more about how to bring their relationship back to equilibrium again. She heard the door open and she felt herself sink into the futon a little more. She kept still on her side, her back to his half of the bed. She felt his weight on the mattress, then his hands gentle upon her.

She found him pulling off her underwear in the old way. If he was begging for grace, she would not be so cruel as to withhold it. She put the icepack on the floor, and turned to him with her lips parted.

Six months of rejection from corporate Australia, and the money from his job as a supermarket shelf stacker was not nearly enough. He took on a second job as a petrol station attendant, and another job delivering pizzas. Nina continued her classes in Arts Administration, and her door-knocking for You Tell Us.

Suzanne invited Nina and Deepak to her home for Christmas that year. She actually invited them to Midnight Mass, where she and her husband Patrick had been chosen to play Mary and Joseph in the Christmas Nativity play. “Wish we could

202 provide them with a Baby Jesus too,” she said to Nina, and from the tone of

Suzanne’s voice Nina knew that to probe further would reveal a raw and pocked underside that was meant to be hidden. She kept quiet.

Deepak was working the night shift at the petrol station on Christmas Eve.

They couldn’t make it to Midnight Mass. On Christmas morning they arrived at

Suzanne’s house, sweaty but on time. The minute Suzanne opened the door Nina and

Deepak were greeted with a whiteness more brilliant than the blinding sunlight outside.

When Nina’s eyes had adjusted to this whiteness, she realised that the whole house, from the walls to the ceiling to the furniture to the crockery were all white.

Even the cushions on the white leather sofas were white. The floor tiles were white.

All the kitchen appliances were white.

“We just finished renovating,” Suzanne said, sparkling in her white glitter- necked kurta and white shorts, offering her left cheek to each of them to kiss.

She introduced them to Patrick, dressed in a white tshirt and white tennis shorts. He held out his hand to Nina and then drew her closer to kiss her on both cheeks. “Merry Christmas, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

He shook hands with Deepak, saying, “Hello mate, nice to meet you, Merry

Christmas. Bit hot today, eh?”

“Yes, but not hot like Bombay. That’s what I call real heat,” Deepak said.

“In Bombay it’s the humidity and the pollution that get to you,” Patrick said.

Deepak handed over the sorpotel he had taken weeks to cook. Patrick accepted it and passed it on to Suzanne.

“Oh, thank you so much, you shouldn’t have,” Suzanne said.

203 Patrick said, “Thought we’d just throw a few prawns on the barbie, do it Aussie style eh? Aussie Aussie Aussie, oi oi oi!” He pumped his fist in the air and grinned.

“Fresh Aussie prawns. This your first Aussie Christmas, Suzanne was telling me?”

Nina was immediately self-conscious on Deepak’s behalf. She knew he was struggling to keep himself together as a new way of living raged around him. And here in this house he was being asked to let go and re-form in the image of that which he despised.

“Yes,” Deepak said. “We came here because Nina wanted to study, and I thought, why not, let's see what happens.”

Nina knew this was not the whole truth but it was inconsequential in the face of greater obfuscations.

“Oh! What are you studying, Nina?”

“Arts Administration.”

“Oh, that's interesting. Like a secretarial course?” Patrick asked.

“No,” Suzanne said as she led them all outside. “Remember I told you, it’s about going to art galleries.”

“Do you have exams at the end?” Patrick asked.

“No, no exams. Just assignments."

"It’s a more enlightened education system compared to India."

The backyard was large enough for a full tennis court. Unlike a tennis court however it was not flat but had mounds in odd places, as if it were suppressing gas.

“We renovated the backyard last year. It’s all synthetic. You didn't guess, did you?” Suzanne said to Nina and Deepak triumphantly.

“We went for the best quality. Price was no bar.” Patrick added.

204 “You know how in that painting at the Art Gallery, the one by Gruner, On the

Murrumbidgee, the land is all rolling like frozen waves? It’s a painting of the country.

We wanted to have that here in the middle of the city,” Suzanne said. “We dug up the backyard and remodelled it according to the painting. The designer even added different shades of green and blue and brown. For free!”

“This is our tribute to our new country,” Patrick said.

Patrick put on his gloves. At the same time, Suzanne reached under the barbie and brought out a large yellow sponge. Every time Patrick spilled a few drops of marinade or oil, Suzanne would immediately wipe it off with the yellow sponge.

“Here everyone uses gloves when cooking. There are standards here. Not like the bhaiyas in India who scratch their bums and use the same hand in the pani puri water.”

Patrick spread a layer of thickly marinated prawns on the hot barbequeue plate.

“So what do you do, Deepak?”

“I used to be the Area Sales Manager for Yoshimoto Television, in Bombay.”

Patrick turned to Deepak as if astonished. “Oh really?”

“Yes. Gave all that up for this lovely lady here.”

Suzanne said, “He works at the supermarket, stacking shelves. That's what you have to do to survive. We were lucky. Patrick was head hunted.”

“Oh, you were bodyshopped. TCS?” Deepak asked.

Patrick turned away to the prawns.

“I started with TCS,” Patrick said, checking the prawns like a master, then spreading them out on a glass plate.

“Let's go to the Formal Dining Area,” Suzanne said. They followed her inside.

205 The table was laid out in red and gold, with nylon poinsettias flecked with plastic snow in the centre. There were little white entree plates with Santa borders and matching dinner plates under them. There were silver plated forks and knives arranged on either side of the plates and crystal tumblers filled with water. The snowman on the placemats was hidden by the plates. Nina would only notice them when she lifted her plate towards the rice for a second helping.

“So, how long have you been living here?” Nina asked, to break the silence.

“We bought this house within two months of arriving. We were put up in company accommodation before that,” Patrick said.

“But your own place is your own place.” Suzanne shrugged.

“It’s quite expensive in this part of town,” Patrick said.

"It's ok for us,” Suzanne said, "We're quite financial."

“I could never rent and pay someone else's mortgage. I couldn't do that, to tell you frankly,” Patrick said.

“You should apply for a Housing Commission place.” Suzanne said.

Nina felt sick with her pity, but Deepak was on a roll.

“Thing is, here they have no work ethic. At Yoshimoto, we were loyal to the company. I practically lived in the office. My boss was like my father. Here, at the supermarket, people come and go, they steal from shelves, they take smoke breaks.

There's no work ethic.”

Patrick put his cutlery down. He said, “Here there is dignity of labour. The worker is treated the same as the boss. Forget the caste system, there is not even the class system in Australia. Tomorrow you think if Rupert Murdoch came to my house I would give him special treatment? He would eat from the very same plate you are eating from, mate.”

206 Deepak shifted in his seat. He said, “One thing I have noticed is that they are very racist here. I've never ever seen...”

“Really?”, Patrick interrupted, “You've experienced racism here?”

“Yes,” Deepak said emphatically.

Patrick looked at Nina. “Nina, have you experienced racism here?”

Nina didn't expect Patrick’s gaze upon her. “Er, I personally have not. People are quite polite.”

“Yes, me too” Patrick said, “I have worked here for six years now. I can say with my hand on my heart that I am an equal.”

Suzanne passed the prawns around.

“Here, Deepak, have some prawns.”

“But the thing is,” said Deepak, waving off the prawns, “at the university where Nina studies, there are many ethnics. And the whole of IT in Australia is

Indians, Indians, Indians. So how can there be racism? Come and work at the supermarket. You'll see.”

“Patrick's boss invites us to barbies every weekend. If he was racist, he wouldn't invite us. And he's white,” Suzanne said.

“The bosses are white, the workers are all non white.”

“Can you describe an incident where someone was racist to you?” Patrick said to Deepak.

“Yes of course, I can name many, not just one.”

“Something that happened at your work place in the last few months?”

“No need to go back so much. Let’s talk about this morning, on the way here,” said Patrick.

207 “It’s ok Deepak, I’m sure Suzanne and Patrick have other things to worry about” said Nina, putting her hand on his arm. But Deepak ignored her.

“We were crossing the road and a man in a station wagon drove so fast past us and shouted at us ‘You fucking black cunts! Go back to where you came from!’

That’s what he said. Ask Nina.”

“Really? Where?” Deepak asked incredulously.

“Just here, on the corner of your street. And he didn't even stop.”

“That's unusual. We've lived here for six years and nothing like that has ever happened to us,” Patrick said.

“This is a high-class area. First time I've heard of this,” Suzanne said.

Nina said, “We were crossing in the middle of the road. It wasn't a zebra crossing or anything.”

“Ah! That's why!” Patrick said. “Now it makes sense. Here you have to follow the rules. People get very angry if you don't follow the rules. This is not India.”

“At work I get abused every day.”

“You know what they say here, if someone calls you a bastard it means he likes you very much,” Suzanne said.

"Come on! I know when someone is insulting me and when they're being friendly."

"I'm sure you do," Suzanne said.

Deepak's phone rang. "Excuse me," he said and left the table to answer the call.

“It must be his work, calling him in,” Nina said. She felt Suzanne look at her for an explanation.

“At the supermarket? But it’s closed today, isn’t it?” Suzanne said.

“At the petrol station. He took up a second job,” Nina said.

208 “Oh! You know that Patrick works for Shell right?” Suzanne said to Nina.

“Yes, same company, but different, er, department,” Nina said.

When Deepak came back to the table he said, "I'm sorry, I have to go, I have to do the 3 pm shift because the guy called in sick."

"That's ridiculous, on Christmas Day! You can't even enjoy Christmas lunch!"

Suzanne said.

"It's three times the pay,” Patrick explained to Suzanne, then turning to

Deepak he said, "Well mate, you've got to do what you've got to do."

"At least have some dessert. I made Pavlova. It's a traditional Aussie dessert."

"Very sorry, come Nina. We have to leave now. We have to wait for a bus, and today is a Public Holiday, buses are not running frequently."

When they were out of earshot, far enough along the street for their voices not to be carried back to Suzanne and Patrick's house, Deepak said to Nina, "I would have been that fucker's boss in Bombay. And he's trying to act like he's some great

Australian Don Bradman or something. He and his wife, your friend, they're whiter than the whites here with their barbie this and Pavlova that. What do they think? I'm stupid or something? I just make up racist anecdotes to narrate at parties? He works in

IT. It's a bubble. He has no idea what happens even on his own street. Such fuckers are your friends."

Then the bus came and they both got on the bus and because of the driver and another passenger, they stayed quiet the whole trip home.

Nina got pregnant without even thinking about it.

“How come?" Deepak said to her when she told him.

209 "What are we going to do now?"

Nina wanted Deepak to tell her which GP to go to, which hospital, what kind of car seat to buy, and what name they would choose for their June baby. However,

Deepak said, "You want to have a baby when I'm working three jobs. It's up to you.

We don't even have Permanent Residency. It's a bit of a luxury don't you think? We have no Medicare. Are your parents going to pay for medical expenses with their retirement savings in Indian rupees?"

It was the first time the possibility of an abortion entered her head. It was against everything she had been taught as a Catholic. She remembered the video they were all made to watch at school called The Silent Scream, about a helpless foetus being butchered, and the wrath of God manifesting itself in the life of the mother.

She thought, "If I go through with an abortion, I will leave him."

She spent the next week eating only organic food, and hydrating with pure spring water from New Zealand. She bought apples from the Farmers Markets, untainted by pesticides. She began to listen to Mozart and Bach on her headphones.

She started to feel nauseous and had to miss a week of work at You Tell Us. That was the clincher, a solid dose of reality: no money coming in.

At the abortion clinic, she had second thoughts. Her old worries and arguments came back with an urgency she could not ignore. The counsellor they had to see before the procedure said, "If you are not sure, I cannot let you go to the next stage."

She looked at Deepak.

"It's ok, you decide what you want to do. I'll keep working three jobs. I came here for you, remember that."

She turned her face away from him and calmed herself down.

210 Then she said to the counsellor, "I'm sure.”

"Good girl. Don't worry, you'll be fine," she smiled, warm as a blanket made with the finest Australian wool.

The procedure itself turned out to be inconsequential. One minute she was pregnant. The next minute she was not. Was this legal? Illegal? She had no idea. All she knew was that she was free. Deepak was free. They fell asleep on their futon together and slept soundlessly, their bodies entangled only at the ankles, for almost 24 hours.

The next time Nina met Suzanne she saw that she was knitting booties.

“Not for me for sure.” Suzanne said, her voice a bleat. “For our neighbour. She’s due in June.”

And just like that Nina saw how easy it could have been.

Suzanne invited Nina and Deepak over for Easter. Nina accepted the invite, but didn't immediately tell Deepak about it. She would wait until the last minute, until there was no way he could refuse.

He worked the night shift at the petrol station on Holy Saturday. He got back home on Easter Sunday morning, bleary-eyed and on edge. There was a spring coiled tight inside him, waiting for release. He began to take his clothes off, opened and closed the fridge a couple of times. Her shoes were lying near the kitchen door. He tripped over them.

“Fuck!” he said, keeping himself from falling.

"Suzanne and Patrick invited us to their house for lunch,” Nina said, her tone tentative, battening down the hatches in preparation for his reply.

211 "I'm not going."

"But I already said yes to them."

"So you go."

"I said we would both come. Please. It won't be just us. They have invited other people also this time."

He turned to look at her.

"Why? I'm not good enough for them, is it? A shelf stacker and a petrol station worker is not good enough for them?"

He turned away again.

He started banging pans in the kitchen as he attempted to fry bacon.

Her phone beeped. It was a message from Suzanne. “What time will you get here?

Need to time the chicken properly.”

Nina texted back. “In half an hour.”

“Who was that?” Deepak demanded.

Nina stayed quiet.

“It was that bitch right? Tell her to fuck off. Tell her to take her fucking prawns on her barbie and shove it up her arse.”

“Don't talk like that.”

He was facing her now, his face icy but also raging hot.

“Oh so now you’re telling me how I should and shouldn't talk. Last year, you fucking said you had no racist experiences. In front of them. Made me look like a chutiya.

And you’re telling me ‘don't talk like that’? I’m not good enough for you now anh?’

He was close now. His eyes were bloodshot.

But she was just plain tired of tiptoeing around him.

212 “I didn’t say you’re not good enough. Stop jumping to conclusions. You’re making a mountain out of a tiny grain of sand.”

Her phone started to ring. She tried to look at the screen wanting to know who would be calling. But he held her hand and tried to prise the phone from her grip.

When she wouldn't let go — why, she had no idea, there was nothing to hide —

he brought his heel, clad in its steel shank, steel toe, heavy duty work boot, down hard upon her bare left foot. He stomped down hard again, this time on her right foot.

She tried to fight him but her feet were crushed and the pain was unbearable. He held his left hand to her throat and shoved her, gasping for breath, against the wall. Then he answered the phone.

“Hello Suzanne! Yes, we’ll be there in half an hour. Yes, all good. See you soon. Oh, and by the way, Happy Easter!”

There was something in Deepak’s voice, and the fact that he answered Nina’s phone, that made Suzanne tell Patrick that they had to leave right away to check on

Nina.

It was Suzanne who found the door wide open and Nina unconscious. It was

Suzanne who rang the police and the ambulance.

The next day Suzanne visited with her Christian righteousness and Christian charity that Nina was able to foresee but unable to resist.

“Don’t look sad,” Suzanne said. “Your toes will heal. You’re lucky to be alive.

There is an interim AVO taken out against him. The cops did all that.”

“What’s an AVO?” she asked.

“Apprehended Violence Order. He can’t come near you, don't worry.”

“Who can’t come near me?” Nina asked this partly because she was fogged with medication, partly because she didn't really believe that Deepak would harm her

213 again, and partly to make it clear to Suzanne that she didn't feel threatened and didn't need her pity.

Suzanne patted Nina’s head and said, “It will take time to accept what has just happened. Sometimes God has other plans. I hope Deepak is jailed for ever, He’s worse than Silence of the Lambs.”

Nina wished that Suzanne had minded her own business. It was not as if he had killed her. They could have worked things through. She did not want to be a divorcee. And now he had a police record. The two years spent cultivating a good impression for the application for Permanent Residency, none of that was of any use now. Every Police Clearance Certificate would be stained with this mark. Every part of her body that he had touched was now a wound, yet a wound that would only be healed by his touch again.

Her toes, both her feet, were rubble. It took every gram of politeness for Nina to keep a neutral face while nodding. What she really wanted to do was to scream loud enough for a hole to be blasted in the ceiling. But the ceiling was white and impenetrable.

“You can’t go back to him after you get out of here,” Suzanne was saying.

“You need a room of your own. Virgina Woolf said that. I told the social worker I would help with accommodation.”

“But where will I go?”

“You’re lucky. We just bought an investment property in Dee Why. Nothing grand. But you can have it for a few months until things improve. Take a leave of absence from uni. You’ll need to get a job where you don’t have to walk so much.

Door-to-door sales is out of the question.”

“It was market research actually, not sales.”

214 “Whatever. You can’t walk much now. Patrick will get you a job at a petrol station. He said there was a vacancy at Northbridge. Don't worry, no one will know you there. You have to stand around most of the time, but you can ask for a special chair.”

It is at Northbridge petrol station that Nina is waiting, for the customer to hurry up and pay so she can go home. The nozzle is back on the hook now and the driver is walking through the doors of the shop.

“Hi luv, how are ya?”

It’s a woman, a female cab driver in uniform. Nina has never seen a female cab driver before.

“I’m fine thank you, how are you?” Nina hasn't dropped her Bombay pleasantries yet.

“Haven’t seen you here before.” The cab driver hands Nina her card.

“Yes I’m new here. Just started about two weeks ago.”

The woman squints as she reads Nina’s badge.

“Nina Pinto. You look Portuguese. From Goa?” Nina is impressed by her deep knowledge of the footnotes of Indian colonial history. Years later she would look at a

Lonely Planet Guide to India and understand where she got her information from.

“My grandparents were from Goa. I’m from Bombay.”

“My grandad was born in India. Calcutta. Then they moved to England. Came out here when he was only a boy.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah. He used to tell us stories about India. I love India. I’m gonna go there after I retire. I’m Donna by the way.”

215 “Hi Donna, nice name.”

“Oh thanks luv.”

“You drive a cab?”

“Yeah. Just finished a double shift. Off home now to put me feet up, watch a nice meaty Spanish movie on SBS.”

“You must be exhausted,” Nina is saying.

“That’s what the city does to ya.”

“Are you from Sydney?”

“No I’m from the country.”

“Oh. Which country?”

The instant she asks this question and even before Donna says “Tamworth,” she realizes how ridiculous, how naïve she sounds. Donna grasps something else, that

Nina is asking a question that doesn't quite make sense and yet makes all the sense in the world. The country is a different country. She laughs with understanding.

Nina begins to laugh too. At first Nina’s laugh comes out in short bursts. Then she begins to laugh deeply, from inside her body, from her soul. The shop resounds with the laughter of these women. Nina knows she is not finished yet. The laughter is flushing out all the debris of time and desire that passes all understanding, making place for new constructions. She knows there are seeds inside her that are rooting her to this minute, this place, seeds that she never knew existed, buried so deep they were now being shaken out as the laughing fills her, and thrills her. Sometimes you need someone to save you from yourself. And as Donna signs the credit card receipt that

Nina pushes in front of her, and Nina is wiping tears from her eyes, the tail end of the previous laugh brings on another unstoppable bout. Nina remembers the last time she laughed like this. It was at her grandmother’s funeral when someone irrelevant

216 cracked a stupid joke. It was before she met Deepak, and before the world had shrunk.

This time it is not death but life that provides context. And this time Nina laughs as a woman who has just absolved herself. Her feet are sore now but the laughter has cracked open her body and the light is coming in.

“Well, lovely to meet you Nina Pinto,” Donna says before she leaves the counter.

Nina takes off her badge.

“It’s just Nina actually. Just call me Nina.”

“Lovely to meet you Nina. See you next time luv. Have a lovely night.”

Donna walks towards the exit. Then, just before the automatic doors open, she turns around. Looking past the city and the country, past the poison of human history indelible with the ink of men, past the wall of colour which rightly or wrongly stands between them, her voice breezy with the ease of lemon yellow jonquils in a blue vase on a window overlooking a bay of plenty, she speaks to Nina woman to woman, “If you ever need gelato, I’d highly recommend PJ’s ‘round the corner. Best gelato in the world, and served by a hot waiter. A girl couldn't ask for anything more.”

And again Nina laughs uncontrollably. Donna can’t help herself either. She takes a few steps back, doubling up with laughter. A symphony is playing with sitars and guitars and cellos and a billion concert pianists on a billion grand pianos. Donna waves goodbye through her merriment. The door beeps as it opens to let Donna out, a trail of hilarity behind her. Nina cannot stop laughing. She is laughing so hard she is slightly dizzy. She holds on to the counter to steady herself and almost knocks off the

Chupachups display. Her sides hurt but the laughter keeps coming.

But this time her laughter is the ancient silt of an underground river, bubbling in the shock of fresh sunlight. It is the sudden realization of her weight in this world.

217 It is the slow and knowing laughter of a woman who has found her place. She is sure now. She is home. She whispers to herself, “Thank you, Donna.”

Sumeet is walking back from across the road after his smoke. Nina can see him waiting for a break in traffic. She logs off. Everything tallies down to the last cent.

She sees the ghostly light on her phone come on again. The bins, she has forgotten the bins. Then she remembers that Sumeet will do them. She can see her phone ringing, although she can’t hear it.

She walks out to the bin, the largest one in the whole of Northbridge, it seems like it is a bottomless drain. She drops her phone in. But not before she has taken a few seconds to revert to factory settings, erasing all her data.

Not even the Queen of Prophets could have predicted this.

“Good night Sumeet” she says as she crosses paths with him.

“Good night Nina. Thank you so much for waiting. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she says.

It is windy that night on Labour Day. But Nina’s feet are cocooned in their covered shoes. She still has dizzy spells but they occur less frequently now, about twice a week, and are much lower in intensity. The warmth is rising up through her.

She thinks of the few thousand dollars she has saved up for an emergency, or a rental bond. Sumeet will give her a reference if needed. In time she will decide to go back to

India. Or she will stay on, finish her Masters Degree in Arts Administration. Maybe do a painting class. The first thing she will paint is a Kangaroo Paw erupting through the earth. No one knows her here. Even Suzanne doesn't really know her. And she knows no one. There is no history with which to judge her. Every pore of her being she can refashion in any way she chooses, she thinks in that single buoyant moment.

Sometimes it is too late yet not too late at all. She walks out free to a coalescing night.

218

219 Cutting Corners

One month ago I won the Parkinson Prize. I won it for my painting of India and Australia dressed up as a married couple. I’m simplifying of course, there is a great deal of depth to the work, years of thought and practice, it’s not a one-liner. But there was no one with whom I could share my joy. I mean there were lots of people - my dealer, my gallery, the critics , those who have written catalog essays for me, those who sent me messages of congratulations, flowers, took me to dinners. But the people I love know nothing about my art.

My sons Om and Akshar are ten and are glad when I paint because it means

I’ll let them play Minecraft and FIFA15 to make sure they stay out of my way. It’s my only option, living as we do in a tiny flat where my studio is in the enclosed verandah that the landlord has converted into a ‘sunroom’. My mother and father who finally got the Family Reunion visas to live here with me permanently, are Catholics of the first order. They go to Sunday Mass as an investment in the afterlife. They want to make sure they have a spot in Heaven, close to all the popes and the bishops and their sanctifying motions and their footstools.

My friends have been stewed in similar stock. They are all middle-class Indian

Australians displaying their Catholic shields in this old country with new colours hoisted on a Cross. They are conservative voters, schooled about Australia by strident political campaigning that promises faster growth, higher levels of secrecy, stronger borders. They are unable to see its slow, deep, and rising conviction that will incinerate people like us. They encounter Indigenous Australia only when they help their kids with school projects. They buy obedient pictures from Ikea, and Adairs, choosing them carefully to match the tack and tone of their brick veneer houses on the

220 hemlines of Sydney. Not for them the provocation of intellectual engagement through art.

I do shift work in the Intensive Care Unit at the Sydney Hospital because let’s face it, you can’t earn a living just from making art. At parties, my friend Sharon always introduces me as a nurse, not as an artist, as if my art practice is a hobby like her Zumba class. She promises to come to my shows, but is always held up at the last moment by her daughter’s physie lessons or her son’s soccer games. When she calls the next day to apologise for not making it, she flits quickly to asking about my shift at the hospital. She is unable to make sense of the blood in my art, its corpuscles in my own body, exonerating themselves without penance or permission. When I told

Sharon that I had won the Parkinson Prize, she said, “Congratulations Brenda! Is that for your work at the hospital?” The Parkinson Prize was named by the Sydney Art

Gallery after Captain Cook’s illustrator. Sharon conflated it with Parkinson’s Disease.

It is this mismatching of the grammars of my life that is doing my head in.

Yet it is only with Sharon, and people like her that I can slink into

Bombayness without worrying about being judged. She knows where I come from, and that is comforting in a place that is all teeth and acid bile. But the problem is she has no idea where I’m going. I suppose it is too much to ask for both in one person.

I even joined the Marian Mangalorean Indian Australian Organisation, or

MMIAO, hoping that there, among my own people I would find at least one person who would understand me. Maybe we could go to galleries together. Or have a conversation without the shadow of incongruence falling between us. However, I soon realised that the MMIAO, like Sharon, was embalmed with gold, frankincense and myrrh, unable to dovetail with the twenty-first century.

221 To grow, you must multiply. This fact was not lost on Peter Soares, the founder of the MMIAO. This elemental realisation came to him as his wife Marina presented him with the news that Regina Ribeiro, the first Indian to be selected to play for the Australian women’s soccer team had publicly thanked a rival organisation,

SAACA – the South Asian Association of Catholics in Australia, for all their help and support over the years. MMIAO and ACA had split the Indian Catholic community in

Sydney like a middle parting on a coconut-oiled head.

The more religious joined MMIAO whose forte was spiritual, cultural, and linguistic conservation. Their motto was The basic fabric of Mangalore should be preserved in Australia. In fact they even went so far as to issue a standing invitation to the Mayor of Mangalore, Victoria, to be the Chief Guest at the Annual Mass in

Konkani on the 8th of September, the Feast of the Assumption. The Mayor of

Mangalore, Victoria, could never make it but sent a bouquet of flowers and a picture of the airport in Mangalore, Victoria attached to it, without fail, every year. The

Annual Mass on the 8th of September was followed by kori roti for lunch and a 12 hour prayer cum healing service led by a priest from Pota, India, which always opened with Ghantt Av' Moriechi / Magnneak apoita / Suadik tea sadan / Noman porgotta / Ave Ave Ave Maria / Ave Ave Ave Maria.

Peter’s wife Marina was an Avon representative in Sydney, and her little table with Avon products for sale with special discounts, was the only concession to pleasure at the MMIAO event every year. Other than that, the white light and cold tiles of the prayer hall provided a suitably austere environment for the faithful who needed the familiarity of self-denial in return for heavenly rewards as the world churned and turned around them.

222 The epicurean ones, mainly the Bombayites and the Gulfies, joined SAACA whose forte was fun. They were more open to a broad membership base and had no problems with Goans and East Indians joining them. They too organised a Mass on the 8th of September, but in English, with an English choir who sang only English hymns, including the Recessional hymn which was always No man can live as an island. The SAACA English Mass was followed not by any sort of prayer service but with a live band, and vanilla scented candles on every table, sannas and sliced bread, sorpotel and Thai green curry, waran and kulfi, and a Masquerade Ball complete with sequins and feathers on every homemade mask.

My husband had always been a devotee of Our Lady, and would genuflect after every Mass at the statue of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour to the left of the altar in our parish church. In his youth he was an active member of the Legion of Mary and the Taize movement. But I was an artist. After doing a nursing degree to please my parents, I got accepted into the prestigious Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay. I attended classes during the day, learning to fix on paper the weight of a breast, the curve of a mouth, every hang and wrinkle on the face of the life-drawing model.

Straight after art classes I would go and change catheters, insert enemas, and wash the faeces off the bodies of my patients in intensive care at Bombay Hospital. I have to admit that both these halves of my life fed off each other. But there was no doubt in my mind that my chosen ancestors were the Progressive Artists Movement, and my hand-picked family were the Young Indian Artists, of which I was a key member, a group of us who were going to slash and burn the New York-London-Berlin trinity of the contemporary art world.

I gave all that up when I got married and moved to Mangalore. I was told that the daughter-in-law of a prominent coffee-estate family, the biggest donors to the

223 parish church, couldn’t really be seen as an iconoclast. But the gaudy colour schemes of the acrylic paintings of the Stations of the Cross in church made the blood in my veins go backwards, and the only way I could make peace with regular Sunday Mass was by thinking of it as a cultural ritual, and volunteering to redo the paintings in vibrant, earthy oils.

My husband suffered a stroke and died in Mangalore a year after we were married and a day before we were granted our visas for Australia. Ever grateful for this perfect timing, I migrated to Sydney on my own, pregnant with twins, and armed with years of neo-natal nursing experience. I found a job easily and the boys went to the hospital day care after my maternity leave ran out. Like Australia itself millennia ago, I broke away from India, leaving a trail of crumbs of do’s and don’ts along the way, as an investment in my return.

In Sydney I needed the fecundity of shared history to feed my art practice. I had dated a few men, thanks to the anonymity of matchmaker.com, once the kids could sleep in their own rooms unassisted. But when I dropped the names of Francis

Newton Souza, Vasudeo Gaitonde, and Vamona Navelcar in casual conversation, all my dates, both Indian and non Indian, thought I was talking about Indian politicians, not the high priests of Indian art. They began to lecture me about the pros and cons of political life. They were caged by insecurity and defended it with officiousness. That was always the deal breaker. So I deleted my online profile on matchmaker.com. I took the initiative, and threw myself into organising the MMIAO September 8 event every year.

This year, however, in the face of rapidly declining membership, Peter

Alvares, suggested to the Organising Committee that they send a spy to the ever- growing SAACA event to see why they were so popular especially with the young

224 ones coming in on student visas. It was time, he said, to make all the balls go up in the air and see where they landed. For this it was crucial to see what rabbits the competition could pull from their sleeves.

Unlike the others in the Organising Committee, I was easy to convince. I knew

I was pretty in a Mangalorean sort of way, with high cheekbones and a full mouth made fuller with red pencil and lipstick. But I wasn't someone you would call a head turner. I would be a safe and inconspicuous spy. So when Peter’s wife Marina asked me if I would infiltrate the SAACA event and report back to the MMIAO, I said “Er.”

Then Peter said, “If their ideas are good, we can use them next year. You can display your sceneries and your drawings behind Marina’s Avon table. It all depends on your reporting.”

So I said, “Ok, that would be fantastic.”

I must have sounded like I was counting my chickens because Marina quickly said, “Don’t cut corners,” as she applied her Avon hand cream to her very dry skin.

“Otherwise we won’t be able to grow and multiply.”

On the 8th of September, I wake early, shower and put on the only dress I have that is not soaked with the memory of my long dead husband, a purple flared number that covers my calves. When I find my matching purple shoes, I realise that they smell of rancid meat from being put away when wet. I have no choice but to wear the only other pair of dress shoes I have, strappy silver stilettoes with buckles around the ankles. They are my wedding shoes, never worn again after that wedding day. I remember the blisters they left on my ankles and toes. That’s okay because I intend to sit down in a corner somewhere at the ACA event, and pretend to check Facebook while actually taking notes about the event on my phone. Peter and Marina have

225 asked for live updates with photos, and videos, and live updates they shall have. After all, any potential connection between my art and the MMIAO must be cultivated with faith, hope, and charity.

I slip into church for the Mass. Things seem to be going off without a hitch, except for a dramatic soprano with a tendency to come in early. During the Prayers of the Faithful, I notice the person working the computer projecting the wrong prayers on screen. He must have opened last year’s file. The Brush script font is illegible,

They should have just stuck to Helvetica. I text Peter and Marina Soares:

“Mismatched prayers, choir a flop.” I know that despite being consumed by the

MMIAO function, they will be peeking at their phones every few minutes, waiting for updates from me. I send them a little video of the other choir members looking askance at the errant soprano.

After Mass I proceed to the Hall and quickly slide into a seat in the opposite corner from the band. I am about to take off my shoes when I suddenly hear my name being called,

“Brenda! Brenda!” I look over in the direction of the voice. It is Sharon.

I go over to Sharon’s table, full of acquaintances I have met at some get- together or another over the years in Sydney. There is Stanny, Sharon’s husband whose eyes are already red with Scotch. There is Johnnie and Nisha, posh with Gulf money and cubic zirconias on the sunglasses pushed back on their heads. There is

Avelina and Maxi, living near the beach, who in their climb towards whiteness have casually started calling their house a “shack.” There is Johnnie’s mum, Aunty Myrtle, and also Avelina’s mum, Aunty Felina, both recently widowed, both on tourist visas that have to be renewed every two years so they can stay in Sydney with their children. All of these people know me as the poor thing whose husband died so soon

226 after the wedding. I know they feel sorry for me as the years begin to thicken and grey me into a corner of unending singledom. They show their pity by focussing on my husband’s death. They ignore my achievements, my Parkinson Prize. It is a world they do not understand, a world full of mockers of Jesus, depraved enemies of family life. As I walk around the table, greeting everyone by kissing them on their cheeks, I can feel the straps cutting into my ankles, burning the tops of my toes. My soles are hot with the friction caused by walking and I can feel the blisters starting to form. I sit on a chair, glad for the weight coming off my legs.

“You’ve become a recluse,” says Nisha.

“Been busy with hospital shifts and my art prac…”

“Nice to see you after ages,” Johnnie says. “How are the boys?”

“All good, thank you,” I say, “They’re at home, watching the Grand Final.”

Aunty Felina says, “I always pray for you when I say the rosary. Poor children without a father.”

Aunty Myrtle says, “On Fridays I say the Divine Mercy Chaplet specially for you, that you may settle down.”

Johnnie says, with his sunglasses high on his conditioned head, “I’m always available if you need me,” and he winks at me exaggeratedly. Nisha immediately smiles languidly and says “Oh please take him Brenda, whenever you want. He’s yours.”

As she speaks she gets up and places herself on her husband’s lap, like a briefcase full of parking fines and tax returns and mortgage repayment accounts, and he encircles her in his arms.

“Take him, take him off me Brenda, let him be someone else’s burden,” she says as she adjusts his arms tighter around her waist.

227 Just then a group of primary school girls in white dresses come around to sell their colourful homemade masks for ten bucks.

“All the money will go to the SAACA for next year’s function,” they say in a somewhat coordinated chorus. Everyone at the table dutifully buys a mask. I buy one too, full of silver glitter and red feathers to pass on to Peter and Marina. I am about to text them about this when Sharon says, “Put it on, let’s see how you look.”

I put on the mask, the rubber band is tight against my head. I try to peer through the eyeholes, obviously cut by a child, with jagged edges that make me squint.

I see a man entering through the doorway. He’s on the other side of the room.

I watch as he heads in our direction. He slows down as he navigates the narrow spaces between chairs and tables and two hundred people moving around in genial conversation.

“You look lovely,” Sharon says, with all the conviction of a supermarket checkout operator about to go home.

I take off the mask. At that exact moment, the music begins. The band starts off the first set with a crowd-pleasing bang.

Come from England Come from Scotland Come from Ireland

Come from Holland, Come from Poland, Come from any land

If you’re looking our for a pleasant holiday,

Come to Bombay come to Bombay, Bombay meri hai…

All the couples at our table get up to dance. Only the ladies with dead husbands remain. I turn on the Recording App on my phone, do a twenty second recording of the music, and begin to email it to Peter and Marina. As I am typing up

228 the email, Aunty Felina says, “By next year we want you also dancing.” So I stop and look at her. I accidentally delete the email. I will have to redo it later on.

“Next year you have to be double, not single,” Aunty Myrtle says.

My feet are burning and I decide to loosen the straps on my stilettoes.

That’s when the man I have seen through my jagged mask enters our circle of lived-out love.

“Hi, I’m Myron. May I sit down here?” He does not offer his hand to me. I can see that he is holding his breath. We look at each other as if taking stock.

Given my situation and the way others feel free to foist themselves or their husbands upon me in jest, I am always careful about the impression I give.

“I’m Brenda. Of course, please sit down. There are plenty of chairs.”

“I know,” he says, “Congratulations,” he says.

“For what?”

“You won the Parkinson Prize. Well deserved.”

“Oh. Thank you so much.”

I saw him hello Sharon as he jostled past her and Stanny on the dance floor.

Did she really talk about my prize?

I look away and focus on the girls selling masks, now at a different table.

Before he sits down he greets Aunty Felina and Aunty Myrtle with kisses on their cheeks.

“Myron? Are you Martu’s’s son from Bajpaye?” Aunty Felina asks.

“No aunty,” says Myron politely.

“No? Martu’s son’s name is also Myron. He will be the same age as you. How old are you baba?”

“Forty two.”

229 “You’re not from Bajpaye then? My sister’s husband is from there. We went to his aunty’s house once during the wedding time. The grandson is called Myron. Or maybe he’s Byron. He also migrated to Australia. He’s your age, hefty like you.

Broad shoulders. I really thought you were Martu’s son.”

“No aunty. My mother’s name is Priscilla. Pressy.”

“Martu has many coffee plantations and only one son.”

“Aunty, I wish we had coffee plantations.”

I laugh at this hint of humble origins, the attempt to make light of this prurience.

Myron looks at me. Is that appreciation in his eyes?

“You’re from Bombay?” Aunty Myrtle asked him.

“Actually I’m from Karachi. Pakistan.”

The circle goes quiet.

“Goan background.” Myron says.

A sigh of relief.

“It’s ok,” Aunty Felina says. “No problem. Whether you’re Goan,

Mangalorean, East Indian, Pakistani, no one bothers about that here in Australia.

After all we’re all Catholics.”

“How come you came to this function?” Aunty Myrtle asked Myron.

“I’m the Treasurer, they’re very open at SAACA, they don't mind a Pakistani

Goan in their group,” Myron says. He stops as if to gauge the reaction. Then he says,

“I want my daughter to be connected to her roots.”

I knew there was something off about him. I am unnerved by this admission of parenthood. I hate myself for the mildest of flirting I have indulged in with this man

230 with a daughter and no doubt an irrevocable wife who is probably just touching up her foundation in the Ladies before she makes an entrance to this function.

‘Where’s your wife?” Aunty Myrtle is asking him.

“What sort of job you do?” Aunty Felina is asking him.

“I work in a university, as an art historian.”

I pretend not to notice. I fidget with my stilettoes. The buckles seem to be stuck.

“In fact, I’ve seen your work, Brenda”, he is saying to me and the air is parting like the Red Sea and I know that Myron and I are on the same side, and the path before us is so clear and solid without any fish to interrupt its unfolding. I look in the direction of the toilets. There is no sign of the wife yet.

“Art Historian? In my days we only had doctor, engineer, farmer, shopkeeper, teacher. Your job pays well? How much do you earn?” Aunty Myrtle is asking him.

“I earn enough to pay the bills aunty, I can even take you out for dinner if you like”, he is saying with ease, and with love for these people even though they know nothing about art, and I want to give him a medal.

“Where’s your wife?” Aunty Myrtle is asking him.

Just then Sharon and Stanny come back to our table.

“I see you’ve met all the lovely ladies at our table,” Sharon is saying to Myron.

“You’ve met Brenda, she’s a nurse. Not just any nurse, but an Intensive Care nurse.

Very impressive.”

“She’s an amazing artist. The Parkinson Prize and all. That’s very impressive,”

Myron is saying to Sharon but this married man, father of a daughter, keeps looking at me.

231 “Yes, that’s very impressive. Parkinson Prize,” Sharon is saying. ‘You remember I thought you won it for your work in the ICU? You have so many balls in the air Brenda, I can’t keep up with you,” Sharon is saying to me and I have no idea if

I should be flattered or offended.

I try to look for a wedding ring, but he is sitting on his hands, and he is still looking at me. I am Moses and he is the staff. Or maybe it is the other way around.

My brain is flooded with the colours of Poussin’s painting which I saw in the National

Gallery of Victoria, and I know the light from the bottom left is driving out the darkness of the top right.

“In fact I saw you in Melbourne some time ago, at the National Gallery of

Victoria,” he is saying to me. “You were looking at the Poussin painting The Crossing of the Red Sea.”

“Oh! You should have come up and said hello” I say keeping the tone platonic, like I do with my dealer.

He smiles and his teeth are succulent and I know my cheeks would be turning red again this very second if I had lighter skin.

“I didn't want to bother you,” he says. “You had your arms around both your sons, I presume they were your sons. I was happy just looking at you looking at the painting.”

My voice would betray that I am charmed and disbelieving at the same time, that someone has watched me with my sons and remembered that moment. So I keep quiet.

“So, where’s your wife,” Aunty Myrtle hasn’t forgotten.

232 The band starts to play Jailhouse Rock. Aunty Myrtle’s words are drowned by the brash opening chords. But Myron has heard her and he opens his mouth to answer.

I turn away, activate my phone, and finish off the email to Peter and Marina.

“She has gone to America.”

The circle goes quiet one more time.

“Oh really? Gone on holiday without you?”

“To be honest, she’s been gone for some time.”

“No problem baba, that is life. We will pray for you. That she will come back.”

“It’s ok aunty, that was many years ago. She is gone for good.” And the painless way in which he says this indicates to me that he is a free man. In fact, he is not just free, he has many layers of freeness within him, many layers of freesomeness, and freedomification. And there is no need to pull out rabbits from any hats.

I know I must make a note of the masks, the food, the seating arrangements on my Notes App so I can pass on this information to Peter and Marina.

But I am taking Myron’s hand.

I have seen him in the few seconds before we touch as he is saying to Aunty

Felina, “Come aunty, come and jive, you look like a great dancer.”

I have seen Aunty Felina say “Arre baba, such a juicy juicy girl sitting in front of you and you are asking a dried up old fig like me.”

I have seen Aunty Myrtle say “She’s talking about you Brenda.”

I have seen all this as if I have painted this canvas myself.

Then I see him turn to me like a gale force New Testament.

Myron’s hand is rough and calloussed. My hand is not that smooth either. I flatten the back of my dress against my bottom with my other hand.

233 “I was wondering,” he is saying as we face each other, eye to eye, “I was wondering if you, er, like this music and if you, er, would care to dance?”

I know he is asking me this irrelevant question because this moment must be marked with words. I know it from the way his exhale is warm on the bridge of my nose, the way his smile is like an expanse of luscious green land on the way to

Melbourne.

“I’m just a nurse” I am saying, “and I am worried about the effect of this loud music on our ears.”

And he says, “Oh yes, I agree I’m just a historian and I can say with peer- reviewed certainty that the volume of this music has an effect on our ears.”

And his fingers are in mine and I think our thumbs are the same size, and I wonder how I would translate their entanglement onto canvas.

“And I can say, with the certainty of a medical professional that our thumbs, I mean this music, does have an effect on the ears” I am saying, loudly enough for him to hear me above the cacophony of the SAACA function, softly enough to indicate that I am contributing to this foundation with words of my own.

The straps are cutting welts into my feet. Every slight movement causes me pain.

I say, “Give me a second.”

Still looking at him, one hand in his, in a feat of marvellous footwork, never again to be repeated, I kick off my stilettoes once and for all. Then bare-footed, rooted to the earth, or at least to the wooden floor beneath my feet, shorter now, but matching him for will and sprite, I face him like a real resurrection.

I smile my own smile, full of leaves that are unfurling in a fresh watercolour.

Myron smiles back.

234 I grip Myron’s hand more firmly.

Despite the height difference, we walk as if shoulder to shoulder to the dance floor.

“I was one of the judges of the Parkinson Prize”, Myron is saying as he turns to face me on the dance floor and all the elements of the universe, black holes, the big bang, alternate realities, quick drying acrylics, always unfinished oils, they all click their heels to attention.

“So there’s a conflict of interest,” I say, my heart threatening to explode just as I thought it was being mended.

“You know what they say, once a judge, never again a judge”, he is saying as the band have stopped playing the jive numbers and have started playing the slow numbers, and Jerry from Seven Hills who works as an accountant by day and records his own music by night does a cover of that Sinatra song, crossing out all need for multiplication, releasing all commandments set in stone, calling forth the future: It had to be you.

I step into his parlour plush with free will and understanding.

Who knows if there will be time for sorrow between us. Who knows about mortgages we cannot hold, and gossip at work that will lead to a sacking. There may be a fractured femur, a tooth infection, a house that gets robbed on a Sunday afternoon. But on this night that is longer than a prize, as I stop taking notes to pass on to Peter and Marina, as I call my children and my parents and tell them I will be home in the morning, as I turn off my phone so I will not be disturbed, as Myron applies a generous dose of pawpaw cream, not the Avon brand, to the welts around my ankles, to the blistered soles of my feet, as the sparrows eat all those breadcrumbs

I have left behind as I detached from India, I am glad for the passing of time, for the

235 sorrowing days that have led finally into this mighty night, when the ripeness of dawn with its sour breath and its brindled light is still to come, because now, even if for one moment, this art historian, this man called Myron, is newly mine.

236

Writers vs. Money:

Negotiating the field of Indian literature in English

237 Table of Contents

Dissertation abstract ...... 241

Chapter One: Introduction ...... 242 Writers and money ...... 244 The social context of literary production ...... 247 Indian literary culture ...... 248 The significance of the study ...... 251 The structure of the dissertation ...... 253

Chapter Two: The research methodology ...... 256 Background ...... 256 Data collection methods ...... 257 A note on grouping publishers ...... 258 Sampling, data collection, transcription ...... 259 Ethical considerations ...... 262

Chapter Three: Literary field, literary game, and the double life ...... 265 Bourdieu’s conceptual framework ...... 265 Field and capital ...... 267 Habitus...... 270 Strategy ...... 271 Friendliness ...... 271 Lahire’s specification of Bourdieu’s theory ...... 273 The literary game ...... 273 The double life of writers ...... 278

Chapter Four: The Indian literary field ...... 281 Rapid growth and uncertainty ...... 281 Entanglements ...... 287 The autonomous and heteronomous principles ...... 287 The Big 5 and local publishing houses ...... 290 Struggles for support ...... 291 Regressive political climate ...... 291 Inadequate support ...... 292 Tenuous links with academia...... 294 The English language ...... 295

238 Chapter Five: Developing the writerly self ...... 299 Indian conceptions of authorship ...... 299 Western conceptions of authorship ...... 302 Some historical background relating to writers and money ...... 303 A writerly habitus ...... 305 Literary communities...... 309 Multiple investments...... 310

Chapter Six: Reaching for success ...... 317 The meaning of success ...... 317 Interacting with literary agents and publishers ...... 319 The literary agent ...... 320 The publisher ...... 323 Survival strategies of writers on the path to publication ...... 325 Two contrasting paths to publication ...... 327 Jehangir ...... 327 Preeti ...... 328 The dilemmas of consecration ...... 332 The book launch ...... 332 ...... 333

Writers’Social network festivals sites ...... 336 Chapter Seven: Conclusion — Writers vs. money...... 339 The writing self and money ...... 339 Publication and financial reward ...... 341 Literary success and economic success ...... 342 Contributions of this study ...... 342 Limitations of the study ...... 343 Directions for future research ...... 343 Concluding comments ...... 344

Appendix A: Publications and presentations arising from the writing of the thesis...... 346 Literary fiction and non-fiction publications ...... 346 Peer-reviewed scholarly publications ...... 346 Seminars / invited presentations ...... 347 Conference papers...... 347

239 References ...... 349

240 Dissertation abstract

This research dissertation investigates how writers of English language literature survive in post-millennial India. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis, this study mobilises the conceptual tools provided by Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework and Bernard Lahire’s qualification of it to examine the unique features of the literary field in India and how they impact on writers’ practice.

This study found that while writers across the world face conflicting demands in their pursuit of a literary career and their need for economic survival, the specificities of the Indian literary field present unique challenges to Indian writers in English. These specificities include rapid growth fettered by uncertainty, a sense of entanglement between the field’s autonomous and heteronomous dimensions and between local and multinational publishers, and writers’ struggles regarding support infrastructure and the position of the English language in India. The writers in this study often adopt a range of survival strategies to negotiate this field, as they develop a sense of themselves as writers, navigate the path to publication, and aim for different kinds of success, while needing to earn a living from work other than writing fiction. This inherent plurality of the writing life enables and constrains writers as they make varying degrees of investments in the literary as well as the extra-literary aspects of their lives.

By examining various facets of the conflicted relationship writers have with money as they negotiate the specificities of the Indian literary field, this dissertation provides a new understanding of the ways in which Indian writers tackle the challenges to their survival in the twenty-first century.

241

Chapter One: Introduction

The first part of this thesis, a collection of stories focusing on Indian Australian women, is a series of fictional renderings, sometimes with writers as protagonists, of my observations as an Indian Australian writer about the ethnic communities with which I am affiliated in Australia. While the research dissertation that follows in this section is not exegetical, it is nevertheless in a dialogic and complementary, but implicit, relationship with the stories, presenting a scholarly analysis of some of the Indian literary communities I am connected with as part of the Indian diaspora in Australia. From my position on the periphery of Indian literature yet deeply connected with it through ancestry, upbringing, education, and professional practice, I present below a scholarly analysis of the struggles of writers working in India in the English language, as they negotiate the literary field. Moreover, the Indian literary communities, part of the field I analyse empirically, provide a context that enables and shapes my own writing.

Most aspiring writers across the world face conflicting demands in the pursuit of a literary career. They must work to develop their skills as writers, get published, achieve recognition from peers and from the literary establishment, gain a wider local and global readership, while at the same time try to sustain themselves financially usually from work other than writing fiction. In effect, they lead what the French sociologist Bernard Lahire calls a “double life” (Lahire, 2010b: 445). This study is an investigation into how this “internal plurality” (Lahire, 2003: 343-345) of the writing life bears upon writers of literary fiction who work in the English language in India 1. It will show that the particularities of the post-millennial Indian context have aggravated the dilemma of these writers. The market for Indian literature has

1 The terms ‘literary fiction’ (written with attention to prose style, depth of character etc.) and ‘pulp fiction’ or ‘commercial fiction’ (written for the mass market) are used as shorthand throughout this dissertation (see Gupta, 2012 for a discussion of how these categories are complicated in the Indian context).

242 experienced rapid growth in recent years, but it is a complex market fettered by uncertainty, with a sense of entanglement between high art and the mass market, and between multinational and local publishing houses. Support from the government is inadequate, and while English language literature occupies a position of privilege, its position is also contested. Writers need to adopt a range of survival strategies to negotiate these complexities. This study argues that at its heart, this negotiation is bound by a conflicted relationship that writers have with money: a desire for it, a disavowal of it, a refusal to be sullied by it, the impossibility of living without it. This dissertation examines various aspects of this complex relationship, this Lahirian “double life”: the aspiration of writers towards the perceived sacredness of the creative process that must be tempered with the profane spectre of the need to earn a living, and the varied, uneven, pragmatic investments writers make in the literary and extra-literary aspects of their lives as they try to survive.

The research questions that guide this study are: What are the specificities of the field of Indian literature in English? How do writers cope with these conditions in their pursuit of a literary career? The study addresses these questions through fieldwork conducted in India from 2011 to 2014. It focuses on writers of fiction, namely short stories and novels, who live in India, write in the English language, and are published in India, either by local publishers or by the Indian arms of the major multinational publishing houses2. All references to writers in this study must be read through this lens, unless explicitly stated otherwise. The research methods used to conduct this empirical study are detailed in Chapter Two.

The next sections of this chapter review the literature in relation to the concerns of this study: the precariousness of the relationship between writers and money, the

2 The term ‘author’ evokes a sense of a constructed being generated through the publication of a work (see Nehamas, 1987 for a critique of the Foucauldian conception of the author-function). I prefer to use the term ‘writer’ in this study because it evokes more of a sense of practice and struggle, a state of emergence rather than an already constructed entity. However, sometimes the terms are used interchangeably in this study. The terms ‘literature’ and ‘writing’ are also used interchangeably in this study, particularly in relation to Indian literature/writing in English although it is acknowledged that the value judgment inherent in the term ‘literature’ is not present to the same extent in the term ‘writing’.

243 social context of literary production, and Indian literary culture. This is followed by a discussion of the significance of this study. The structure of this dissertation is described in the final section.

Writers and money

The conflicted and precarious relationship between writers and money is not specific to the experience of Indians, or writers, or Indian writers, but seems to be echoed throughout economies of the arts across the world, albeit inflected differently by the features of each different context.

Numerous scholars have considered ways in which the financial economy influences the creation of much artistic work. For Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, cultural and creative workers are subsumed under the capitalist workforce, compelled to create work according to the requirements of the industry for the purpose of profit maximization (Adorno, 2001 [1991]; Adorno & Horkheimer, 2007). Taylor and Littleton suggest that the theory of the Culture Industry also characterises the creative worker as “outside capitalism” (Taylor & Littleton, 2012: 30), where the creative worker pursues her/his craft outside of industrial production, in a workshop or studio. They suggest that this alternative is possible because the contemporary capitalist industry has a need for new goods, which will then be standardized for mass production and consumption. Thus, the Romantic idea of the artist as individual genius is reinscribed to suit capitalist production and consumption. Some scholars have pointed to the precariousness of the so-called ‘creative economy’ under neoliberal capitalism. McGuigan notes that many attracted to work in ‘the creative industries’ will be unsuccessful due to its extremely competitive environment, with stressful conditions such as “unpaid internships, lowly-paid and insecure jobs, short- term contracts and extremely uncertain futures in general; not to mention ‘freelancing’ in bars and cafes to support the brave yet crazy quest of the lone artist or semi-pro musician” (McGuigan, 2013: 109). Although he speaks more generally about work in ‘the creative industries’, his observations resonate with the experiences of writers in this study, as will be discussed in the following chapters.

244 Resonating with McGuigan’s work, Hans Abbing notes that arts economies are “winner takes all” (Abbing, 2002: 107) economies, where only a few earn spectacular sums of money while the majority of artists cannot earn enough to make a living (ibid.). Abbing’s work, focused on the economy of the arts in mainland Western Europe, Britain, and the USA, suggests that “the exceptional economy of the arts” (Abbing, 2002) is pervasive across all art forms, whose features seem to be that “the economy is denied…[a]rtists are (more than others) intrinsically motivated…oriented towards non-monetary rewards…inclined to taking risks...” (Abbing, 2002: 282) among many other reasons that contribute to this exceptionalism. Pierre-Michel Menger notes (based on data collected in France) that work arrangements in the arts “bring into the picture discontinuity, repeated alternation between work, compensated unemployment, non compensated unemployment, searching and networking activities, cycling between multiple jobs inside the arts sphere or across several sectors related or unrelated to the arts” (Menger, 2001: 242).

In a significant if sobering series of five surveys of Australian artists across a range of art forms (including writers, visual artists, and composers) conducted over a 30 year period, David Throsby and his colleagues focus on the “effects the changing economic, social and cultural environment have on the way artists work” (Throsby & Hollister, 2003: 79). As discussed in Chan, Bruce and Gonsalves (Chan, Bruce, & Gonsalves, 2015), this longitudinal survey data points to the tough economic conditions encountered by Australian artists and shows that “ [h]alf of Australian artists in 2000-01 earned less than $7,300 from their creative practice before tax” (Throsby & Hollister, 2003: 79). Seven years later, this finding has been corroborated by a report on the state of the arts in Australia published by the Australia Council for the Arts, noting that in 2007-08 the median creative income of artists (across a range of art forms) was $7000 (Australia Council, 2015: 17). These figures point to the precarious relationship between artistic work and money in Australia, especially when viewed in relation to the sum of $43,921 (ABS, 2012) which was the average annual wage in Australia in 2007-08. It is not surprising then that in 2007-08 only 17 percent of artists surveyed (across a range of art forms) were able to work full-time on their creative practice (Australia Council, 2015). Data specifically focused on the Australian theatre sector also points to precariousness in relation to artistic practice and economic income, as many experienced theatre directors and designers seem to

245 leave the sector between the ages of 35-45 mainly because of low wages (Bailey, 2008: 11, 22). Further, in another survey conducted by Throsby and his colleagues, 56 percent of Australian artists across all art forms nominate “‘insufficient income from arts work’ as being the single most important factor inhibiting their career development.” (Throsby & Zednik, 2010: 93). In findings that resonate with one of the concerns of this study, that writing practice is inextricably entwined with other social aspects of a writer’s complex and plural life, Throsby and Zednik note that “only about one-fifth of all artists are likely to be able to meet their minimum income needs from their creative work alone… [and] that half of all artists are unable to meet their minimum income needs from all of the work they do, both within and outside the arts. This observation confirms the importance of a spouse’s or partner’s income in sustaining an artist’s professional practice...” (Throsby & Zednik, 2010: 48 original emphasis as cited in Chan et al. 2015: 31). This is consistent with data from a longitudinal study of Australian fine artists, which reveals that “the majority [of student artists] (nearly eight in ten) supported themselves by doing casual, part-time or full-time non-art-related work, through government income assistance, or a combination of both. The other 20 per cent were supported by their parents or spouse, or self-funded from other income sources” (Chan et al., 2015: 31).

In relation to writers, the Australian novelist Charlotte Wood, now Chair of Arts Practice (Literature) at the Australia Council for the Arts, recently said, “Friends are staggered when I tell them a writer gets $2.50 on a $25 book” (Wood in Wyndham, 2014), further noting that “[w]hile the average Australian income is $57,000, only 4 per cent of writers make more than $50,000 a year and 70 per cent make less than $10,000” (Wyndham, 2014). Preliminary findings from the most recent survey of Australian authors conducted by David Throsby and his team reveal that the top 25 percent of authors in Australia earned an average of only $9000 per year from their fiction (Zwar, 2015).

This precarious economic situation seems to be mirrored in the UK, where a recent report notes that nearly 90 percent of authors earn their living from sources other than their writing (P. Johnson, Gibson, & Dimita, 2015), and the median earnings of authors is £4000 (Gibson, Johnson, & Dimita, 2015: 19) with “the average professional author …now making well below the salary required to achieve the

246 minimum acceptable living standard in the UK” (Flood, 2014). In the USA too, this economic precariousness has been noted by a recent survey conducted by the Authors Guild, which suggests that the median writing-related income of respondents surveyed decreased by 24 percent in the last five years to $8,000 (AuthorsGuild, 2015). This fraught relationship between writers and the money they are able to earn from their fiction has received attention from numerous media commentators (see Bauer, 2015 for a recent piece that got worldwide attention).

While the relationship between the arts and the economy is fraught with uncertainty across the world, as indicated by the studies cited above, little such information exists in relation to the experiences of Indian writers. This study is the first of its kind to focus on Indian writers and their experience of a Lahirian sense of a “double life”, which itself is a consequence of a precarious relationship with money rooted in the peculiarities of the Indian experience, as will be discussed throughout this study.

The social context of literary production

Scholarship concerning the social context of the production and consumption of literature has mainly focused on the early-modern and modern periods. Studies include those of printed commonplace books during the Renaissance (Moss, 1996), of book culture in specific societies such as nineteenth-century France (Lyons, 2008), seventeenth and eighteenth-century USA (Hall, 1996), Ireland from 1750-1850 (Ó Ciosáin, 1997), of books and readers in eighteenth-century England (Rivers, 1982), nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain (Finkelstein, 2006), and of the professional literary agent in Britain from 1880 to 1920 (Gillies, 2007).

There have been some recent attempts to examine the literary cultures of nations outside of the Euro-American context, such as the exploration of literary production in Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, some African nations and within the African diaspora, India and within the Indian diaspora (Fraser & Hammond, 2008; Guttman, Hockx, & Paizis, 2006). Pierre Bourdieu’s influential works, The Field of Cultural Production (Bourdieu, 1993b) and The Rules of Art (Bourdieu, 1996), which situate an artistic work within the social conditions of its production, circulation and consumption, have influenced numerous studies that locate the material aspects of the creation of a book

247 within its relationships with broader socio-political, economic, and literary discourses (Brouillette, 2007; Casanova, 2004; Guttman et al., 2006; Huggan, 2001).

There have been numerous studies of the contemporary globalised production of literature (the work of Casanova, 2004 has been extremely influential). These include works that mobilise qualitative social research methods to study particular geographic areas within the broader ‘globalised’ literary context, such as John Thompson’s detailed sociological study of trade publishing in Great Britain and the USA (Thompson, 2012). A recent Special Issue of the journal Cultural Sociology presents transnational perspectives on contemporary literary production (Childress, 2015; Franssen, 2015; Franssen & Kuipers, 2015; Gonsalves, 2015; Pareschi, 2015; Sapiro, 2015; Sato, Haga, & Yamada, 2015; van Es & Heilbron, 2015; Verboord, Kuipers, & Janssen, 2015). Special Issues of the Journal of Sociology focused on the Australian context (see for example Bennett, Frow, Hage, & Noble, 2013; Brook, 2013 ), and of New Literary History addressing broader issues of significance in relation to the sociologies of literature (see especially J. F. English, 2010; Frow, 2010; Lahire, 2010b; Quayson, 2010) provide numerous theoretical and empirical perspectives on the social context of literary production. Particularly illuminating work has been conducted in relation to creative writing practice in Australia (see especially Brook, 2013 2015; Webb, 2012, 2015)

However, little scholarship exists in relation to the conditions of literary production in post-millennial India. One aim of this study is to contribute to knowledge about the practices of Indian writers, taking into account the social contexts in which they must work.

Indian literary culture

Historical perspectives on Indian literary cultures focus not just on English language texts but also on texts in Indic languages, including but not restricted to the nexus between colonialism, language, and literary production (see Busch, 2011; C. Chatterjee, 2010; R. Chaudhuri, 2012, 2014; Deshpande, 2007; Dharwardker, 2003;

248 Kothari, 2006; Orsini, 2010; Pinto, 2007; Pollock, 2003, 2006; Venkatachalapathy, 2012). Much-needed work is also being done in the emerging areas of print studies and book history in India (see these insightful edited collections Chakravorty & Gupta, 2011; A. Gupta & Chakravorty, 2004b, 2008).

Some scholars have documented the co-dependent relationship between imperial English and European powers in India and the printed word, a relationship that echoes to this day through the publishing circuits that centre around the US-UK and Europe (for a discusison of the centre and the periphery in publishing see Franssen & Kuipers, 2015; Gonsalves, 2015). In the colonial era, this relationship was fostered especially by the English East India Company (Ogborn, 2007), and English publishing houses such as Oxford University Press, Longman, and Macmillan (R. B. Chatterjee, 2006, 2011). The history of the book in India is intertwined not only with the history of colonisation but also with the history of religious conversion to Christianity, and it seems, an unofficial history of misrecognition influenced by the varying degrees of importance given to the each colonial power by diverse interpretations of Indian history. There is an uncorroborated story of the discovery of a printing press with moveable type, aged “at least one thousand years” unearthed in Benares, India, as reported by The Printer, a New York Journal in 1860 via Warren Hastings, the then Governor General of India himself through a person named Major Roebuck (Ogborn, 2007: 266). The first printing presses were said to have been brought to India by Jesuit missionaries in 1556 (see A. Gupta & Chakravorty, 2004a: 11) but rejected by the Mughal rulers who liked collecting printed books for their libraries but were not really interested in printing presses themselves. Some scholars accept that as it was in Europe, in India too the first printed book was The Bible, translated into Tamil, the classical language of the region, by two Lutheran missionaries, Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Pluetschau in the Danish colony of Tranquebar in 1712 (see A. Gupta & Chakravorty, 2004a; Ogborn, 2007; Venkatachalapathy, 2012). However many scholars point to the Portuguese naturalist Garcia de Orta’s Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India printed in the Portuguese colony of Goa in 1563 as the first book printed in India (see Ferrão, 2016 (Under review); Fontes da Costa, 2012; Županov & Xavier, 2014 for some recent perspectives in a long tradition of scholarship that confirms this).

249 While this study shares the intellectual concerns of the rich tradition of scholarship on Indian literature in English in relation to Indian writing and Indian culture and society,3 the methods employed by many of these works, that is close textual analysis and distant reading of IWE texts, are different from the qualitative social research methods used in this empirical study (as discussed in Chapter Two).

Within this tradition, three recent studies (Narayanan, 2012; Sadana, 2012; Zecchini, 2014) have examined various aspects of literary production in contemporary India in an interdisciplinary manner. Narayanan’s work presents a material critique of literary production and reception focusing on the rights of minorities and disadvantaged communities. Sadana’s work excavates the links between a specific place (Delhi), two languages (Hindi and English), and text, using an ethnographic approach. Zecchini’s work constructs one of the first scholarly pictures of literary modernism in India based on the life and work of the poet Arun Kolatkar, using a mix of close textual analysis, archival and ethnographic approaches.

Three recent studies engage in a conversation about Indian literature and literary cultures that this dissertation contributes to. However, the uniqueness of this dissertation lies in its empirical approach to examine the Indian literary context in practice, using qualitative social research methodology to gather data.

In doing so it finds Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice which incorporates the interlinked concepts of field, capital, and habitus, a useful springboard for a qualitative exploration of the contemporary Indian literary field in practice in the English language. Further, it finds Bernard Lahire’s conceptual revisions of Bourdieu’s framework germane to the analysis of the practices of Indian writers, especially his conceptualisations of the literary game (Lahire, 2010b, 2012, 2015) , the “double life” (Lahire, 2010b: 445) of writers, and his embrace of plurality (Lahire,

3 (see the following for a small sample of influential texts: Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2008; Bhabha, 1994; A. Chaudhuri, 2008; Mehrotra, 2009, 2012; Mukherjee, 1985, 2000, 2008), including a strand within this tradition that champions minor voices, and invigorates the scholarship of literature from below (Chakraborty, 2014; Ferrão, 2013; Ferrão, 2014a, 2014b; Ganguly, 2008, 2012; Kothari, 2006).

250 2003, 2008, 2010b, 2011, 2012). Writers must craft their identities as writers outside of an economy of financial exchange even though they aspire to earn a living from writing fiction. Consequently, they draw themselves ever more tightly into the necessity of leading a “double life” (Lahire, 2010b: 445), with multiple social memberships entwined with and informed by each other, as they work long hours producing fiction, developing their literary careers, trying to achieve various kinds of success, while simultaneously working in day jobs in order to earn a living. This study therefore aims to make a unique contribution to the study of Indian literature in English by focusing on the plurality of writers’ practices, and recognising the economic, social, and historical conditions under which writers work in post- millennial India.

The significance of the study

Contemporary Indian literature in English has met with spectacular success on the global stage in recent years. Rarely has a year gone by when an Indian author has not won, or been on the shortlist or longlist of one of the world’s major literary prizes. New titles of Indian literature in English appear on bookshelves of both real and virtual bookshops across the world with almost clockwork regularity. However, this global attention is mainly concentrated on English language fiction that is usually the work of writers who live and work outside of India, and who have been published outside of India by the major “publishing corporations” (Thompson, 2012: 101-146). These major publishers include the Big 5 publishers (Eisler, 2014; Quinn, 2014) namely Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, MacMillan, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, who dominate global English language trade publishing. This global attention ignores the work done by numerous small publishing houses within India to nurture emerging voices. This study is significant because it focuses specifically on writers who live and work in India and are published by local publishers or the Indian arms of the Big 5 multinational publishers, all of whom now have offices in India.

Much global attention on Indian literature in English, with its attendant focus on individual authors, is situated in what may be described as “the theological logic of ‘first beginnings’” (Bourdieu, 1996: 169), linked to Romantic notions of creativity

251 springing from individual genius. Such discursive framing of the success of individual authors disaggregates individual authors from the material conditions in which they work. Thus we know quite a lot about the work of writers, but we know little about how writers actually become writers in the first place, and we know even less about the conditions in which writers struggle to survive in a country like India, a so-called emerging super power, a so-called democracy. I say ‘so-called’ because these terms have been contested by scholarship and activism and stories coming out of contemporary India, demonstrating the complexities around the broad and unqualified use of these terms in a country as diverse and multifariously stratified along caste, class, gender, ethnic, linguistic, and religious lines as India (For a small selection of scholarly work addressing this diversity see Menon, 2012, 2015; Narayan, 2015; Phadke, 2013; Phadke, Khan, & Ranade, 2011). The constructions of India familiar in Western pop culture are usually associated with cricket, Bollywood, and a particular brand of yogic spirituality. Today these orientalist constructions are not restricted to Western discourses about India but are also “re-orientalised” (Lau, 2009) anew within India itself (For example see Scroll, 2014 about re-orientalised cover designs of South Asian novels ), a now familiar phenomenon where “a cultural East comes to terms with an orientalised East” (Ponzanesi, 2014) . This study aims to add complexity to such orientalist and re-orientalist simplifications which evoke what Ponzanesi calls “the uneven and non-reciprocal flows of globalization…friction characterized by unequal interconnection across difference” (Ponzanesi, 2014: 40) usually weighted in favour of the West. Accordingly, this study focuses instead on the material conditions under which Indian writers labour and seek to survive as writers. It is therefore significant in relation to knowledge about cultural life in post-millennial India.

This study, with its focus on the complex relationship that writers have with money in the Indian literary field, has broader international significance in relation to exploring the conceptual frameworks opened up by engaging with non-Western social experience. It may seem odd to make this claim when the conceptual framework of this study is based on the work of two Frenchmen, Pierre Bourdieu and Bernard Lahire. However, as Dipesh Chakrabarty points out, “one result of European colonial rule in South Asia is that the intellectual traditions once unbroken and alive in Sanskrit or Persian or Arabic are now only matters of historical research” (Chakrabarty, 2008 [2000]: 5-6). He says, “the so-called European intellectual

252 tradition is the only one alive in the social science departments of most…modern universities” (Chakrabarty, 2008 [2000]: 5). The processes by which Enlightenment Europe was appropriated and engaged with in South Asia inform modern social critiques of the oppressive operations of caste, gender, religion, colonialism, and neoliberalism in India today, he says (Chakrabarty, 2008 [2000]: 4). This is the inheritance and position from which he writes (Chakrabarty, 2008 [2000]: 5). In writing from a similar position, I attempt a small movement towards de-colonizing knowledge, towards “provincialising Europe” (Chakrabarty, 2008 [2000]), not the geographical location, but, taking my cue from Dipesh Chakrabarty, the universalizing Euro-centric categories, concepts and formulations of knowledge about the ways in which literary fields function, and the enabling and constraining forces that writers must negotiate, in the process of creating and being created themselves in post-millennial India.

The structure of the dissertation

This introductory chapter has provided a brief overview of the study. It presented a review of the literature in relation to writers and money, the social context of literary production, and Indian literature in English. It then discussed the significance of this dissertation. The next chapter, Chapter Two, presents the research methodology used in this study. Chapter Three sets out the conceptual framework of the study. It provides a brief overview of Bourdieu’s theory of practice and introduces Lahire’s specification of Bourdieu’s framework. It argues that Lahire’s conceptualisations of the literary game and the “double life” of writers provide more nuanced and therefore more useful tools for analysing the complex relationship between writers and money in this study. In doing so it discusses the Lahirian interrogation of the autonomy of the literary field, the split between literary professionalism and economic professionalism, and the consequences of the double life of writers including their multiple social memberships and the plurality of dispositions.

Chapter Four addresses the first research question of this study by discussing the specificities of the post-millennial context of Indian literature in English that influence the precarious relationship between writers and money. They include rapid growth, with its underbelly of an always present sense of uncertainty, a sense of

253 entanglement between high art and commercial fiction, between multinational and local Indian publishing houses, and struggles regarding support infrastructure and the position of the English language in India.

Chapters Five and Six address the second research question of this study by exploring two different aspects of the pursuit of a literary career in the Indian context: in relation to the development of the writerly self, and in relation to the quest for success. Chapter Five explores how the seeds of a precarious relationship between writers and money are sown right from the time writers begin to develop a sense of themselves as writers. This chapter unfolds over three sections. The first section provides some historical background about the complex relationship between Indian writers and money. The second section discusses how the development of the writerly habitus is inextricably entwined with a sense of insecurity, as well as hope about money. The third section of this chapter discusses the ways in which writers manage the multiple strands of their lives and thus lead a “double life”, developing the craft, engaging with other players in the field, and earning a living.

Chapter Six explores ways in which the sense of success for writers is always a balancing act between literary success and economic stability. It is argued that this balancing act further intensifies the conflicted relationship between writers and money. It is divided into three sections. The first section provides a brief introductory discussion of how the meaning of success for writers in the Indian literary field is laced with the hope of literary as well as economic success. The second section is a longer section that discusses the various survival strategies mobilised by writers in their quest for success, as they negotiate the uncertain path to publication, with a focus on two contrasting publication journeys. The third section explores the dilemmas of consecration as writers engage in the uncertain literary game, focusing on the book launch, writers’ festivals, and social network sites.

Chapter Seven is the concluding chapter of this study. It draws together the arguments made in this study in relation to the conflicted relationship between Indian writers and money. It notes the limitations of the study, and makes some suggestions for the direction of future research in this area.

254 Appendix A is a list of publications and presentations arising from writing this thesis.

255 Chapter Two: The research methodology

Background

This thesis aims to inductively understand how writers survive in post-millennial India. The research questions that guide this study are: What are the specificities of the field of Indian literature in English? How do writers cope with these conditions in their pursuit of a literary career? Using a constructionist epistemological position (Crotty, 1998), this thesis constructs a picture of the contemporary Indian literary field and its key characteristics. In doing so, it illuminates aspects of the precarious relationship that writers have with money in India, providing empirical evidence to support the usefulness of Bernard Lahire’s specification of Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework for conceptualizing the “double life” of writers.

The research questions of this study are addressed through fieldwork conducted in India from 2011 to 2014. I focus on writers of fiction, namely short stories and novels, who live in India and write in the English language, and are published in India, either by local Indian publishers or by the Indian arms of the major multinational publishing houses. As noted in the introduction, all references to writers in this study must be read through this lens, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

While there have been numerous studies of Indian writers, few have adopted an empirical approach as this dissertation does, using qualitative research methodology to gather data, and, like in documentary film and verbatim theatre, to hear some of the voices of the individuals and communities that make up the Indian literary field. This study is therefore unique and makes an original interdisciplinary contribution to contemporary literary studies, to the sociology of literature, as well as to studies of contemporary Indian society. It aims to provide a deeper understanding of what it means to survive as a writer of fiction in post-millennial India.

256 Data collection methods

In keeping with Chan’s conceptualisation of “ethnography as a form of social practice” (Chan, 2013a) the methodology for this research project includes in-depth, semi- structured interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis. These three methods of data collection allow for the triangulation of data with a view to strengthening veracity, credibility, and validity (ibid.). Fieldwork was conducted between 2011 and 2014, with the majority of interviews and observations conducted between May 2013 and February 2014. A total of 38 interviews were conducted, mainly with writers, but also with literary agents, publishers, booksellers, literary studies academics, editors of literary journals, a judge of a literary prize, organisers of open mic events and writing groups, and other key informants in the field, as listed in Table 1.

Table 1: Face-to-face interviews 13 Writers 8 Publishers 2 Literary Festival Organisers 2 Literary Agents 1 Literary Academic 9 Key Informants 2 Editors Of Literary Magazines 1 Bookseller

In this study, writers have been broadly classified as follows: Emerging writer: No books of fiction published but working on a manuscript at the time of the interview Early career writer: One book of fiction published at the time of the interview Mid-career writer: Two to four books of fiction published at the time of the interview Established writer: More than four books of fiction published at the time of the interview

257 A total of 280 hours of participant observation was conducted over 23 different literary events such as at literary festivals, a writing workshop, writers’ residencies, the Frankfurt Book Fair, book launches, literary awards, writers’ group meetings, and open mic events, as listed in Table 2. Field notes were handwritten during and immediately after each event. Although field notes were written in small notebooks of various sizes for ease of portability, their length ranges from the equivalent of two (for book launches) to ten (for the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Jaipur Literature Festival) typed up A4 pages for each event observed. A number of web-based, and hard copy documents were also analysed, mainly for the purpose of enhancing the validity of the conclusions.

Table 2: Participant observation Event Location Year 4 Open Mic events Two each in Mumbai and New Delhi 2011, 2012, 2013 6 Days at the Frankfurt Book Frankfurt 2012 Fair 1 Book Awards Event Mumbai 2012 5 Writers’ Festivals Two in Mumbai, one in Goa, one in 2012, 2013, Bangalore, one in Jaipur 2014 1 Writing Workshop Goa 2013 2 Writers’ Group Meetings / Mumbai and Goa 2012, 2013 Read-meets 4 book launches Three in Goa and one in Bangalore 2013 4 days at a Writers’ Residency Bangalore 2013-14 1 National level Publishing Goa 2013 Conference

A note on grouping publishers

The Indian arms of the Big 5 owe allegiance to their parent companies in the UK/USA. The Big 5 is a popular term given to the five publishers who dominate global English language trade publishing (Eisler, 2014; Quinn, 2014) and includes

258 Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, MacMillan, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, all of whom now have offices in India. Although there are numerous differences between them, they are often grouped together in this study because of the homology between them in the volume of the capital they possess, accumulated through the weight of antiquity, location, prizes, fame of the authors, citations in text- books of their authors, and media presence.

Sampling, data collection, transcription

Sampling was done using a mix of snowball sampling and opportunistic sampling through cold-calling (Minichiello, Aroni, & Hays, 2008: 172). While the semi- structured open-ended nature of each interview allowed for rich data collection, the data collecting experience concurred with the work of Patton (Patton, 1990) in that it led to very different responses from different participants and made the analysis of data more challenging. However, these differences added rich and nuanced information to the study, in keeping with its inductive and constructivist approach. In some ways these interviews could be seen as a co-creation between the interviewer and the interviewee (Minichiello et al., 2008: 70), as interviews were conducted outside of the interviewees’ everyday life. Conducting such co-created interviews suggests that “research is itself a ‘creative’ practice” (Chan, 2013c: 30). The responses of interviewees may be viewed as part of the stories they tell about themselves. As Chris Bilton notes, “In the absence of any clear signifying system for status and recognition, playing a role which conforms to expectations and perceptions, even self-perceptions, provides a legitimising framework.” (Bilton, 2013: 130). This resonates with Anthony Giddens’ conceptualisation of the “ discursive consciousness” (Giddens, 1984) which refers to the capacity of agents to give reasons, rationalise their conduct, tell stories about their practice. Despite these limitations, semi- structured interviewing proved extremely useful because it allowed the participants to speak their mind and to take the conversation in whichever direction they felt was suitable, leading to a more relaxed atmosphere during the interview.

While only a selection of interviews have been used in this dissertation, due to word count restrictions, below (Table 3) is a list of all participants (pseudonyms used)

259 interviewed for this study. Interviews were recorded using a digital recorder, and anonymised and saved on my computer and in a password protected Dropbox account. Some interviews were transcribed by me, while others were transcribed by professional transcribers who signed Confidentiality Agreement forms, agreeing to keep confidential all details from the interviews they were transcribing. When using quotes in this dissertation, care was taken to preserve the voice of the participant, but most quotes were “cleaned up” i.e. ums and ahs were removed to make quotes more coherent, and to adhere to the word limit of this dissertation.

Table 3: List of participants in this study

Writers Preeti Early career writer, journalist, copywriter Jehangir Early career writer, established journalist and non- fiction book author, reviewer, educator Ali Early career writer, sales professional Razia Emerging writer, copywriter Neel Emerging writer, copywriter, advertising executive Luca Emerging writer, performer, poet Bhima Established writer, former copywriter Latifa Established writer, runs an NGO, writes in a language other than English but included in this study as an exception as her works are translated into English and other languages, and I encountered her work in English. Anika Mid-Career writer, artist, educator Bina Mid-Career writer, journalist Heena Mid-Career writer, journalist Salma Mid-Career writer, journalist, non-fiction author Alice Mid-Career writer, literary editor

260

Literary Agents and Publishers Gargi Literary Agent: India, co-organiser of a literary festival, journalist, non-fiction book author Niloo Literary Agent: International Seema Publisher: Ruby Publishing, one of the Big 5 Shakti Publisher: Bond Publishing, one of the Big 5 Shovon Publisher: Marsh Publishing, one of the Big 5 Nayana Publisher: Krill Publishing, a small Indian publishing house Sahara Publisher: Ruby Publishing, one of the Big 5 Amit Publisher at small Indian publishing house Rustom Publisher at small Indian publishing house, journalist, non-fiction author Mihir Publisher at a small Indian publishing house

Others Kiran Literary festival organiser, journalist Yezdi Literary festival organiser, publishing industry consultant Haider Literary Academic, writer Shaheen Editor of Literary Magazine Deepa Editor of Literary Magazine Sunil Bookseller

261

Key Informants Om The person who connected me to the first event I observed, an open mic event in Mumbai. He seemed to know many people in the field. He runs an online education business Roland Publisher - International, academic, non-fiction author Freny Publishing Industry consultant, journalist Mona Writer, editor Lalita Writer, literary festival organiser, writing residency organiser, judge of a literary Prize Danielle Writer-International Mona Writer-International, educator Suhail Early career writer with whom I conducted an informal interview in 2011 to gauge the viability of the project, copywriter Don Non-fiction author, journalist, academic

Ethical considerations

Ethics Approval was granted on May 8, 2012 (Approval Number 12 047 ) by the Arts, Humanities & Law Human Research Ethics Advisory Panel, UNSW, with a 12 month extension granted on April 2, 2013 (Approval Number 12 047 EXT). In keeping with the stipulations of the Ethics Approval, participation in this study was voluntary. Participants were provided with a Participant Information Statement and were asked to sign a Consent Form, prior to the interview. They were advised that they were free to withdraw their consent at anytime.

As I attempted to establish rapport, most participants wanted to know the names of the other people in the field that I had interviewed. While questions such as these squarely positioned writers and publishers and others in the field as competitors in the

262 field, they also pointed to the porous, dialectical relationship between the public sphere and the private sphere, and between the sense of individualism and communitarianism that pervades contemporary Indian social experience, unable to be contained neatly by the western demarcation between the public sphere and the private sphere (see Acharya, 2015; Chakrabarty, 1999; Chakrabarty, 2008 [2000]: 180-213; Kaviraj, 1997; Udupa, 2012).

When faced with such questions, I felt it was important to reciprocate their trust in me by being honest in return (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2011: 48-49). I responded to such questions by giving a vague answer such as “I’ve interviewed many people.” However when probed further, as often happened, with specific questions about whether or not I had interviewed particular people, I felt that divulging only the names of interviewees when asked (without divulging any other interview details), did not breach confidentiality. This is because all participants agreed, in the Consent Form, to their names being divulged.

However, in this study, in following the principle of doing no harm (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2011: 226), all names of persons and publishing houses, as well as some biographical details have been changed to maintain confidentiality and to ensure anonymity. Participants were offered the choice of being identified or being anonymous. All participants chose to be identified. However, in retrospect, it seemed to me that this choice may have been made by some participants as an act of trust in the interview setting, and/or as an act of social tact, and/or as a misrecognition of the power of a PhD thesis as a tool for the self-promotion of participants. Therefore, in recognition of this complexity, I took the decision to maintain the anonymity of all participants to ensure that I could objectively analyse their interviews without fear of the perception of misrepresentation, as may happen when respondents are named even if with permission. Participants therefore are assured of anonymity and confidentiality by the removal of their names from transcripts and in this thesis. To protect the anonymity of the participants, each participant has been given a pseudonym that may or may not mirror their gender. Any identifying information such as names of publishers or institutions, other languages in which participants work, titles of books etc. have been deliberately disguised or omitted to ensure anonymity.

263 In the process of conducting this research I have had to confront numerous ethical questions in relation to representation, that of speaking about a particular group of people (Indian writers in English in this case) from the position of someone not quite of that group. Anne Brewster’s work on intersubjectivity (for a tiny indication of her influential corpus of work see Brewster, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2011) across indigenous studies and whiteness studies, her invigoration of the engagement between the personal and the collective, and her ethical attention to her own position as a white scholar of indigenous literature has made me particularly attentive to my own position as an insider and an outsider in the Indian literary field: an insider as a writer who grew up in India, and an outsider as a researcher now of the Indian diaspora observing my own “people” who perhaps thought of me, I often felt, as a “fly-in/fly-out” (Storey, 2001) researcher with the privilege of university funding from a rich country.

264

Chapter Three: Literary field, literary game, and the “double life”

This chapter sets out the conceptual framework of this study. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Bernard Lahire’s specification of it provide a set of tools with which to address the research questions posed in Chapter One. This chapter unfolds in two sections. The first section provides a brief overview of the take-up of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework and then proceeds to discuss Bourdieu’s key interlinked concepts of field, capital and habitus, and their usefulness for this study. The second section argues why Lahire’s specification of Bourdieu’s field theory is useful for understanding the positions and practices of writers, especially those who aspire to become published in a very competitive literary field. This section focuses on two Lahirian conceptualisations pertinent for this study: the literary game, and the double life of writers.

Bourdieu’s conceptual framework

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual framework has been marshalled around the world across a diversity of disciplines such as education (Grenfell, 2014; Naidoo, 2004), cultural studies (Bennett, Emmison, & Frow, 1999; Moore, 2015), feminist studies (Adkins, 2004; Adkins & Skeggs, 2004; Moi, 1991; Skeggs, 2004) postcolonial studies (Go, 2013; Hilgers & Mangez, 2015; Puwar, 2009), studies of refugees, migration, and multiculturalism (Hage, 1998, 2013; Millington, 2010; Noble, 2013), media studies (P. English, 2015), studies of inequality and underemployment (Bowman, 2010; Jeffrey, 2010), critiques of neoliberalism (Chopra, 2003), and discussions of intersubjectivity and social relations (Bottero, 2010; Bottero & Crossley, 2011) 4. Bourdieu’s theory has also been extended by some scholars. Janet Chan has adapted Bourdieu’s theory to conceptualise occupational culture and

4 For a sense of the uptake of the Bourdieusian framework in Australia and New Zealand, see (Bennett et al., 2013; Woodward & Emmison, 2009).

265 practice (see Chan, 1997, 2001a, 2011, 2013b, 2015; Chan, Devery, & Doran, 2003; Chan, Gonsalves, & Metcalfe, 2011) and the impact of information technology on police practice (Chan, 2001b, 2003). Jen Webb extends Bourdieusian analysis to creative arts disciplines in contemporary Australian universities (Webb, 2012). Bourdieu’s conceptual apparatus has also been interrogated by numerous scholars (for example see Bennett, 2007; Mead, 2015 for an invigoration of the concept of habitus).

A Bourdieusian framework has proved useful to scholars studying the practices of artists and the conditions of cultural production across a range of art forms such as visual art and photography (Born, 2010; Chan et al., 2015; Frisinghelli, 2009; Haddour, 2009; McCarthy, 2013; Myers, 2013; Robbins, 2009; Schultheis, Holder, & Wagner, 2009; Simone, 2009; Sweetman, 2009; K. Thomas, 2013; K. Thomas & Chan, 2013), including the intersection of creativity studies, art-making and education (see the work of K. Thomas, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015), theatre (Shevtsova, 2002), music (Elafros, 2013; McIntyre, 2008; Santoro, 2013; Scarborough, 2012), community-based arts (Khan, 2013) and fashion (Entwistle & Rocamora, 2006).

Bourdieusian field theory has been used extensively to understand the context of literature and literary production (see Berkers, Janssen, & Verboord, 2013; Boschetti, 2006, 2012; Dubois, 2011; Franssen, 2015; Franssen & Kuipers, 2013; Gonsalves, 2015; Pucherova, 2011; Sapiro, 1999, 2003; Sapiro, 2008, 2010, 2015; Thompson, 2012; van Es & Heilbron, 2015; Verboord et al., 2015 for some recent works that use aspects of the Bourdieusian framework), including in the Australian context, focused on the sociology of literature and creative writing (see especially Brook, 2013 ; Brook, 2015; Gonsalves & Chan, 2008; Paton, 2008, 2012, Forthcoming; Webb, 2012, 2015).

Bourdieu once asked the question: “But who created the ‘creators’?” (Bourdieu, 1993a; and also Bourdieu, 1996: 167). He argued that artists who create work are themselves created by “the whole ensemble of those who help to 'discover' him and to consecrate him as an artist who is known and recognised” (Bourdieu, 1996: 167). The ensemble that Bourdieu talks about is not just the people in the ensemble; namely the writers, literary agents, publishers, reviewers, academics, booksellers, readers, judges of literary prizes etc. but includes the relations between them, the positions they

266 occupy, the ways in which they acquire a feel for the game, their struggles and competition to accumulate various kinds of power.

This relational aspect of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework has been useful for studying the Indian literary world in this dissertation because it provides a way of understanding individual agency, or the “schemes of perception, thought and action” (Bourdieu, 1989: 14) of writers without excluding or overlooking the role that is played by objective structures (such as publishing and marketing conventions, and the role of the state) that affect the social world of literature. Bourdieu’s theory of practice is particularly useful for understanding how writers negotiate their precarious relationship with money. This is because of its attention to the logic of practice (Bourdieu, 1990 [1980]), its attention to practical sense as a “quasi-bodily involvement in the world…a feel for the game” (Bourdieu, 1990 [1980]: 66), its attention to practical logic being different from abstract logic or theoretical logic (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992: 39, 40, 43). Bourdieu’s theory therefore provides a way to understand the practical decisions writers make as they work in the world of Indian literature in English, the pragmatic investments they make in order to survive as writers, and the consequences of their pursuit of a literary career. Nested within Bourdieu’s theory of practice are the interrelated concepts of field, capital, and habitus. They are discussed below.

Field and capital

A field is a “social universe” (Bourdieu, 1987), “a multi-dimensional space of positions” (Bourdieu, 1985), and an “ensemble” (Bourdieu, 1996: 167) not just of people but also of institutions and the relations between them, the forces that enable and constrain them, the struggles they engage in, their failures and successes. Thus the geographic, social and symbolic space in which writers work and in which Indian literature is created — the Indian literary field — is a space where writers, literary agents, publishers, critics, judges of prizes, readers etc. are situated and where struggles for power, authority, status, recognition, literary and economic success take place.

267 These struggles are dependent on the various kinds of material, social, cultural, and symbolic resources that individuals and groups draw upon to preserve and improve their positions in the field (see Swartz, 1997: 73). These resources are forms of power and reward, conceptualised as capital in the Bourdieusian framework. Struggles and competition for various forms of capital are like struggles and competition for “aces in a game of cards” (Bourdieu, 1987: 4). Besides economic capital (money, stocks, shares etc.), Bourdieu identifies three other forms of capital: cultural capital, social capital, and symbolic capital. Cultural capital refers to educational qualifications, skills, and credentials. Social capital includes friend-circles, networks, and resources based on connections and group membership. Symbolic capital is “the form the different types of capital take once they are perceived and recognised as legitimate” (Bourdieu, 1987: 4). Prestige, renown, reputation, recognition, honour, and status are all forms of symbolic capital. Symbolic capital may be conferred by specific institutions such as academies of art, museums, educational institutions, and also “organizations which are not fully institutionalized: literary circles, critical circles, salons, and small groups surrounding a famous author or associating with a publisher, a review or a literary or artistic magazine” (Bourdieu, 1993b: 121). Thus in this study, the system of relations that generate symbolic capital is inclusive of not only of academia, the state, and literary institutions, but also small literary circles such as writing groups, open mic events, and small critical circles such as reviews or publication in a local newspaper, in the Indian literary field.

Literary and artistic fields, because of their low levels of economic power but high levels of symbolic power, are in a dominated position within the field of power but in a dominant position within the field of class relations (Bourdieu, 1993b: 38; Swartz, 1997: 138). This sense of domination of the literary field by the larger field of political and economic power is useful for understanding the struggles of writers to attain economic success as well as literary success.

Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of fields of cultural production as having a heteronomous and an autonomous dimension is a useful way of understanding the Indian literary field. He says that the literary field is

268 the site of a struggle between the two principles of hierarchization: the heteronomous principle, favourable to those who dominate the field economically and politically (e.g. “bourgeois art”) and the autonomous principle (e.g. “art for art’s sake”) (Bourdieu, 1993b: 40)

For Bourdieu, writers and other players in the field who position themselves/are positioned within the autonomous dimension see economic success “as a sign of compromise” (Bourdieu, 1993b: 40). The more dominant dimension in the literary field is the heteronomous dimension, more receptive to the external demands of the market (Bourdieu, 1993b: 40-41). The sense of entanglement and obligation between these two dimensions in the Indian literary field are discussed in the next chapter.

Bourdieu asserts that a field of cultural production, of which the Indian literary field is an example, is an economy of symbolic exchanges where the economic world is reversed. This is because of its inversion of the fundamental principles of the economic world i.e. the pursuit of economic profit and a correspondence between investment and returns (Bourdieu, 1993b). This does not mean that players in the Indian literary field are not interested in pursuing economic capital. Instead, it draws attention to the way in which there is an “interest in disinterestedness” (R. Johnson, 1993: 20) Bourdieu points out that one can simultaneously be interested in a game while being disinterested in, but not indifferent to it (Bourdieu, 1998: 77). That is to say, being ‘disinterested’ is a concealment of interest, and therefore is not the same as being ‘uninterested’ which is a negation of interest rather than a masking of it. A disinterested disposition conceals interest in the economy, not with cynical, calculated intention but as a way of conforming to the explicit rules or tacit guidelines of the field. In other words, there is value in the image of the writer and of writing practice as “pure, disinterested creation by an isolated artist” (Bourdieu, 1993b: 34) and there is value in the disinterestedness of writers in the pursuit of economic profit. A disinterested disposition is possible only in a field where disinterestedness is rewarded, such as in fields of cultural production, including literary fields, scientific fields, and the universe of the family (Bourdieu, 1998: 85-88).

269 Habitus

The habitus is a creative, generative concept, that transcends the antinomies of determinism/ freedom, conditioning/creativity, consciousness/the unconscious, the individual/society (Bourdieu, 1990 [1980]: 55). The habitus is “a feel for the game” (Bourdieu, 1990 [1980]: 66). It is:

a ‘practical sense’ (sens pratique) that inclines agents to act and react in specific situations in a manner that is not always calculated and that is not simply a question of conscious obedience to rules. …The habitus is the result of a long process of inculcation, beginning in early childhood, which becomes a ‘second sense’ or a second nature (R. Johnson, 1993: 5).

As Lizardo tells us, the concept of the habitus may be used to subject social action to explanatory schemes, but it is far from being deterministic in the sense of purporting to predict how human beings behave in any given situation. In fact it points to the possibilities of a wide range of creative and purposive actions (Lizardo, 2004). The habitus inclines players in the field “to ‘cut their coat according to their cloth’ and so to become the accomplices of the processes that tend to make the probable a reality” (Bourdieu, 1990 [1980]: 65). Therefore, as “practical sense” (Bourdieu, 1990 [1980]: 66), as a sense of “things to do or not to do, things to say or not to say” (Bourdieu, 1990 [1980]: 53) the habitus is changeable as it interacts with a changing field. As Bourdieu tells us, “The field structures the habitus [and]….Habitus contributes to constituting the field as a meaningful world endowed with sense and value, in which it is worth investing one’s energy” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992: 127).

Bourdieu says that “When habitus encounters a social world of which it is the product, it is like a ‘fish in water’: it does not feel the weight of the water, and it takes the world about itself for granted” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992: 127). Conversely, those who find themselves in an unfamiliar social world, do not have “the ease of the well- born” (Bourdieu, 2000: 163), and feel a sense of awkwardness. He says:

the parvenus and the declasses…are more likely to bring to consciousness that which, for others, is taken for granted, because they are forced to keep watch

270 on themselves and consciously correct the ‘first movements’ of a habitus that generates inappropriate or misplaced behaviours (Bourdieu, 2000: 163).

Those who are unable to rely upon the old habitus must learn to play the game anew when encountering a new social scene. These are a particularly pertinent set of ideas in relation to the struggles of writers who must tackle the inherent plurality in their lives as they try to pursue a career in the literary field while at the same time earning a living usually in other fields. They do this by employing numerous survival strategies.

Strategy

The term strategy is used in this study not in the sense of a purposive, rational, calculated pursuit of goals, but in the Bourdieusian sense of “unconscious dispositions in the habitus shaped by the field” (Chan et al., 2015: 33), the “product of a practical sense” (Lamaison and Bourdieu, 1986: 112), and as a “specific orientation of practice” (R. Johnson, 1993: 17). Bourdieu thinks of action as strategy, nested within his conception of action as “patterned and interest-oriented at a tacit, pre-reflective level of awareness that occurs through time” (Swartz, 1997: 67). Thus strategies are different from rules chiefly because of the maneuvering of temporality, the ways in which tempo is handled (see Bourdieu, 1998: 92-99; Swartz, 1997: 99). This conception of strategy steers Bourdieu’s theory of practice away from the deterministic bent of structuralism and infuses it with the creative, generative force of agency within a structuralist framework (see Swartz, 1997: 98). Strategies may be mobilised in various ways, for example, as defensive strategies by those in power to defend the status quo, as assertive strategies by newcomers seeking attention, or as subversive strategies by those who are dominated in order to upset the hierarchy and create new positions for themselves (see Bourdieu, 1993b: 83).

Friendliness

Some strategies used by writers in this study include different registers of what I term “friendliness” (see Gonsalves, 2015 for a discussion of the way friendlines is mobilised by Indian publishers, as well as by others in different fields of cultural production across the world). This concept of friendliness is based on the idea of “the

271 survival of the friendliest”, a term used in the work of Brian Hare (Fegan, Mitchell, Hare, & Woods, 2014; Hare & Woods, 2013; O'Callaghan & Hare, 2013) to refer to the phenomenon of the domestication of dogs as they evolved from wolves. Those wolves that were able to survive by being more tolerant, social, and friendly, could outcompete those who were less friendly (ibid.). I use the term for its conceptual charge and its appropriateness for describing certain survival strategies of writers, despite the linguistic slippage between the superlative adjective – friendliest, and the noun – friendliness.

I conceptualise friendliness as a disposition, which is mobilised as a strategy in the Bourdieusian sense. As such, the disposition of friendliness is a part of the habitus of writers. As a child learns to think in rather than with the mother tongue, where the mother tongue is an already constituted disposition (Bourdieu, 1980 [1990]: 67), so too, players in the literary field, learn to think in friendliness. Friendliness is mutually beneficial social engagement, with the perception of shared assumptions of the other’s best interests at heart.

The accounts of participants in this study suggest that friendliness is often like a “second nature” (Bourdieu, 1993b: 234) for individuals in the field. A disposition of friendliness is an embodiment of practical knowledge of the field, the “product of a practical sense” (Lamaison and Bourdieu, 1986: 112). This notion of a “practical sense” is further discussed in the work of Jen Webb, who notes that “there is nothing automatic or naïve about this practical sense: it is the outcome of thorough training, and of a comprehensive investment in the field” (Webb, 2012: 11). Just as “Practical sense” for Bourdieu “is a quasi-bodily involvement in the world” (Bourdieu, 1990 [1980]: 66), there is an embodied aspect to friendliness. As Jen Webb, Tony Schirato and Geoff Danaher note, “the relationship between field and habitus functions to ‘produce’ agents bodies and bodily dispositions: what Bourdieu refers to as bodily hexis” (Webb, Schirato, & Danaher, 2002: 37). For Bourdieu, bodily hexis is “political mythology realised, embodied, turned into a permanent disposition, a durable manner of standing, speaking and thereby of feeling and thinking” (Bourdieu, 1977: 93-94). In the Indian literary field, bodily hexis manifests itself in the production of a friendly body, which is not homogenous across the field, but differentiated according to the relationship between field and habitus. So, I suggest

272 that the bodily hexis of writers who are more aligned with the autonomous dimension of the field are different from the bodily hexis of those more aligned with the field’s heteronomous dimension, although in India there is a sense of entanglement between these dimensions, as will be discussed in the next chapter.

Strategies of friendliness involve an element of gift-giving, where there is expectation of reciprocity with a counter-gift, but crucially marked by an interval which has “the function of creating a screen between the gift and the counter-gift and allowing two perfectly symmetrical acts to appear as unique and unrelated acts” (Bourdieu, 1998: 94).

In this study, the data suggests that writers mobilise strategies of friendliness as survival strategies in various ways as they engage in the literary game. The accounts of some writers suggest that friendly-persistence is useful to create new relations and maintain existing relations in the literary field, as well as to establish new positions in the field. This is further discussed in Chapter Four.

Lahire’s specification of Bourdieu’s theory

Bernard Lahire’s specification of Bourdieu’s theory, particularly his conceptualisations of the literary game, and the “double life” of writers, provide nuanced and cogent ways to understand the uncertain relationship between writers and money in the Indian literary field. Lahire’s work in this regard marks not so much a shift as a qualification and fine-tuning of Bourdieu’s field theory, providing a more useful set of tools with which to understand the choices made by writers across the world in general, and Indian writers working in the English language in particular. This section first discusses the Lahirian notion of the literary game, and then proceeds to discuss his idea of the “double life” of writers.

The literary game

Lahire interrogates the Bourdieusian concept of the field, particularly the literary field (Lahire, 2003, 2008, 2010b, 2011, 2012, 2015), suggesting that it is “better suited to the study of the position and differentiated value of works and the publishing houses

273 supporting them than it is to the producers of works and their conditions of production” (Lahire, 2010b: 444). This is because writers in the literary field are seldom able to earn a living from the field, and therefore must be part of other fields and social spheres. They cannot “keep both feet in that field, but rather keep one foot outside: the money-making foot that allows the other one to ‘dance’ (Lahire, 2010b: 448). Lahire says:

Although it is symbolically highly prized and can generate intense personal vocations and investments, the literary universe is overall very little professionalized and brings very little financial reward. It therefore brings together individuals who in their very great majority belong, for economic reasons, to various other occupational universes. Generally forced to exercise a ‘second job’, participants in the literary universe are closer to ‘players’ – who regularly exit the game to ‘earn their living’ outside it – than full-time ‘agents’ of a field. It is particularly for this reason that I preferred to speak of the ‘literary game’ rather than a ‘literary field’ (Lahire, 2015: 79).

This conceptualisation of the literary game is different from Bourdieu’s use of the term. For Bourdieu, the “game” is a metaphor to suggest an “intuitive grasp” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992: 98) of the field. Bourdieu describes the habitus as a “feel for the game” (Bourdieu, 1990 [1980]: 66) as players in the field struggle for the accumulation and exchange of various forms of capital, which are like “aces in a game of cards” (Bourdieu, 1987: 4). For Lahire, however, the “literary game” is a description of the secondary field that demands mobility. It requires players to exit it in order to earn a living. He says:

The concept of a literary game refers to a secondary field, very different in its functioning from related fields – especially the academic and scientific fields – that provide the economic means for converting the individuals participating in them into permanent agents in the field and thus lead them to invest the bulk of their energies in their work. Unlike Bourdieu, who uses the metaphor of a game in a simple pedagogical manner to explain what a field is, I crafted the metaphor of a “literary game” and have exploited its possibilities in order

274 to differentiate types of universes which offer living conditions that differ greatly for their respective participants (Lahire, 2012: 415-416).

This Lahirian notion of the literary game provides new language to articulate the practices of Indian writers who pursue a literary career within the Indian literary field, yet must exit the field in order to earn a living, and re-enter it in order to continue to play the economically unprofitable but symbolically profitable literary game. Lahire notes, “I rely on the contrasts between the word “game” and the word “work”: work (for profit)/game (leisure activity), primary activity/secondary activity, serious activity/frivolous activity, and the like” (Lahire, 2012: 426 n15). Although for most writers in this study, the activity of writing is considered work, a serious if satisfying activity, it is still only tenuously linked to economic profit, and therefore must be put aside to engage in a primary occupation that provides a living wage.

While Bourdieu notes that the boundary of the field is “a stake of struggles” (Bourdieu, 1993b: 42), characterised by the “extreme permeability of its frontiers” (Bourdieu, 1993b: 42) and that the “limits of the field are situated at the point where the effects of the field cease” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992: 100), Lahire suggests that it is problematic to understand writers and their practices only within the strict limits of the literary field. This is because “agents never belong exclusively to one social universe and never play exclusively on one stage” (Lahire, 2010b: 447). Rather the mobility of writers between different social worlds, and their multiple social memberships, not just their literary existence, must be taken into account when trying to understand the practice of writers (see Lahire, 2010b: 447, 449).

In critiquing the Bourdieusian conception of literary autonomy, which he calls Type 1 autonomy, a sense that literature and the literary field are activities separate from other spheres of activities, he says,

…writers, who are the raison d’être of the literary game and its principal moving force, are however collectively the least “professional” from an economic point of view, in the sense that they rarely are able to live exclusively from the profits from their publications. [Writers]…must find the

275 economic means to have the free time for literature, as the literary game itself provides them little or no means to do so (Lahire, 2012: 419).

As Lahire suggests, writers are the reason for the existence of the literary world. Literature, the work that writers do, is enmeshed within political, religious, economic, legal, scientific, and philosophical activities, the stuff of life itself. Yet most writers are unable to earn a living from writing fiction. Thus economic capital, usually earned outside of writing, sustains writers even as the time spent earning it eats away at the time meant for literature, for developing one’s writing practice.

Lahire distinguishes a second kind of autonomy, Type II autonomy which he takes to mean independence from political, religious, and economic powers. This too he finds reductionist and implausible. He quotes the French writer Gustave Flaubert’s comment that the writer’s freedom gained from religious and political patronage has been replaced by the yoke of profane dependence on money:

When you do not address yourself to the crowd, it is fair that the crowd not pay you. That is political economy. And yet, I maintain that a work of art worth its name and crafted in good conscience is priceless, has no commercial value, cannot be paid for. Conclusion: if the artist lacks a private income, he must die from hunger! We think that the writer, because he no longer receives pension from the greats, is much more free, more noble. All his social nobility now consists of being equal to a greengrocer. What progress! (Gustave Flaubert in a letter to George Sand, 12 December 1872 cited in Lahire, 2012: 420).

Flaubert’s nineteenth century ‘Conclusion’ is that a writer creating a priceless work in the absence of a private income, must pay the ultimate price of death. This points realistically, if somewhat strongly, to the twenty-first century concerns of writers in the Indian literary field, as will be discussed later in this study. For Lahire, any consideration of the autonomy of the literary field, whether Type I or Type II, prevents “any investigation of the role that extra-literary or para-literary experiences

276 play in the process of creation, and more precisely, on what authors write and the way they write it” (Lahire, 2012: 423-424).

This necessary mobility between different social worlds, trying to achieve literary success within the literary field while simultaneously earning an income outside of it, this “double life” (Lahire, 2010b, 2015) that writers are compelled to lead, complicates notions of the autonomy of the literary field. Lahire notes that what takes place outside of the literary game has many consequences for those who engage in the literary game. He draws attention to the extra-literary and para-literary experiences of writers (Lahire, 2012: 423-424) and consequently to difference between the literary and economic aspects of the practices of writers. He says:

And we shall see that the confusion is enormous on this question of “the autonomy of the literary field” because we use different definitions of autonomy and confuse arguments concerning the economic professionalization of authors with arguments which are about their literary professionalization. The paradoxical character of the position of authors is due to the fact that unlike other holders of scholarly knowledge, the greatest professionals from a literary point of view have little chance of becoming the greatest professionals from an economic point of view (Lahire, 2012: 416 original emphasis).

This differentiation between literary professionalism and economic professionalism is a useful way to think about the experiences of writers in this study e.g. long gestation period for some writers in this study for whom publication took many years, chiefly because they needed to spend time earning a living outside of the literary field.

This lived-reality of writers, with varying degrees of investments in multiple social worlds, struggling to achieve literary success and economic stability suggests that writers live a “double life” (Lahire, 2010b, 2015).

277 The double life of writers

Lahire’s notion of the “double life” of writers draws attention to their multiple social memberships. It is linked to the literary game that they engage in as they pursue a career in the literary field while trying to earn a living outside of it. Writers must manage multiple strands of their lives as they spend time developing their craft, navigating the uncertain path to publication, accumulating social capital in the field, while simultaneously earning income usually from work other than writing fiction. This, he says, leads to

suffering linked to the discrepancy between an individual’s subjective definition of self (as a writer) and a large part of that individual’s objective life conditions. Unlike those people who experience their profession as a central and permanent part of their personality, writers who, for economic reasons, work a “day job” have a cultural and “personal” foot in literature and a material (and sometimes also “personal”) foot outside of literature (the second foot freeing the first from dependence on market constraints) (Lahire, 2010b: 445).

Writers must make numerous choices, and varying levels of investment in multiple social worlds, the world of literature and the world of work which only rarely correspond with each other as writers attempt to survive in the literary world as well as economically. These multiple investments and varied ways of engaging with different worlds, Lahire suggests, create a “heritage of non-homogeneous and non- unified dispositions, habits, and abilities varying across the social contexts in which their personal development took place” (Lahire, 2003: 345).

Although Bourdieu drew attention to the habitus clivé, his own divided habitus, or what he called the “two habitus” (see Bourdieu, 2000: 159-163; Bourdieu, 2004 [2007]: 22; also Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992: 127 re the divided or torn habitus) some scholars have pointed to the contrast between this sense of the habitus as divided and the sense of habitus as a unitary system of dispositions in most of his other key works (see Bennett, 2007 for a discussion of these contrasting conceptualisations of habitus in Bourdieu's corpus). Some scholars have also

278 questioned the sense of the habitus as ‘durable’ with regard to social mobility, pointing to a fissured and fractured sense of the production of habitus over a lifetime. For example, Friedman notes in relation to contemporary Britain that the habitus may be considerably more subject to “inculcation, alteration and disruption” (Friedman, 2015: 17) over a person’s life than Bourdieu envisaged.

Bernard Lahire takes issue with this unitary sense of habitus, saying that the notion of ‘disposition’ central to the Bourdieusian concept of the habitus rests on dubious, unspoken assumptions (Lahire, 2003). He says that the “notions sociologists use to conceptualize psychological processes occurring at the level of social groups capitalize too strongly on the idea that these processes are general and homogeneous in nature” (Lahire, 2003: 329). Instead he calls for a “sociology at the level of the individual” (Lahire, 2003: 332) with the focus on individuals as “complex products of multiple processes of socialization” (Lahire, 2003: 332-333). Just as he points to the plurality of social worlds of which writers are a part, as discussed earlier, he says that “writers cannot be reduced to their field habitus” (Lahire, 2011: 30). He thus eschews the use of the singular literary habitus when attempting to understand writers, their lives and their practices. He talks about “the internal plurality of individuals: the singular is necessarily plural in nature” (Lahire, 2003: 343-344).

One formulation of dispositions pertinent to this study is Lahire’s focus on the varying intensity of dispositions. He makes a distinction between “strong and weak dispositions” (Lahire, 2003: 336) which he links to the distinction between “dispositions to act and dispositions to believe” (Lahire, 2003: 336), and the gap between them. To illustrate this, he says:

living continuously in a cultural and ideological atmosphere in which the benefits of consumption are praised may lead social agents to dream of consuming in order to ‘feel good’, ‘be happy’, or ‘be in on it’. However, these very agents may be without the economic means allowing them to act according to their beliefs; consequently, they may feel temporarily or permanently frustrated. Even more fundamentally, agents may have internalized specific norms, values, or ideals without ever being able to

279 develop the habits to act that would allow them to attain their ideals (Lahire, 2003: 337).

He suggests that when people express opinions in conversation but don't put them into practice, it may not just be masquerade, but an illustration of the gap between the disposition to act, and their beliefs or their disposition to believe. These, he says, are “no less ‘profound’ than the habits igniting actions; however, they were formed under different conditions and are used and actualized in different contexts and circumstances” (Lahire, 2003: 338). This Lahirian formulation of dispositions of varying intensity and intentionality is useful for this study because it illuminates the struggles some writers face in the Indian literary field as they grapple with what they believe they must do and what they actually do as they attempt to negotiate their precarious relationship with money.

While the Bourdieusian theoretical framework and its interlinked concepts of field, capital and habitus continue to offer critical purchase for this study, the data collected for this study suggests concurrence with Lahire’s specification of the Bourdieusian theoretical framework, namely his conceptualisation of the literary game and the “double life” of writers. Thus, this study employs the concept of the literary game that writers engage in as they move in and out of the literary field, trying to manage multiple investments in multiple social worlds, living a “double life” as they pursue literary success and economic stability.

The next chapter presents a discussion of the unique conditions and specificities of the Indian literary field that influence the practices of writers as they negotiate a conflicted relationship with money.

280 Chapter Four: The Indian literary field

This chapter discusses the ways in which the relationship between writers and money is influenced by the specificities of the post-millennial Indian literary field. This discussion draws on the empirical evidence and documentary sources collected for this study. It will demonstrate that the Indian literary field in the English language is characterised by three key features: (i) a rapid growth in the literary market fettered by uncertainty; (ii) a sense of entanglement between its autonomous and heteronomous dimensions and between its global and local publishing interests; and (iii) writers’ struggles regarding support infrastructure and the position of the English language in India. This chapter is divided into three sections corresponding to the three specificities of the field. The first section discusses the rapid growth of the Indian literary field and the constraints and uncertainties faced by writers as they make decisions in relation to their various investments in their pursuit of a literary career and economic reward. The second section describes the precarious and entangled autonomous and heteronomous dimensions of the Indian literary field and the relationship between local and multinational publishing houses. It also discusses the effect these entanglements have on writers’ negotiation of the multiple strands of their lives. The third section discusses the Indian literary field as a site of numerous struggles: writers work under a regressive political climate; are inadequately supported, with tenuous links to academia; and those writing in English are confronted with the complicated position of the English language in the Indian context. These structural factors are relationally linked, and constantly reflect, refract and subtend each other in ways that influence the relationship between writers and economic capital, necessitating many to lead “double lives”.

Rapid growth and uncertainty

The genealogy of Indian writing in English can be traced back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the first book ever published by an Indian in English being a two-volume edition self-published in Cork, Ireland, in 1794, entitled The Travels of Dean Mahomet, A Native of Patna in Bengal, Through Several Parts of India, While in the Service of the Honourable The East India Company, Written by Himself, In a Series of Letters to a Friend. The author, Deen Mahomed, convinced 320 friends to

281 entrust him with a deposit well before the publication and delivery of the book (Dharwadker, 2003: 199), 5 thus ironically locating the history of Indian publishing transnationally within the tradition of self-publishing, and the more recent phenomenon of crowdfunding. More pertinently for this study, these antecedents also locate the history of Indian publishing within the “exceptional economy” (Abbing, 2002) of the arts, where writers rely on the financial generosity of friends and others in the pursuit of publication and literary success. This was totally in keeping with the late eighteenth century practice of self-publishing through subscriptions in England (see D. Griffin, 2009; Schücking, 1966) in a period that preceded the rise of the publisher and the literary agent.

A more direct link exists between the market, or commercial considerations, and the growth of Indian literature in English, via the official institutionalisation of the English language in Indian education. Indians were writing and getting published in English in India since the early nineteenth century. However, a turning point occurred when Thomas Macaulay famously advocated for the adoption of the English language in Indian higher education through his ‘Minute on Education’ written in 1835. One of his aims was the promotion of loyalty to Britain via English-educated Indian intermediaries between the British government and the Indian masses. The effect of “A Minute stretching into centuries” (Prasad, 2011: 3-23) upon the development of Indian writing in English has been noted by many scholars (see Das, 2009; Mehrotra, 2009, 2012; Mukherjee, 2008). When making his case using numerous different reasons why English should be institutionalised in Indian education, Macaulay “clinches his argument with the ground reality of commerce” (Prasad, 2011: 14) successfully demonstrating that Indians were actually willing to pay to learn English, a fact that proved irresistible to the lawmakers of “the nation of shopkeepers, which won an empire with a trading company” (ibid.). The roots of the postmillennial growth of the field of Indian literature in English may thus be traced back to this dovetailing of commercial considerations with the imperialist institutionalisation of the English language in India.

5 The spelling of Deen Mahomed’s name varies in numerous texts. I follow the one used by Tabish Khair (Khair, 2014)

282 The last two decades of the twentieth century saw a steady rise in global interest in Indian writing and reading in English. This growth in interest could be seen as the result of an imbrication of a number of factors: the enormous success of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in 1980, followed by the other prize-winning Indian and Indian diasporic authors such as Arundhati Roy, Rohinton Mistry, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai, and Aravind Adiga; a growing Indian diaspora especially in the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; the rise of postcolonial studies in the U.S. and U.K. academy; and the entry of the first of the Big 5, Penguin, into India in 1985, followed later by other publishing houses who now constitute the Big 5.

The rapid growth of the Indian literary field is evidenced by numerous indicators. While much globally successful Indian literature in English (including the work of all the writers mentioned above) was and continues to be first published outside of India by one of the Big 5, the publishing industry within India itself is said to be growing by thirty percent per annum, with over 16,000 publishers publishing 90,000 new books per year in twenty-four languages including in English (CAPEXIL, 2012; FICCI, 2014). As such, it ranks seventh in the number of books published annually, and third in the number of English language books published annually, across the world. Numerous observers see the Indian publishing industry as booming (R. B. Chatterjee, 2011; FAQ, 2011a; Claudia Kaiser in FAQ, 2011b; Ghai, 2008; S. Gupta, 2012; Mallya, 2014; Pathak, 2011b; C. Sarkar, 2011a; N. Sarkar, 2011b). Some see it as having “come of age” (Ghai, 2008; C. Sarkar, 2011a) with higher production values, better quality printing and publishing output, as well as training programs in publishing in partnership with established publishing institutions like the Frankfurt Academy (see Gonsalves, 2015 for a discussion of the way in which the growth of the field influences the practices of Indian publishers in the globalised marketplace). Today, India is one of the few places in the world where printed newspaper subscriptions, in various languages, are going up, largely due to increasing literacy and opportunity for upward social mobility (Pathak, 2011a; Deloitte, 2014; GBO, 2013). The Times of India is said to have the largest circulation of English newspapers in the world with a readership of 7.64 million per day, although this is less than half of the daily readership of the top Hindi daily, Dainik Jagran, at 16.43 million (Jain, 2015: 151).

283 A growing population that is literate in the English language, youthful, and technologically savvy, is often seen as a key strength of the Indian market. Out of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) grouping, India has the largest group of English speakers, a lucrative market for Western publishers, estimated to be about six to ten percent of the population, or about 100 million. Thirty-three percent of the population is currently under 15 years of age (Haub, 2012). About ten percent of the population have access to the internet, with approximately 867.80 million mobile phone subscriptions, and numerous tablet and phablet devices that are proving to be most attractive for consuming digital content including books (Mallya, 2014: 76). With growing literacy, India has what publisher Urvashi Butalia calls “book hunger” (Butalia in P. Griffin, 2013), needing more books to satisfy the needs of its population of 1.2 billion. In an echo of Macaulay’s nineteenth century argument regarding the commercial viability of English in India because Indians were willing to pay for it (Prasad, 2011: 14), India’s growing English speaking population includes a large number of people from the aspirational lower and middle classes who are illiterate even in their own mother tongues, yet many try to ensure that their children receive an education in English (Bangay & Latham, 2013; Härmä, 2011), the global language of jobs.

These demographic trends have affected the practices of writers in the Indian literary field. Linked to rising literacy and upward social mobility is the surge in the number of Indians writing fiction in English, and the consequent increase in the number of literary agents and publishing houses. The data collected for this study corroborates this. Sahara, one of the research participants and Head of Publishing at one of the Big 5 publishing houses in India, reveals that she had to remove the ‘Submissions’ option on the company website as they could not keep up with the deluge of unsolicited manuscripts being submitted via the website, approximately “30 to 40 manuscripts a day”. 6 This resonates with the work of Franssen and Kuipers who note that abundance of new manuscripts “as a consequence of increasing globalization, implies a qualitative change in the working of the literary field” (Franssen & Kuipers, 2013: 71). However this abundance has not been properly measured in India. The constraints faced by the

6 Pseudonyms are used for all research participants in this study, as discussed in Chapter Two which sets out the Research Methodology for this dissertation.

284 publishing industry make it very challenging to gather accurate data (Mallya, 2014; C. Sarkar, 2011a). Urvashi Butalia notes that there has been no survey of the field since 1972, and not all publications have ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers), which could have allowed the size of the industry to be estimated with some accuracy (Butalia in P. Griffin, 2013) .

However, this sense of abundance in relation to unpublished manuscripts does not necessarily assure resultant growth in readership and sales. While reading for pleasure in India is beginning to have more appeal, reading to learn or pass exams is still the dominant mode through which many Indians read. This uncertainty in the growth and development of a literary readership in a predominantly oral culture is reflected in the words of Shakti, Head of Publishing at one of the Big 5: “when you can listen to grandmothers stories for free, why will you spend money buying a book?” These deep-rooted traditions of oral storytelling, mixed with a sense of thrift in a country that is marked by high levels of poverty, suggest low expectations for sales of fiction titles. This may not augur well for writers hoping to be signed on by commercial publishers. Yet, on account of the growth in the number of literary agents and publishers, some writers feel that the possibilities of getting published are now quite high compared to a decade ago. Salma, a mid-career writer, says:

maybe you may not be able to get through to a Penguin because of the sheer volumes that they get. But if you are decent…[other publishers] won’t make you rich overnight, but you will get published. Or there are anthologies. There are calls for submissions…the internet.

The proliferation of publishing houses, print and online literary journals and magazines, and the ease of self-publishing may have contributed to a more democratic, more easily accessible publishing environment in post-millennial India. Yet, all these seemingly optimistic indications of growth can have unintended consequences, in spite of India’s growing geopolitical clout. When Indian publishers attempt to sell the rights of Indian fiction to the world at global literary marketplaces such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, they find that India tends to be seen as a profitable market, a new bazaar for Western books, rather than also a provider of new content (Gonsalves,

285 2015). As Sahara notes, “the whole thrust of Western publishing is to sell out to the East, right? It’s not the other way around…their markets are full up of books”. This suggests that despite the patina of global accomplishment linked to the success of a few writers who are first published outside of India, many writers published in India find it hard to reach a global audience. This is chiefly because of the reluctance of Western publishers to sign on Indian writers working in India and being published either by the Indian arms of the Big 5 or local Indian publishers.

Another source of uncertainty in the field is the unwieldy and unreliable infrastructure, notably the book distribution system (P. Griffin, 2013; Noronha, 2011), and the way the retail of books is organised. Salma says that distributors function essentially as a “transport system” rather than “dynamic” advocates for books, resulting in poor sales. She says, “Distributors are not distributing. They’re following old patterns. They’ve got ten bookstores on their list so they’ll go to the same ten bookstores and if those ten bookstores don’t want a book then that book doesn’t sell”.

In relation to retail, Shovon, the Head of Publishing at one of the Big 5, tells us, “the biggest challenge is that we don’t have organised retail in India. So getting the books out in the market is a difficult difficult ball game”. Therefore, writers must sometimes take it upon themselves to make sure their books can be bought by readers. Jehangir, an early-career writer of fiction but an established journalist, poet, and non-fiction author, says that he accepts every invitation he gets to read his work, and carries copies of his novels in his backpack to sell to audiences, however small the audiences may be. He wants to do everything he can for his book, he says. In this way he functions not just as a writer, but also invests time and energy performing the roles of the PR person, and the bookseller. Salma provides the example of another Indian writer who surmounted the constraint of poor distribution by taking control of it herself. She says, “she made sure that her books were in the stores… then of course if you’re willing to sign up for that kind of thing then that’s your whole life. You do nothing else, because it’s a lot of time and energy and investment”. Salma acknowledges that this investment of time and money may be beneficial in the end because of economic reward. She says, “I’m guessing the money you make from it makes it worthwhile”. In this case, Salma’s friend was working not just as a writer,

286 but was invested in her roles as a distributor and marketing person too. The inherent plurality of writers’ lives, the double lives they lead, includes the negotiation of multiple roles even when they play the literary game at the cost of time spent working on their fiction. The often economically unprofitable but symbolically profitable literary game is contextually dependent, requiring a constant process of pragmatic decision-making in order to maximise the chances of economic reward while pursuing literary success.

Entanglements

Post-millennial India is a very strongly differentiated society along caste, class, gender, religious, ethnic, and linguistic lines, each of these categories also being heterogeneous, contextually differentiated and unstable (Menon, 2015) in the larger Indian field of power. Additionally, the impress of a history of colonisation of different parts of India by different European powers is still felt today, as is the state’s neoliberal striving to play economic catch-up with wealthier Western nations. This study is limited by its focus on writers of fiction working in the English language. Even so, there are some perceptible entanglements within the post-millennial Indian literary field, in relation to the Bourdieusian stratification of the autonomous and heteronomous dimensions of the field, as well as in relation to global and local publishing interests.

The autonomous and heteronomous principles

Fields of cultural production, such as the Indian literary field, are sites of struggle between the autonomous and heteronomous principles (Bourdieu, 1993b: 40) which correspond with the production, publication and consecration of ‘literary’ and ‘pulp’ fiction respectively, as discussed in the previous chapter. This struggle involves the “relationship to the audience” (Bourdieu, 1993b: 46), particularly interest in economic profit (ibid.), which is, at its heart, “a struggle to impose the legitimate definition of literary or artistic production” (ibid.).

This struggle between the two principles is further complicated in India. Drawing on the accounts of writers in this study, aspects of this struggle may be perceived as a

287 sense of entanglement between the autonomous and heteronomous dimensions of the field. I use the term ‘entanglement’ to suggest interlacing, where separation and extrication is not easy, and also in relation to asymmetric gift exchange as developed in the work of Nicholas Thomas (see N. Thomas, 1991: 189). This sense of entanglement has arisen because of the growth of the field, as discussed earlier, and is historically situated in post-millennial India. It affects the idea of literary legitimacy in the Indian literary field. It influences the way writers in this study address the question of who may be a legitimate writer in India. On the one hand, the writers in this study may be seen as ‘literary’ writers, valuing recognition and honour from the literary establishment in the form of good reviews, awards, favourable media coverage. Yet the writerly habitus, or the way writers develop a sense of themselves as writers, is often shaped by the attention to economic profit in the wake of the astonishing success of Indian ‘pulp’ fiction writers.

Some writers perceive a sense of gift-giving and obligation in relation to the literary field: the large Indian English readership being built by the current crop of successful pulp fiction writers, the obligation of writers to be increasingly involved in the marketing and publicising of their work, and the interest that some international publishers now have in India. This is turn affects the way some writers develop a sense of themselves as writers. The role of Chetan Bhagat, a management graduate turned best-selling author, has been noted by many participants in this study. He is a ‘pulp fiction’ writer credited by many to have created an unprecedented, large market for Indian writing in English, while at the same time being discredited by the (autonomous) Indian literary field for his two-dimensional characters, unimaginative prose, and contrived plots (S. Gupta, 2012; Tharoor, 2006). Preeti, an early career writer, sums up the sense of gift-giving and obligation some writers feel towards Chetan Bhagat. She says:

I do not subscribe to his writing at all but…he got the marketing aspect into writing. He completely opened the market for writers. So whenever he is lampooned by writers I don’t say anything because I know that I owe my book in some small way to him.

288 Preeti’s account also provides a glimpse into the reasons why Chetan Bhagat has been so successful:

He targeted the small town reader who was just about getting into English novels and who was the first generation English reader in his or her family, who had no idea…where to begin…didn’t have an English literary background. So he wanted to write something which was accessible and which someone like this could relate to. So he did the IIT campus novel, he had written in a very basic, colloquial way, the way an Indian person on such a campus would speak and it was a huge hit and suddenly publishers realized…there is a market for Indian writers. Before that they clearly said there’s no market for Indian writers. Everyone’s too busy reading their Jeffery Archers or Sidney Sheldons. I am speaking in the pulp fiction department. And Indian writers were very niche literary. There was no best selling Indian pulp fiction writer and I think Chetan Bhagat created that.

Successful commercial fiction writers like Chetan Bhagat have demonstrated the strength of the market for Indian English fiction in India, creating a large base of readers for their work, and in a sense being perceived as gifting this large base of readers to the “autonomous” writers. As Sahara notes:

…anyone picking up a book is a good thing in my mind. And it’s a start. And if you start reading then you learn discernment. I mean then you’re going to be able to at least decide, OK, this one isn’t so good, this one is better. And it grows from there.

Sahara hopes that these first generation readers will contribute to the growth in readership of literary fiction. However it remains to be empirically tested in the Indian literary field whether the Bourdieusian conceptions of ‘legitimate taste’, ‘middle- brow taste’ and ‘popular taste’ which are homologous to educational levels and social classes (Bourdieu, 1984 [2010]: 8) act as rungs on a ladder that readers may climb, as Sahara hopes.

289 Chetan Bhagat gave up his job in investment banking to be a full-time writer after achieving unprecedented success in the Indian market. This is in stark contrast to the double life that “literary fiction” writers often lead. Most writers in this study try to pursue literary success by playing the literary game, while needing to leave the field continually to hold on to their day jobs in order to sustain themselves economically. However as will be discussed in the next chapter, literary legitimacy itself, as perceived by writers in this study, is inflected with the sense of entanglement between the autonomous and heteronomous principles of the field. Additionally, the definition of a legitimate “writer” is itself the site of a complicated relationship with money in India.

The Big 5 and local publishing houses

The Indian literary field is further entangled in relation to the provenance of its publishing houses i.e. global publishers, or the Big 5, and local publishers who are smaller independent publishers emerging out of India. Along with the entrance of the Big 5 into India over the last decade, there has been a proliferation of smaller independent publishers within India itself (S. Gupta, 2012; Mallya, 2014; Noronha, 2011; Sadana, 2012). Most local publishing houses in India are “family-owned, small- scale businesses” (Mallya, 2014: 74). Some of these small independent publishers have entered the field to speak specifically for particular sections of Indian society which have been underrepresented in Indian literature, such as Zubaan, and Kali for Women, focusing on work by and about women; Navayana on caste from an anti- caste perspective; and Queer Ink on work by and about India’s LGBTI communities. These smaller publishers occupy very different positions from those of the Big 5 within the Indian literary field. Bereft of the prestige enjoyed by the Big 5 on account of antiquity, international literary prizes, and their positions in Anglo-American publishing circuits, these smaller Indian publishers commission works that may not become bestsellers but may introduce fresh voices and experimental, cutting edge works into the field. Both kinds of publishers publish literary as well as popular works, and also works in translation, demonstrating further entanglements within the field. Additionally, there are numerous collaborations between the Big 5 and the smaller Indian publishers. An example of this is the partnership between Zubaan, a local independent feminist publishing house, and Penguin, one of the Big 5, in the form of

290 an agreement to publish “a joint list of at least four titles a year” (Zubaan, 2015). One consequence of this entanglement for writers in this study is additional opportunities to get published in India while accessing global markets, or at least enjoying the prestige of being associated with a global brand. This presents the possibility of leveraging this prestige to negotiate better economic outcomes for future publishing deals.

Struggles for support

The Indian literary field is a site of numerous struggles for support and legitimacy for writers. Some internationally and nationally recognised writers who have won prestigious awards or may be on various bestseller lists enjoy positions of high status and recognition that may shield them from some of these struggles. However, the accounts of many writers in this study suggest that they must deal with numerous issues that have a bearing on their positions in the literary field. This is partly due to a regressive political climate, inadequate state support, and tenuous links with academia. Writers who work in English are also a part of the ongoing conversation about the position of the English language in India. These struggles further compound the fraught relationship between writers and economic profit.

Regressive political climate

The literary field in India is constantly mediated by the larger field of power of which it is a dominated part. It operates within a culture of provincial politicking, corruption, censorship and self-censorship in what may be termed a “repressive liberal system” (Sapiro, 2003) as it engages with the larger field of power. Public protest and state protection is minimal and often inconsequential against frequent violent acts committed against writers, publishers and bookshops, and the constant threat to freedom of speech from self-styled guardians of culture. This weakness in public engagement and state protection when writers are threatened poses a constraint leading to serious consequences such as censorship and self-censorship, affecting freedom of expression and the safety of writers, publishers, booksellers and their families. Books are banned, burned, and authors and their families issued with death threats on the grounds that the book offends religious sentiments, as with the work of

291 Salman Rushdie, whose book The Satanic Verses has an import ban in India (Mitta, 2012) and the work of Indologist Wendy Doniger (Sengupta, 2014), or offends caste sentiments, as in the cases of the Tamil authors Perumal Murugan and Puliyur Murugesan (Sundaram, 2015). As Jehangir says, “it’s as if every writer here is on his own”. This sense of isolation perceived by some writers creates fear. While it is mainly writers who work in other languages which don't have the status of English who have been the targets of recent death threats, and many writers continue to confront this fear and defy attempts at censorship, this sense of fear contributes to a climate of uncertainty for all writers in India, irrespective of the language in which they work. This acts as a counter-narrative to the more prevalent narrative of a flourishing Indian writing and publishing industry as sometimes perpetuated by international media.

Inadequate support

Another challenge writers face is inadequate financial support from the state, and from public or private organisations. While the arts may be seen as a public good in India, as it is in wealthier nations, this perception is not backed up by adequate financial support. Extreme and widespread poverty, malnourishment, disease, poor access to health services, unspeakable violence based on caste, religion, gender, and geographical location, and widespread illiteracy are some of the immediate concerns upon which government attention and spending must be focused. Therefore, supporting writers is understandably not a pressing concern. With no equivalent of funding bodies such as the Arts Council in the UK, or the Australia Council for the Arts in Australia, that provide grants to writers so they can concentrate on their writing practice without needing to work in a day job, writers in India must spend the better part of their time outside the field in order to earn a living, at the cost of spending time working on their writing.

One of the first public institutions set up by the newly independent Indian state was the Sahitya Akademi, a national academy of letters aimed at the development of Indian literature in over 24 languages, including in English. While the Sahitya Akademi does not provide grants in the way of the arts councils of wealthy countries, the work of the Sahitya Akademi may be seen as attempting to create a sense of an

292 “autonomous national marketplace for esteem” (J. F. English, 2005: 265) through its annual national awards ceremonies, its fellowships, and its special editions of selected texts. This nationally bounded conferral of prestige is reinforced through the other literary prizes offered to writers in India. It must be noted here that contrary to the experience in the Anglo-American publishing circuits where the “proliferation of literary prizes… has…outpaced by a wide margin the growth in literary publishing” (J. F. English, 2005: 325), in India, there are only four major national awards, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Hindu Literary Prize, the Jnanpith Award, and the Crossword Book Award, which are exclusively for writers working in India in one of the major languages. The Jnanpith Award, a privately endowed award, holds the highest monetary value (approximately seven lakh rupees, or fourteen thousand Australian dollars). However, literary awards, while providing prestige which is the currency of the symbolic economy, do not provide economic stability because they do not have life-changing economic capital attached to them. Salma says:

… India’s highest award the Jnanpith…It’s an honour. But if you look at the money that is attached to it, any writer living in a city would not be able to survive more than a year on it… [you’re] getting a lifetime achievement award and the money attached to it is not enabling you to live…there’s no question of saying that OK I will starve but I will write. You don’t have that option. You can’t seek to be unemployed.

Further, the conferral of literary prizes (not restricted to English language fiction in this instance) underscores the complexities of the “winner takes all” (Abbing, 2002; J. F. English, 2005: 334) aspect of the Indian literary field. For example, the 2014 winner of the Jnanpith Award in India, the Professor of English literature and Marathi novelist and critic Bhalachandra Nemade, also previously won other top honours (Nandgaonkar, 2015) such as the Sahitya Akademi Award, and the Padma Shri award (for distinguished service in any field). While Professor Nemade is a highly respected and most deserving recipient of any award, most writers are unable to access such monetary offerings, however slim they may be. This further underscores the uncertain aspects of the relationship that writers have with economic capital.

293 Tenuous links with academia

Another challenge faced by writers is the informal and very tenuous links with academia. From Derozio, the first Indian poet to write in English, who was the Assistant Headmaster at Hindu College, Calcutta in the early nineteenth century, to Eunice De Souza, poet and novelist, who retired as Head of the English Department at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai in the early twenty-first century and is still writing today, many Indian writers have earned an income from the academy by teaching literature in various languages at universities. Over the centuries, other literary personalities have collaborated with universities and student groups to facilitate literary events, one such being Sumersingh Sahabzade who founded the Patna Kavi Samaj as requested by Patna University Students in the late nineteenth century (Ritter, 2010: 258). Hariaudh, a poet of the Braj Bhasha language (the precursor to present day Hindi), writing in the early twentieth century, upon retirement from government service, is known to have turned down an offer to work in a court, and instead to have taken up an offer to work in a university (Ritter, 2010: 265). However, these jobs within the academy are available only to a handful of writers, and are further restricted to the few with relevant qualifications in literary studies. These connections have not yet materialised into the “Program Era” (McGurl, 2009) of Creative Writing courses offered by the academy.

Creative Writing programs, at both undergraduate and postgraduate level in universities across the world, act as training grounds for emerging writers, even as they push the field further towards credentialisation and a formalised sense of literary professionalisation. However they also perform another important role in the field, and that is to provide jobs for writers. Most Creative Writing programs are staffed by permanent and temporary workers who themselves are writers, offering a source of income that is related to their writing practice. Creative Writing training in India is usually offered on a short-term basis, such as workshops for a few days, or a one term writing class in select universities. For Salma, the possibility of being accepted into a Creative Writing course and then being offered teaching, as a means of subsidising one’s writing practice, is an attractive one but is unattainable currently in India. Preeti says that teaching in a Creative Writing program would be a useful way to keep in touch with the field. She says, “I wish you had that here in India as well because

294 that’s perfect…It gives you time to research….It’s just more connected with your field than anything else really is”.

The English language

English as a language dominates the broader Indian literary field in terms of prestige. One reason is its speakers and writers “benefit from colonial and neocolonial structures” (Narayanan, 2012: 13) including the lucrative Anglo-American publishing circuits. These structures are much less enabling for writers and translators working in the other Indian languages, often under tougher economic and symbolic constraints. This prestige that the English language has enjoyed is related to the politics of language formation after Independence, and economic policies designed to empower English speakers and the English language, as well as the rise of English as the global language of employment (Narayanan, 2012: 15). However, Indian literature in English struggles for legitimacy in the larger field of power as it is sometimes considered to be incapable of representing Indian culture, unlike literature in other Indian languages which are perceived as being better representative of the “lived experiences” (Narayanan, 2012: 12) of their writers. This opposition to the English language in India is rejected by many scholars who consider English as a legitimate Indian language (see Prasad, 2011: 4). The English language, and language in general, is considered to be a “tool of self-fashioning” (Ashcroft, 2009: 101) despite its “affective dimension” (Ashcroft, 2008: 14) rather than merely a cultural symbol or “a repository of cultural contents” (Ashcroft, 2009: 4). Some scholars suggest that there are many different kinds of English used across India (Prasad, 2011: 76; Snell and Kothari, 2011) leading to the formulation of Indian writing in English, not as literature written in a homogenous Indian English, but as “Indian literature written in English” (Prasad, 2011: 76)

One enfranchising application of this argument for the use of English as a “tool of self-fashioning” (Ashcroft, 2009: 101) is illustrated by its enthusiastic uptake by some Dalit communities. Some have argued that the English language, a language that has no memory of caste oppression unlike other Indian languages, has been a tool for empowerment, providing the oppressed castes with “agency, articulation, recognition and justice” (Kothari, 2013: 60) as well as “revealing the internalisation of caste

295 hegemony” (Kothari, 2013: 62) not least because it has no scriptural injunctions against the learning of it (Anand, 1999). There is even a regular celebration of the birthday of Thomas Macaulay, reviled in India by some for his hand in cementing the teaching of the English language in India, with the worshipping of “Goddess English” by some Dalit communities because of the debt of gratitude they feel they owe to the English language (Gopinath, 2006; Prasad, 2011: 19-22).

This empowering take-up of the English language by Dalit communities is still available only to a few. Post-millennial India continues to be plagued in overtly violent as well as covert ways, by a casteist, Brahmanical patriarchal society (for accounts of the lived experiences amidst the unspeakable oppression of Dalit communites, see especially the work of the Dalit writers Ilaiah, 1996; Limbale, 2004), privileging upper caste Hindu men over everyone else, as recent public protests have highlighted e.g. against sexual assault on women in public spaces (Phadke, 2013) and against a resurgent right-wing Hindutva wave (Heredia, 2015; Pandey, 2014). Industry expert Vinutha Mallya points to numerous divides within India due to “a lack of access and affordability, poor infrastructure, and social inequalities” (Mallya, 2014: 75). For example, Dalit writers, including those who write in English, are constrained by a field that is largely dominated by upper caste publishers and editors (Limbale, 2004: 131).

Indian publishing in English, by its very nature and focus on the English language, excludes a majority of the Indian population who do not have access to the English language. Thus the Indian literary field in the English language is marked as a small but elite field, a field of privilege, populated by the political and economic elites, the upper classes and upper castes of India, who have access to an education in the English language and in whose hands the press and political power are largely concentrated. However, when speaking of the economic success of Indian writers in English, this privilege must be read in relation to the small readership for literary fiction in English in India. To work as a writer in the English language in India is to come to accept low payments from one’s writing. As Veeru, a writer and editor notes:

…given the size of the country we have a very small reading public [in English]. And that immediately makes it unviable for any publisher to pay a

296 writer more than a certain sum. And often publishers are spending their own money and not earning any themselves and they can’t afford to pay anyone either. So that all kind of becomes this cycle of low payment. No payment. No payments on time.

Therefore, despite all the status and prestige that accompanies literary professionalism for writers working in English, these writers still need to find work outside of the economically unprofitable practice of writing fiction. Some writers have the financial support of their families, marking the particular class background of Indian writers in English. Veeru says:

Most English writers in India are from a class that can afford to sit back and they don't need to worry about where their next meal is coming from usually. Because they generally belong to the upper middle class people. They have other sources of income. Perhaps over generations. Family money…Then you have the category of the bureaucrat, technocrat, MBA kind of people who come into writing…the moment you say English, it’s already upper middle class.

These complexities of working in the English language reinforce the need for writers without family or other wealth to lead a “double life.” This is because the small size of the field means fewer opportunities and the need for multi-tasking: writers also run literary festivals, literary agents write books, editors at publishing houses start up their own literary agencies, and writers edit the literary pages of magazines. In order to legitimise their positions in the field, and to better compete for the diminishing pool of resources, some emerging writers in India undergo long periods working gratis within the literary field, engaging in work other than their own writing, such as starting and editing literary journals, and curating literary festivals, before getting published. This is discussed in more detail in the next chapter.

This chapter has described the unique conditions of the Indian literary field in English: its rapid growth encumbered by uncertainty; a sense of entanglement between the autonomous and heteronomous dimensions of the field and between global and local publishers; and struggles for support in a regressive political climate,

297 with inadequate state support, tenuous links with academia and a contested position in relation to the English language. These conditions enable yet constrain writers as they engage with the field, intensifying the need to lead a double life as they attempt to strike a workable balance between the effort to write fiction and the need to earn a living.

The next chapter provides a discussion of how the complex, often antithetical, sometimes symbiotic relationship between writers and money is inextricably intertwined with the development of the writerly self.

298 Chapter Five: Developing the writerly self

The seeds of a precarious relationship between writers and money are sown right from the time writers begin to acquire a set of writerly dispositions, and continue through to the ways in which they negotiate the inherent plurality of their lives, conditioned by the unique features of the Indian literary field. This chapter explores how writers cope with these conditions of the field as they develop a sense of themselves as writers, one aspect of the pursuit of a literary career. It unfolds in four sections. The first section provides some historical background in relation to the conflicted relationship between writers and money in India. The second section presents a discussion of the development of the writerly habitus, which is often inseparable from insecurity about money. It explores the often tentative, qualified decision to name oneself a writer, tied as this decision is to the legitimacy provided by literary professionalism through publication, but also to the hope of economic professionalism through earning an income from one’s writing influenced by recent developments in the literary field. The third section discusses the ways in which some writers seek out support from literary communities. The fourth section of this chapter discusses the ways in which writers manage their multiple investments in the literary and non-literary aspects of their lives. This is explored in relation to their mobility in and out of multiple fields. In this way this chapter argues that the development of the writerly self is inextricably entwined with a sense of insecurity about money as well as a sense of optimism about earning financial reward from writing literary fiction.

Indian conceptions of authorship

There are a diversity of opinions in relation to Indian conceptions of authorship Historical studies point to the fluidity of the concept. As the historian Sheldon Pollock notes, “pre-colonial South Asia knew multiple temporalities (as it knew multiple spatialities both pragmatic and cosmic) as well as multiple modes of representing and using the past and of denying and arresting the past” (Pollock, 2001: 22). This history of spatial and temporal diversity influencing modes of representation infuses contemporary India too, fully integrated though it is with the global capitalist

299 economy, making it almost impossible to generalise about conceptions of authorship. In relation to the Tamil Bhakti poetic tradition, which began to proliferate between the sixth and the ninth centuries CE mainly in the Tamil-speaking south of India before spreading to other parts of present-day India, “…the authors of these poems are regarded as saints and the experience embodied in these poems is no less than the experience of God (Cutler, 1987: 1; Divya, 2011). This aspect of divine embodiment tied to literary authorship includes a focus on mimesis. This may been seen in relation to the performance of kirtan, which is a meditative performance tradition that sometimes involves only singing but can also include heterogeneous oral performance traditions where dance, music, theatre, oration, audience participation, and moral narration mix to varying degrees in the different kinds of kirtan in different parts of South Asia. (Novetzke, 2003: 220). The mythic sage Narada is considered to be the first kirtankar, or author-performer of kirtan, by many traditions in India. In describing one particular kirtan performance, Novetzke notes that throughout, “the kirtankar has dressed like, and in some sense, acted the part of Narada. The performer is thus engaged in mimesis of the great sage, a kind of imitation that nonetheless requires the kirtankar to also be spontaneous and inventive in the performance itself” (Novetzke, 2003: 226).

The vectors of mimesis, spontaneity, oral and scribal literary production intersecting in a single performance suggest that the shift from what Elizabeth Eisenstein calls a hearing public to a reading public (Eisenstein, 2009 [1979]: 129), or orality to print culture, didn't quite occur in as straightforward fashion in India as it did in some parts of the West. In some parts of India, such as nineteenth century Calcutta, print culture was a site of struggle and contest as it intersected with oral and physical performative traditions, and “far from displacing earlier traditions and freezing writing habits into standardized norms, actually continued and expanded much of the earlier conventions” (Ghosh, 2006: 187-188). Further, focusing specifically on the Namdev tradition of kirtan, Novetzke suggests, “literate and illiterate are synchronic, not diachronic; that is, we see no teleology of development from orality to writing but rather a system where orality conditions and trumps writing. We have a figure actively presented as illiterate—Namdev—set amid a decidedly literate (and scholarly) community, sharing the same space, time, geography, and cognition as his literate fellows” (Novetzke, 2003: 237). As Novetzke further points out, “the idea of authorship in the Namdev

300 tradition has not taken as its central concept the sovereign, creative author. Instead, the tradition has kept at its core a corporate model of authorship. Through the medium of print, as well as through the medium of performance, this corporate configuration has shifted and expanded but has not transformed itself into a mirror image of the modern Western author that Eisenstein, for example, sees produced through the world of print” (Novetzke, 2003: 241).

Another aspect of authorship in India, albeit in relation to scholarly work, is the activity of appropriation feeding off unequal power structures linked to colonialism. As Tavakoli-Targhi notes, “European students of the Orient, rather than initiating original and scientific studies, relied heavily on the research findings of native scholars. By rendering these works into English the colonial officers in India fabricated scholarly credentials for themselves, and by publishing these works under their own names, gained prominence as Oriental scholars back home. The process of translation and publication enabled the Europeans to obliterate the traces of the native producers of these works and thus divest them of authorship and originality, attributes which came to be recognised as the distinguishing marks of European scholars of the Orient” (Tavakoli-Targhi, 2011: 271).

Ulrike Stark suggests that the category of the “professional author who could live by his writing” (Stark, 2007: 80) came into being in the late nineteenth century in India with the proliferation of print and the new genres of fictional literature (ibid.). Venkatachalapathy suggests a relational conception of the author, with reference to Tamil culture. He argues that the author is not merely the producer of a text, but a product of the changing relations between producers, the work, and the public (see A.R.Venkatachalapathy, 2013, 2012: 99-111). Although Guha-Thakurta focuses on the making of Indian art, she offers a similarly relational concept of the ‘authorship’ of a work of art as “a complex set of mediations between artists, patrons, critics, and a ‘public’, ambiguous but always present” (Guha-Thakurta, 1992: 2).

A brief summary of Western notions of authorship is provided below.

301 Western conceptions of authorship

Michel Foucault famously asked “What is an Author?” (Foucault, 1969). Foucault notes that the author’s name:

manifests the appearance of a certain discursive set and indicates the status of this discourse within a society and a culture...there are a certain number of discourses that are endowed with the “author function”... [which is] the result of a complex operation which constructs a certain rational being that we call ‘author’ (Foucault, 1969: 107-110).

This discursively constructed nature of authorship is far from the romantic understanding of authorship and of the author that persists even today. For instance, contemporary conceptions of the writer resonate with the common conception of the artist as “a unique and inspired individual who expresses and communicates his or her unique vision through the artwork” (Sawyer, 2011: 22). This common conception, as Sawyer points out, is only about 200 years old (ibid.).

According to the medieval view of authorship, the author was seen as a scriptor through whom the divine script was performed (Burke, 1995). During the Renaissance, individual genius was celebrated, and original productions were valued over neo-classical imitation (Burke, 1995). This was followed by Romanticism’s validation of inspiration and imagination. This is where the notion of the inspired creator took precedence (Burke, 1995), and laid the foundations for today’s persistent rhetoric of intellectual and artistic autonomy from the world of commerce and economic profit. Many also attribute current notions of the sole author to Romantic ideals of the inspired artist (Burke, 1995; Shanken, 2007). A reaction to this Romantic tradition then followed, with the impersonal push of New Criticism which separated the work from the context in which it was created (Burke, 1995), and with Roland Barthes’ ([1968] 2006) contentious call for the birth of the reader to come at the cost of the death of the author (Burke, 1995). As Burke notes, the contextualised nature of authorship has assumed an even stronger position with the discourses of New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, and Postcolonialism (Burke, 1995), Feminism and Gender Studies. The cultural context of authorship is an important consideration,

302 especially when we contrast traditional Indigenous notions of authorship as collectivist with little regard for contemporary first-world notions of individual authorship (Murphie & Potts, 2003). Yet even today, the most persistent conceptualisation of the artist or writer continues to hinge on the Romantic and Modernist notions of intellectual and artistic autonomy from the world of commerce and economic profit. Yet the lived-reality of most writers, including writers in Australia, the UK, the USA as discussed in Chapter One, involves negotiating a complex relationship with money, leading a “double life” (Lahire, 2010b).

Thus, Indian conceptions of authorship developed differently from Western conceptions of authorship, as discussed above.

Some historical background relating to writers and money

The idea of the writer or author or poet in India is inseparable from a sense of insecurity about money, as discussed above. The history of literary cultures in India furnishes us with numerous examples of how Indian writers have always had to negotiate a conflicted relationship with economic profit as they attempted to practice their craft and participate in the literary field, while simultaneously trying to earn a living.

Court patronage was the chief way in which writers working in Sanskrit, Urdu, and many other languages earned a living across pre-colonial and colonial India. Examples include the Sultan’s courts in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that supported writers of vernacular poetry in the Dakkani and Gujri languages (Orsini, 2010: 5,8), the sixteenth century Bundela court of Orchha where riti poetry developed in the Braj Bhasha language (Orsini, 2010: 6), and the Mughal courts in North India that provided patronage to the great Urdu poets such as Mir, and Mirza Ghalib. One eminent poet of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century writing in Braj Bhasha, Hariaudh, maintained a friendship with an influential local personage, Sumersingh Sahabzade, who shared his library with him and introduced him to his first publisher (Ritter, 2010: 257). In the south of India, Tamil society, even as far back as the pre- Christian era, was sustained by patronage of various kinds, from tribal chieftains during the Sangam period (first century BCE to third century CE) to feudal lords and

303 royalty from the fifth to the eighth centuries (Venkatachalapathy, 2012: 20-21). The Nayakkar kings and their successors, religious matams or mutts/monasteries were the patrons of Tamil art and literature (Venkatachalapathy, 2012: 21).

The idea of the writer in India is also infused with a sense of precariousness in relation to negotiating the “the internal plurality” (Lahire, 2003: 343-344) of life as a writer. Ritter tells us about the Braj Bhasha poets writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Northern India, who earned their living as teachers, merchants, government servants, while also availing themselves of court patronage (Ritter, 2010: 250-255). In the early twentieth century, the famous Tamil scholar and author Maraimalai Adigal who established a printing press and began to self-publish his work is said to have complained “By doing singly the works of an author, printer, publisher, proof reader, foreman, clerk, steward, etc., I am left little time for dining, sleeping, resting and exercising.” (Venkatachalapathy, 2012: 103).

In twentieth and twenty-first century India, the public perception of writers seems to have been influenced partly by this historical sense of writers needing patronage and influential connections of some sort and also sometimes needing to take on other kinds of work in order to survive. But it is also fed by two recent occurrences in the Indian literary field as discussed in relation to the growth of the field in the previous chapter: firstly, the winning of high profile international literary awards such as the Booker/Man-Booker Prize by four Indian writers since 1981 - Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, and Arvind Adiga - and the Pulitzer Prize by Jhumpa Lahiri, and secondly, the exponential sales of post-millennial pulp-fiction written and published in India. The media coverage of both the Booker Prize, with attendant discussions of advances, prize money and sales in UK or US currency, astronomical sums when converted into the humble Indian Rupee, as well as the continuing media coverage of the unforeseen sales of pulp fiction in India by authors such as Chetan Bhagat, Amish Tripathi, and Ravinder Singh, have highlighted the economic profit associated with writing, the spectacular sums of money that some writers can earn (Greenlees, 2008; Lopez, 2013; Nair, 2012; PTI, 2014; A. Roy, 2009; Singh, 2012; Soofi, 2013).

304 Some writers in this study have contended with these opposing views. For instance, Preeti says that when people found out that she is a writer, “You either get asked, ‘Oh really? Can you make a living as a writer?’ Or they think you’re a millionaire because you’re a writer.”

In reality, very few writers earn a living from writing fiction in India today. Jehangir, who has an insider’s knowledge of the field as a writer, reviewer, and journalist, says:

There maybe two dozen Indian who earn their living through writing. There must be millions of Indians who are living through writing say textbooks or writing journalism. I’m talking about actual fiction. I would say two dozen is a vast, vast exaggeration.

There is thus a duality in the public perception of writers in India: a historically-based sense that writers need patronage and connections, and also a day job in order to survive, while at the same time an impression based on recent public discourse focused on large advances and glittering prizes that writers can earn high incomes. This duality in the public perception of writers has also contributed to shaping the dispositions of writers working in post-millennial India, conditioning the way they think about themselves as writers, influencing their desire to achieve literary success with the hope of perhaps emulating the economic success of some recently celebrated Indian writers.

A writerly habitus

Many writers who participated in this study seemed to understand the challenges before them in relation to earning an income from writing fiction.. At a writing group observed for this study, most writers I spoke with had long since made sure that they had a financial security blanket either by working in day jobs or through support from family. At an Open Mic event in Mumbai I observed in 2011, Meena, a writer who has been coming to the weekly Open Mic for three months in a row, introduced herself to the audience as “a brand manager by day for [a multinational food company] and a poet not by night but by the side” At the same event, another writer, Rabia, told me that she supports herself by working as the head of the “content team”

305 at a social media agency. This need of writers to ensure that they have an alternative source of income has deep roots within the larger field of power in India. As Jehangir notes:

… parents in my generation made no bones about the threat of poverty being a very real one…‘Don’t study, you know you’ll end up in the streets begging’ [was] said to you very frequently…So I think the neurosis of money is part of my generation’s psyche…especially the middle class…you confront very early the possibility that you may be penniless.

The abject poverty of large swathes of the Indian population is often posited as a threatening possibility as well as a reminder to the privileged middle classes, a minority in India, of what may happen to them if stripped of education and job security.

When Jehangir was growing up, the thought of becoming a writer did not occur to him. He says:

I didn’t know that there was money in writing. I didn’t know that it was a career. When I was growing up boys who were doing well in school were asked whether they wanted to be engineers or doctors and after having thought about it for a while, I thought, I don’t want to be an engineer, so I want to be a doctor.

The decision to name oneself as a writer can be a crucial moment in the development of the writerly self. Although many writers in this study thought of themselves as writers from a very early age, especially because of encouragement from family, school, and university teachers, there is usually reluctance on the part of writers to publicly name themselves as writers, to feel comfortable calling themselves writers. This decision is often shrouded in uncertainty. It is taken almost tentatively, usually only when the writer is legitimised by the prestige of publication or the conferral of a literary prize. The act of calling oneself a writer in public is also shackled with the idea of labour being valid only if you can earn money or recognition from it. The

306 validation that Salma received for her stories in the college magazine positively influenced her sense of herself as a writer. For Bina, on the other hand, she gave herself permission to think of herself as a writer only when she won a prize. She says, “I got a second prize in a [University level] short story competition, and that settled it. I was a short story writer”. For Razia, despite having a large readership from her weekly online column and now from her weekly series of short stories that she self- publishes on her blog, she is still hesitant about calling herself a writer. She says:

I think I always saw myself as a writer, [but] I’m not sure whether even today I can call myself a writer because if you’re looking at it as a profession then it has to pay the bills and it still doesn’t do that. So, more than a writer, I’d say I write…[I’m an] internal communications professional. I mean unless at some point things do break even. If I can take off from a day job and write, it’s great.

For Razia, the decision to name herself a writer in public is inextricable from economic professionalism. Although Alice hoped to become a writer all through her childhood, it was only upon publication that she felt comfortable with the title of writer. She says:

I think for me publishing was the key to calling myself a writer, or a novelist…if you can be published it’s a sort of objective validation of your work that you have been published and your work is out there. Otherwise it’s really in your head…so I think the more I got published and definitely after my first novel came out I started to feel OK I can call myself a writer now.

The Indian literary field is in a dominated position within the larger field of power, in a country with a neoliberal agenda on the global stage, trying to catch-up with the West. Therefore, the long hours writers spend writing into a notebook, or typing on a typewriter or computer, hunting for the most accurate language to describe a situation, the perfect synonym, words, sentences, stories, the engagement with “meaning- making practice first and foremost” (McGuigan, 2013: 99) as McGuigan describes the specificity of cultural work, is not considered legitimate work. It is sometimes considered a frivolous hobby mainly because economic and/or symbolic reward is not immediately tangible. Preeti says:

307

I speak from a Bombay space. We’re the commercial hub. Even now, apart from the literary community and academia and all that, writing is not considered a profession at all…It’s not like a banker, you know, who works everyday. It is not considered work. I think it will take a long time for that to change.

However, the growth of the field, as discussed in Chapter Two, has contributed to a change in the public perception of writers. Alice points to the idea of being a writer gaining traction in India because of its associations with a certain lifestyle. She says:

I think writing books within the English speaking world [in India] is becoming a more and more recognisable thing to do…writers have become more visible and there are more outlets for books to travel …people from IT and banking and all kinds of professions are now writing books.

Alice’s account resonates with the “romantic ideals of working in the ‘creative industries’” (Chan, 2013c: 23) that motivate people across the world. More importantly for this study, her account also suggests a small but perceptible shift in the way some writers think about themselves, a reshaping of the writerly habitus in relation to money and literary legitimacy. Razia, an emerging writer, hopes to make a living from writing fiction once her collection of short stories has been published. Another writer, Preeti, thinks that if you have a good literary agent, it may be possible to earn a living from writing fiction one day.

Given the rapid growth of the publishing field, the possibility of earning a living from fiction in India today shapes the way some writers develop a writerly disposition. A lucrative literary career is something that has entered the realm of possibility for some writers, even if only as a mirage created by the large advances and glittering prizes recently won by some Indian writers, and the unprecedented success of ‘pulp fiction’ writers as noted earlier. Thus the perception of literary legitimacy itself is undergoing a slight but detectable shift.

308 Literary communities

In order to grow as a writer and develop one’s writing practice, some writers feel the need to reach out to and be supported by a community of writers, by a “web of allegiances, acknowledged and unacknowledged...debts and apprenticeships, conscious and unconscious” (Subramaniam, 2007) through socialisation into a community of writers. The seeking out of a support system, is a survival strategy shared by writers across the world, and has a long history in Indian literary cultures. For example, poets like Ratnakar, writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the Braj Bhasha language in North India joined the Kashi Kavi Samaj (Ritter, 2010: 266), the contemporary equivalent of a writers’ group. A support system in contemporary India can take different forms, as writers seek to be nourished and nurtured in their writing practice, and in turn provide a source of support to their peers.

Fieldwork for this study suggests that it is literary gatherings such as Open Mic events where writers read/perform their work out to a public audience, and writers groups where writers give and receive feedback on their work, which seem to be ways in which this need for support is served, and writerly dispositions acquired.

The Open Mic event taps into ancient oral literary practices, evoking, even if inadvertently, some aspects of the oral storytelling tradition of Dastangoi, performed in royal courts and public spaces in northern India between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, and now revived by a group of ‘dastangos’ in contemporary India (Farooqui, 2010a, 2010b; M. Roy & Roy, 2014). However, as shown in this study, the Open Mic event serves specific purposes in contemporary India. Jehangir was part of a circle of poets that have gone on to write fiction and are now respected and influential people in the Indian literary field. As Jehangir tells us:

Writers nurture other writers. Bombay’s the only city that had a poetry circle that for more 10 years met every week and then every month to discuss poetry…when people came to the circle they listened. They offered workshop criticism. They didn’t offer themes and tensions…They looked at the poem as machine and they said let’s get this machine to be more efficient.

309

In the wake of this poetry circle came Caferati, a writers’ collective that now hosts monthly Open Mic events in New Delhi and Mumbai, as well as writers’ groups or “read meets” in various Indian cities depending on the time and inclination of its members. There is inadequate support infrastructure for writers, such as the absence of formal instruction within the academy as noted earlier. The support provided by more informal literary communities, such as those created by Open Mic events and read meets, becomes a valuable space where techniques about the craft of writing, as well as tacit knowledge about how to be a writer in India, may be acquired. For Salma, the investment of time in the Caferati writing group was worthwhile because it exposed her to some good writing from other members of the group, and helped create social relations with other writers who went on to achieve recognition and renown both locally and globally.

Multiple investments

The negotiation of multiplicity characterises the experiences of writers in this study. Writers must invest time and energy in front of the page or screen, developing their craft, creating work. They must participate in the literary game, spend time making connections in the field, making themselves known, and getting to know others. They must also simultaneously earn a living, usually from work outside the literary field. This experience of inherent plurality in the lives of writers is not specific to Indian writers, as noted in the previous chapters. It echoes the work of Throsby and Zednik on the multiple job-holdings in non-arts work by practicing artists in Australia (Throsby & Zednik, 2011). It also bears some similarities with the conceptualisation of “protean careers” (Bridgstock, 2005) characterised by “high mobility and low job security; several occupational roles; multiple sources of income; subjective motivations and measures of success; and personal responsibility for career development (including social networks and transferable skills)” (ibid.). Almost all the writers in this study expressed the desire to spend all their time writing rather than having to juggle multiple occupational roles. The necessity of negotiating this plurality is exacerbated by the unique conditions of the Indian literary field. This includes the inadequate support infrastructure for writers in India, as discussed in Chapter Three, particularly the lack of financial support from a state that must address

310 the more immediate life-and-death concerns of its citizens, and the economically unappealing (even if symbolically appealing) literary awards offered in India.

When it comes to developing their craft, writers in India develop methods to cope with the material conditions of their existence, some of which resemble the practices of writers elsewhere. Jehangir, having learnt to silence his internal critic that used to tell him that everyone would know that his work was “just a cheap knock off”, does not brush his teeth in the morning until he has written 1,000 words. Preeti waits until 11:30 am when the car cleaner and the household help have finished their jobs, before she puts on earplugs to block out the noise of traffic while she writes. Salma writes at home, and when she is sick of home she steps out to a café to continue writing. Preeti used to write on the train while commuting to and from work, as well as at work “when the boss wasn’t looking”. However, all of these approaches are contingent upon the availability of time, usually possible because of the “protean careers” (Bridgstock, 2005) of the writers mentioned above.

The writers in this study mobilise a range of survival strategies, which Bourdieu would call “assertive” (see Bourdieu, 1993b: 83) strategies, as newcomers to the field, in order to seek attention, and to establish themselves in the field. The term strategy, as discussed in Chapter Two is used in this study in the sense of being a “product of practical sense” (Lamaison and Bourdieu, 1986: 112), as tacit and pre-reflective, not cynical or rational.

For Veeru, the need to earn a living doing work other than writing fiction, means that he is able to work on his fiction only when there is a deadline to be met. He is unhappy with this situation and aims to develop a writing routine. Berating himself, he says: “If you stop writing for six months it might take you another month to get back to where you had left off and that’s just a waste of time, not counting the waste of time those six months were. If you call yourself a writer, you better write [everyday]”.

Jehangir talks about the financial constraints he faced when writing his novel, which was one of the reasons for him taking twenty-five years to write it. When he was twenty-one he realised whatever he had written of the novel was very bad:

311

So I started again. I was twenty-one and at this point my father was dead so there was an additional kind of responsibility towards the family. I was the sole earning member. I had to provide for my mother and provide for the family so writing became even more difficult and even more complicated because I was teaching seven days a week, mathematics.

Jehangir’s account points to the “suffering” (Lahire, 2010a: 445) linked to the “double life” he endured as he was compelled to weave together the disparate strands of his life: as a grieving son, as a writer trying to maintain an expressive practice, as a mathematics teacher.

Although Preeti was juggling freelance work in journalism and advertising while trying to work on her fiction, the negotiation of the double life that she was leading was a source of frustration, distraction and began to “eat away precious writing time”. She says:

…you can’t refuse work when it comes and you can’t choose when you want to do that work. So ideally I would have liked…six months in the year [working in day jobs] and six months when I am just concentrating on my fiction writing. But it doesn’t work like that and just when you’re in the fiction-writing mode, you get a job and then you can’t refuse it…that’s my biggest challenge so far.

Although Preeti decided to “take a chance” and quit her full-time job, knowing she could count on the financial support of her husband, she continues to earn an income doing freelance work as a copywriter, travel writer, and book reviewer, while also being partly supported by her husband. However, not having to work full-time provides her with more time to spend on developing her craft, working on her fiction.

For Alice, a mid-career writer, the sense of writing full-time without worrying about earning a living is associated with a sense of indulgence, even though she has had three novels published to critical acclaim. She says:

312 To make money from the books, it’s unrealistic…there are very few people who would just have the luxury to sit back and dream about their books and write them slowly. Who has that kind of luxury? Almost no one. Everyone has to make a living.

The multiple investments that writers make as they leave the field to earn a living, and return to it to play the literary game, has numerous consequences such as lengthening the time it takes to get published, finding paid work in jobs related to writing fiction, and working for free in the literary field in order to build connections that may help with getting published.

Jehangir says that in order to make a living he “wrote an article a day for the first ten years of my writing career” besides giving private tuitions in mathematics. As noted earlier, he took twenty-five years to get his novel published. Jehangir’s book won an award in India and has since been published in the US and UK and distributed across the globe. However, he still continues to engage in the literary game, needing to leave the literary field and return periodically, as he teaches part-time in an institution of higher education.

Razia took time off from her career in advertising to work on her collection of short stories. However, she has since gone back to work as, having grown up exposed to feminist ideas, the thought of being financially dependent on her partner has been challenging. This has slowed down the process of finishing her manuscript and trying to find the right publisher.

Although Bina has been writing both fiction and non-fiction for many years while raising children, as she followed her husband who worked in the armed forces, from one posting to another, it is her husband who ironically continues to financially support the family as a journalist. After he retired he began to write journalistic features for trade magazines connected to his field and began to get paid for his work. She describes the family situation by saying:

313 I would say that he’s the prosperous writer and I’m the writer in the attic just about making ends meet because creative writing is not a paying line unless you happen to be very famous.

She continues to write literary fiction, but the necessity of investing time and effort outside of the field for many years means that she is not a beneficiary of a “winner takes all” (Abbing, 2002: 107) economy, being unable to earn a living wage from her writing.

Some survival strategies employed by writers include doing paid work within the literary field, as a way to legitimise their positions in the field. This also often aids in acquiring a stronger set of writerly dispositions. Veeru supports himself by working for a couple of literary entities funded by Indian and overseas organizations. He says, “I don't earn a living as a writer actually. I do earn a living by doing things around writing.”

Salma notes that a lot of writers get jobs in publishing because it is connected to the skills they have developed as writers:

A lot of people get into publishing for a job. It’s not like you know they’re editors who decided OK I must now write a novel. There were probably people somewhere were interested in reading and writing and said that ‘OK let me try this for a while.’ I know lots of aspiring writers who joined publishing only because they’re so sick of every other job prospect and [think] ‘OK at least editing is something I can do. I have a skill…I know how to read, I know how to give feedback I know how to correct grammar. It’s either that or journalism and I’d rather take that than journalism’.

Alice was able to mobilise her position as a published writer to find work related to writing fiction. She says:

I think it was important that I had already published books and then got a job as an editor. I’m not making money directly from the novels but the novels have helped me get work in other things…it expands your opportunities.

314

The position of being a published novelist provided Alice with access to social networks and status, enabling her to create a new position for herself in the field as an editor. This position in turn enabled the accumulation of more social capital, which helped Alice entrench herself more firmly within the field.

However, for many writers, paid work in publishing and editing is not an option in a small, elite field. They must make the pragmatic decision to work for free in the literary field in their pursuit of a literary career. They choose to make an investment of time and effort that they hope will pay off in some way. Veeru’s survival strategies, for example, are indicative of the kinds of work writers undertake in order to access networks that will help them navigate the path to publication. As an unpublished writer, Veeru founded a literary journal along with a fellow aspiring writer. He tells us that he decided to start the journal for two reasons:

One, which is the official reason, is that it was one of the first literary magazines, like literary literary magazines online…[it] encompassed all sorts of genres and all languages, which we thought was required. The unofficial reason was that we were both unpublished, struggling writers and we thought this might be a good way to get some attention.

This position as an editor of a literary journal helped Veeru negotiate some of the constraints of the field, such as lack of easy access to publishers for those with little social capital, and also helped him achieve his goal of publication. He says:

I do have two books now… I attribute it to the people we gradually came to know over the course of running [the journal]. Like [Person X]…I’d approached him for some of his poems for [the journal], and that's how we kind of started talking and getting to know each other. Then I sent him a draft of my translations and he was like, we should publish this in the magazine he runs. So, I would attribute my publications to [the journal] and to the people I got to know because of that.

315 Veeru didn't receive any economic reward in the course of founding and editing a literary journal. On the contrary, he invested at an economic loss, putting in money from his own pocket, to fund the running of the literary journal. However, his multiple investments of time and money and simultaneous investments in his day jobs, paid off in symbolic returns. He developed valuable skills, and connections with people who contributed to the publication of his books. Veeru’s honest acknowledgement of the “ensemble” that helped him develop a sense of himself as a writer, and his reciprocal contribution to shaping the field through the investments of time and money he made to publish his literary journal, suggests that his choices paid off and helped him towards literary professionalism. For Veeru, part of playing the literary game, was to stay in the field to work as a literary editor for free, while leaving the field to earn a living, and returning to it to work on his writing and publish his books.

This chapter has explored the complicated and precarious relationship between writers and financial reward that infuses the development of the writing self in the pursuit of a literary career. Spending time on developing one’s writing, grappling with the decision to call oneself a writer, seeking out communities of support, subjecting oneself to the instabilities of multiple job holdings, working in paid roles and investing in unpaid roles within the Indian literary field, are some ways that writers develop a sense of themselves as writers, and legitimise their positions within the field. Thus the development of the writerly self is inextricably interwoven with a sense of insecurity about money yet also hopeful of the perceived economic opportunities offered by the field, necessitating a constant process of negotiation of the double life.

316 Chapter Six: Reaching for success

The peculiarities of the Indian literary field affect the development of the writerly self, and the quest for success, as writers pursue a literary career. Chapter Four explored the development of the writerly self, imbued as it is with insecure yet hopeful associations with money as writers lead a “double life”. This chapter focuses on the quest for success as writers encounter much uncertainty while engaging in the literary game. The idea of success for the writers in this study involves a balancing act between the desire for economic security and the desire for literary success through recognition, renown, and honour. Publication is the first stepping-stone to different kinds of success. In navigating the uncertain path to publication while leading a “double life”, writers must weigh their aspiration for success through consecration by the literary world alongside their need for economic security. Writers struggle to find ways to maximise economic profit while being careful not to be seen as shameless self-promoters in their quest for different kinds of success. This dilemma further intensifies the adversarial relationship they have with money. This chapter explores these knotty issues in three sections. The first section provides a brief discussion of the inherent duality present in the meaning of success for Indian writers, entwined and laced as it is with hopes of commercial success as well as literary success in the form of recognition and renown. The second section discusses some of the strategies employed by writers as they interact with literary agents and publishers on the precarious path to publication, with a focus on two contrasting publishing journeys. The third section discusses the uncertainties and adversarial elements contained in the quest for success that writers must hold together once they have been published, as they seek further consecration from the field through the book launch, writers’ festivals, and social network sites.

The meaning of success

The participants in this study expressed many different responses to questions about the meaning of success and how it may be achieved. Yet the common thread that runs through these responses suggests that writers are continuously grappling with ways to

317 achieve symbolic success in the form of excellence, prestige, honour, recognition and renown, not only by the general public but especially by those whose opinions they value and who share the illusio, or belief in the game (see Bourdieu, 1998: 76-77) that is played in the literary field. At the same time they hope their works achieve commercial success and provide some economic reward. For Razia, success has many layers. She says:

If I can write full time that means I have made it commercially… I think success would also be writing that one book…which you know you would have hit something beyond yourself.

This positing of commercial success alongside the possibility of grasping “something beyond yourself”, a way of describing the pursuit of excellence, resonates in some ways with the idea of “cultural transcendence” (Chan, 2016 Forthcoming) which relates to that aspect of creative practice where the artist seeks reinterpretation, a reaching out beyond the self.

For Preeti, there is some uncertainty inherent in the idea of success. She says:

I really don’t know what makes a successful writer and it’s certainly not being a bestselling writer because if I was to write a badly written book which sold 10,000 copies, you are successful commercially but not as a writer.

Preeti’s account suggests that while success is an ambiguous term for her, she accords more value to symbolic success, to creating a well-written book, being considered a ‘good’ writer in the eyes of the literary establishment. In the “struggle to impose the legitimate definition of literary or artistic production” (Bourdieu, 1993b: 46), Preeti’s account indicates that she is positioned within the autonomous dimension of the literary field, where high art or high-brow literary works are valued rather than catering to the mass market and selling 10,000 books.

For Bina, success includes the conferral of symbolic capital in the form of recognition. She notes that when her short story was broadcast on the BBC, the prestige associated

318 with the BBC brand provided recognition and renown in the eyes of some readers and listeners. However it was also of no consequence to those who did not share the illusio of the field. She says:

Before it was broadcast I wrote to various relatives and all [asking them to] listen on such a day at such a time…I realized that most of them didn’t. That was also part of the maturing of the writer. You just keep writing and don’t expect that kind of enthusiasm for your writing from everyone.

For Bina, a sense of equanimity is useful when dealing with success. Encountering success is linked with pleasure derived from being recognised as a writer. She says:

There is something to publishing a book and then your picture comes in the paper and then people recognize you’re the author…there will be some who will boost your confidence and may come from unexpected directions…readers from 6 years old to 80 plus and various backgrounds…people have e-mailed me, and phoned me and told me in the street and all that…at the end of the road a little girl said “you’re the author!”…what a sweet thing, no?

Although it is not explicitly tied to economic reward, recognition from the public is one aspect of success for Bina, providing a sense of legitimacy and validation of her work as a writer.

Interacting with literary agents and publishers

On the writers’ journey, the intersection with literary agents and publishing houses is a crucial one. Publishing, after all, is a “social practice” (Venkatachalapathy, 2012: 15). It is through creating and maintaining social relations with literary agents and publishers, who help writers negotiate the precarious relationship with economic capital, that writers move closer towards their goal of getting published.

The history of Indian writing in English and other languages is entwined with the history of self-publishing, as noted in the previous chapter (see A. Gupta &

319 Chakravorty, 2004a; Venkatachalapathy, 2012). Increasingly today, in a swiftly changing literary field, writers are able to harness technological capital to self-publish on the Internet. However, many writers in this study still choose to depend upon literary agents and publishers to confer a “public existence” (Bourdieu, 2008: 123) upon them. This is because literary agents and publishers are more than just intermediaries between the writer and the market. They have the power to consecrate writers through publication and its attendant conferral of prestige and renown. One consequence of the growth of the field is that literary agents and publishers must now work with its Janus-faced character: the global interest in India primarily as a large and lucrative market for Western books has risen at the exact moment when there is a surge in Indians writing fiction, wanting their books sold in the global marketplace (see Gonsalves, 2015 for a discusison of the practices of Indian publishers in a global marketplace such as the Frankfurt Book Fair).

The literary agent

Literary agents today see themselves as “managing the long term career development of their authors” (Thompson, 2012: 86). The work they do includes reading manuscripts and offering editorial advice to writers, preparing proposals and manuscripts for submission to publishers, selling and managing the rights of books across various territories domestically and internationally, maintaining an active social media presence etc. Although literary agents perform different roles from publishers, they are “locked in a system of reciprocal interdependency and mutual benefit” (Thompson, 2012:76) with publishers, performing the tasks of scouting and filtering through the manuscripts of first time writers, and also spreading the risks of judgment between them (Thompson, 2012: 75).

One of the chief roles that literary agents play is representation. In doing so, they “give face” (Goffman, 1967: 9) to writers. As Goffman tells us, “to give face is to arrange for another to take a better line than he might otherwise have been able to take, [and] the other thereby gets face given him, this being one way in which he can gain face” (Goffman, 1967: 9). Giving face is a crucial step on the precarious path to publication, as it enables a writer, through the work of literary agents, and also the

320 work of publishers, to be legitimised. Thus, in the Indian literary field, and in literary fields more generally, the “facework” (Goffman, 1967) performed by the literary agent is a way of physically and symbolically representing the writer, a way of enhancing a writer’s prestige and status, and a way of building a writer’s reputation, all towards the goal of getting published and thereby attempting to accumulate economic and symbolic capital.

Razia says she has “zero contacts in publishing”. Therefore, the “facework” (Goffman, 1967) performed by the literary agent on her behalf has been crucial in furthering her aim of becoming a published writer. This is because her agent knew exactly which market and which publishing house to send Razia’s manuscript. This saved Razia a lot of time and uncertainty that she would have otherwise faced had she chosen to “just cold mail a Penguin or a Harper Collins then I wait three weeks not even knowing whether anybody’s read it or it’s gone into that dead pile”.

Razia notes that she outsourced to her agent the uncomfortable task of negotiating the price with the publisher, preferring to focus on the writing. She maintained an “interest in disinterest” (R. Johnson, 1993: 20) in the field’s taboo on making explicit the details about economic exchange (see Bourdieu, 1998: 96). She says:

I’m very bad at money and talking money…I think a good agent is a great boon because you don't worry about the odds of selling a book, of negotiating the contract, drawing it up, you know, and you’re just focused on what’s the most important thing, which is the writing…I have no idea about the industry and what an agent does is they charge fifteen percent of whatever advance you get so it makes sense because I don’t mind if somebody gets a little bit of that money ’cos they’re working for themselves too and I’m a pretty bad negotiator.

Razia’s reluctance to deal with the economic aspect of the publishing process is not inconsistent with her desire to one day earn a living from writing fiction. It does not mean that she has a lack of interest in the economic aspect of the publishing process. Rather it complements this desire. She chooses to make a pragmatic decision to devolve this part of the process to the literary agent. Convenience may be one reason

321 for this. However it also illuminates another aspect of the precarious relationship with economic capital. She places her trust in this gatekeeper to “give face” (Goffman, 1967: 9) to her, to confer prestige upon her, to get her a good deal with the publishers, and to attempt to secure for her a pathway to economic and symbolic success, without muddying her own hands with the profanity of economic transaction.

Some accounts of writers in this study provide a sense of the value of the word of mouth factor, “that evasive quality, whose workings few would claim to understand” (Todd, 2006: 34) that Todd suggests is a very important aspect of publishing (see Todd, 2006: 29). In relation to the sale of books, the word of mouth factor includes the personal recommendations of books between peers and other social groups that are seen as being knowledgeable, playing a key role in readers’ decisions to buy books. However, this word of mouth factor is also particularly helpful as writers navigate the precarious path to publication. Word of mouth introductions between peers led to Alice finding a literary agent. Alice went to a book fair in Europe in her role as a journalist, to cover the fair for a national magazine. There, a friend of a friend put her in touch with a literary agent who agreed to represent her outside of India.

Jehangir tells us how word of mouth through more senior colleagues, helped him create a connection with Peter, a famous UK-based international literary agent. He says:

I met Peter at the Jaipur literary festival. You know, friends do this for you. [Name of famous writer] introduced me to Peter and said, ‘let’s all have dinner together.’ So we sat around and I told a story and then Peter came up and said, ‘Hey if you are going to write a novel I would like to take a look at it.’

This interest from a famous literary agent spurred Jehangir on to keep working on his manuscript.

While there has been a growth in the number of literary agents in India, and some writers send their manuscripts to them in the first instance, they are still very few in

322 number. Unlike the USA and the UK agent-based markets, in India it is still possible to contact numerous publishers directly, without the help of a literary agent, via the post or the ‘Submissions’ button on publishers’ websites. This is one reason why some literary agents in India today often find themselves in a “fragile and severely compromised” (K. Gupta, 2015) position. The Indian literary field in the English language is a field of privilege, as noted in previous chapters, many writers already have family and other connections with publishers, which they mobilise in order to move closer to their goals of getting published. Again, this leaves literary agents in positions of insecurity. Gargi, one of India’s best known literary agents, tells us that she barely manages to break even. As Gupta notes, some writers get friends to do publishing deals so they don't have to pay an agent’s commission. They approach literary agents only to deal with the problematic aspects of the path to publication, such as approaching the Big 5 in India who have stopped accepting unsolicited submissions, selling the more difficult UK/US rights or Indian language rights (K. Gupta, 2015).

The publisher

The various meanings of the word “publisher” provide an indication of the complexities inherent in the roles that publishers play. In the English language, to publish is to make something known. In Hindi, one of India’s national languages, the word for ‘publisher’ is prakashak, sharing the same root word as “illuminator”. The German word for ‘publisher’ is verlag, and it “derives from the word meaning ‘moneyman’, literally the man who laid out the necessary sum to finance the printing” (Weidhaas, 2007 [2003]: 35). These combined etymologies of the word ‘publisher’ in English, Hindi, and German, continue to shape the way publishers are perceived today. One of the key roles of a publisher today is to acquire content and turn it into a book, and in doing so to build up a list (Thompson, 2012: 19). While this may be seen as the core role of a publisher, most publishers perform a multiplicity of other roles, such as legitimising the creative labour of a writer, converting a creative work into a commodity that can be bought and sold, conferring prestige, honour, and status upon a writer, and acting as conduits for a nation’s thinking about itself and the world.

323 Before a writer is legitimized by publication, s/he has to steer through a series of gatekeeping processes within the publishing house. Junior editors, who perform the first line of gatekeeping processes to the field, sift through the “slush pile”, a term commonly used in the literary field to describe the large volume of unsolicited manuscripts most of which are of poor quality (see Thompson, 2012: 75, 160) in order to find interesting manuscripts. The use of the term “slush pile” reflects the habitus of publishers, pointing to the kind of perception they have of unsolicited manuscripts, a sense of weariness experienced when sifting through these piles. As Shovon, the head of a multinational publishing house tells us:

…most of the slush pile is rubbish. It’s pure garbage. But I’m a firm believer that in that rubbish you might just find a gem. So I make sure that everything that comes to us is read.

While Shovon is confident that most unsolicited manuscripts sent to his publishing house get read, this may not be the most common way that publishers discover new talent. The “slush pile” is growing larger as more people are writing in India. As noted in Chapter Three, Sahara, the head of a multinational publishing house says that the “slush pile” and the workload associated with it grew so unmanageable, that they had to remove the submissions facility on their website. Sahara notes that there are “other ways” through which exceptional manuscripts will come to her attention, referring to social networks, family connections, word of mouth introductions, and recommendations through friends, all of which are linked to the privileged nature of the Indian literary field in the English language.

The next section discusses the strategies used by some writers in this study as they navigated the precarious path to publication. It is suggested that some writers mobilise dispositions of disinterestedness and friendliness in different registers, as assertive or subversive strategies for survival, as discussed in Chapter Two. These survival strategies are mobilised to create and maintain social relations with literary agents and publishers, and also to upset the hierarchy and create new positions in the literary field.

324 Survival strategies of writers on the path to publication

The accounts of writers in this study suggest a diversity of ways in which they connect with publishers. Salma’s account suggests the value of friendly-persistence as a survival strategy in achieving her goal to get published. She describes herself as “naïve and fresh out of college” with “quite mediocre” writing when she first set out to find a publisher in 2002. The field has changed drastically since then, with numerous international and local publishers now positioned in the Indian literary field. However, in 2002, only a couple of the Big 5 publishers had established themselves in India, and there were still only a few local Indian publishers of English language fiction. Salma plucked up the confidence to contact publishers directly. This reliance on confidence resonates with the work of Bilton. He notes that “[a]rtistic careers are notoriously precarious, and an underlying self-confidence and self-belief is a necessary protection against rejection, failure, and self-doubt” (Bilton, 2013: 130). It is her self-belief that propelled Salma to persist in the face of rejection. She tells us about her experience of navigating the path to publication:

I had an idea for a short story book…I was visiting Delhi and I decided to try meeting some publishers because I had, maybe not a full manuscript, but I had a lot of poetry and a few short stories and I wanted to see if the possibility of a book existed….I managed to get a meeting at Rupa through somebody who knew somebody. They met me and they said ‘Short stories maybe. Poetry definitely no.’ I called Kali. They said, ‘Definitely no’. I tried going to meet Penguin but never made it past the lobby…The walls were fairly high.

Despite initially failing to get past some gatekeepers, Salma kept trying various other avenues. She used to write a blog, which she pitched to some publishers as a book of non-fiction. This pitch was accepted by a local Indian publisher. However, the way in which she went about finding a publisher offers a glimpse of the resilience, sense of level-headedness, and especially friendly-persistence often required of writers as they face challenges on the path to publication. This disposition of friendliness mobilised as strategy in the Bourdieusian sense, stood Salma in good stead on the road to getting published. She says she knew some editors and publishers because she kept meeting

325 them at various literary occasions. She also asked friends who had been published to share the names of their editors and publishers:

Some never wrote back which was fine and some people did write back and some jumped at the manuscript and some didn’t quite jump. So the person who kind of jumped most I went to them.

In this way, Salma mobilised friendly-persistence as a strategy, coupled with pragmatic decisions to go with the publishers who showed the most interest. This is quite different from Bina’s account of her path to publication, which provides an example of the Bourdieusian sense of a disinterested disposition. Bina says that she was still working on a few short stories when Rustom, a local Indian publisher contacted her. The government of her state provides a grant towards the publication of work related to the culture of that particular state, and Rustom presented her with this information. She says:

Rustom read a few [of my stories] I think mostly online…He liked the style and this and that, and he got in touch. He said how many stories do you have about [our state]? …I said I’m not ready to publish a collection yet. I wanted to grow, and [make it] a proper collection of stories. He said ‘No, no, no. Write another [book] after that. Get this one out.’

Unlike some writers positioned within the heteronomous dimension of the Indian literary field who self-published their first books and then went on to achieve tremendous economic success, Bina was very emphatic about the way she thinks of herself as a writer. She says:

My policy had always been no self publishing. Because I’m in the traditional mould. If I’m a professional writer they must pay me. Even if they don’t pay me well, they must pay me. Now it is much simpler to self publish than it ever was but that is not even the last resort. It’s not yet on the horizon for me.

For Bina, payment for her work, however meagre it may be, provides a sense of validation of her worth as a writer. She is unwilling to forego this.

326 Two contrasting paths to publication

Jehangir

Jehangir’s “double life”, namely his position in the literary field and in other fields, as a journalist, a reviewer of the fiction of other writers, a published non-fiction author, while being a source of “suffering” (Lahire, 2010a: 445), also provided numerous opportunities for the accumulation of social capital. Jehangir’s first book, a book of nonfiction, was also the first book for his editor-publisher, Sunny, from one of the Big 5 publishing houses in India. Jehangir tells us of how he first met Sunny, and the chain of events, occurring over many years, that led to his novel finally being published. Jehangir says:

Sunny rang me up and said ‘I’m coming to Bombay, can I come and meet you?’…I still remember I was sitting in this big barn-like room in the Times of India…and I saw Sunny coming down that aisle and I felt a sense of relief because I thought, ‘Hey, I’ll be able to work with him. That’s nice’. I like [him].

This positive connection, which in turn was based on a perceived combination of personality and physical characteristics, as he walked down the workplace aisle, led to a long and fruitful partnership. It began, as noted above, with a book of non-fiction that was the first book for both the writer and the editor-publisher and continued over many books. The similarity of the positions of the writer and publisher in the field: Jehangir, as a journalist with a prestigious media company, and Sunny representing a prestigious publishing house, shared similar status in the field, what Bourdieu terms “the affinity of habitus” (Bourdieu, 2004 [2007]: 27).

Jehangir was soon offered a contract for his novel in progress, with the same publishing house. He was paid Rupees 5000, not a large sum, and he signed the contract. Sunny would regularly ring Jehangir to check how things were going. Jehangir would send him some drafts. Sunny would “make encouraging sounds and suggest changes,” and Jehangir would go back to working on his novel, while holding

327 down numerous day jobs. However, after some years, Sunny left the company, leaving Jehangir with no anchor in the publishing house:

In 2010 I got a letter from [name of publishing house] saying, ‘you know, you have signed with us for a novel in the year dot. Our auditors have told us to cancel all contracts that are beyond 7 years okay because the paper trail is getting too much. So all your contracts before this are revoked. Keep the money. We don’t even want the money back.’ Just take your book and f---off basically.

Jehangir says that this letter shocked him, because suddenly there was no certainty to his novel being published. He says, “I was nude before god.” However, within two months, Sunny joined another publishing house, this time, a new, small local house, but with some big names in international publishing attached to it. Jehangir “gave” his novel to Sunny who then published it, and thus conferred a “public existence” (Bourdieu, 2008: 123) upon Jehangir as a published novelist. This conferral of a public existence upon Jehangir was the result of a complex intertwining of the social trajectories of his publishing house, his publisher within that house, and the conditions imposed by the field itself.

Jehangir’s path to publication was facilitated by his already established durable networks developed because of position in the literary field and in other fields. His path to publication was lengthened in part because of his own sense of whether the work was ready or not, but mainly because of his “double life”, by the need to spend most of his time in day jobs thus leaving him with little time to develop his craft. In contrast, Preeti’s path to publication was lengthened because of the uncertainties of the literary game, not just on account of the conditions of her own writing practice but because she just could not find a publisher for a very long time.

Preeti

Preeti’s position in the field as a curator of a small literary festival, a journalist with a travel magazine, an advertising copywriter, and a writer whose short stories have been published in literary journals, necessitated leading a “double life” but also provided

328 her with some social capital. However, her path to publication was fraught with risk and uncertainty over many long years. It took five years from the completion of her manuscript to the publication of her book. She sent her manuscript to numerous publishers but didn't receive replies. She says that having a short story collection, rather than a novel, added to the difficulty of selling her work to a publisher. When asked about the process of finding a publisher, she says:

It was a nightmare…at that time unless you were a big name, they didn’t really want [you]…they had so many manuscripts and, also a first time author with a short story collection, you wouldn’t touch with a barge pole… So when writers say it was very easy, they just sent the manuscript, and it got accepted, it’s incredible for me, because it was a very difficult process.

One publisher she approached asked her to pay for publication. She says:

I got this call and letter saying ‘we like your manuscript, we were actually going to publish it last year but then we took our time.’ The editor I was in touch with quit, and then the next one said, ‘Okay you need to give a down-payment of so much’. I was thinking, ‘One second, aren’t you supposed to pay me an advance’?

Needless to say, Preeti declined the offer of publication for payment. Preeti says finding a publisher would have been more difficult if she didn't have a collection ready. She also suggests that Indian publishers are more open to Indian writers now.

It is interesting to note how she created social relations with the publishing house who eventually published her book. The field’s expectation of disinterestedness in self- promotion, of being careful not to be seen as a shameless self-promoter, held Preeti back from contacting publishers in person, until a friend literally pushed her into making friendly contact with a publishing professional. One day, at a now defunct literary festival in Mumbai, she attended a session where the Business Head of one of the Big 5 publishers was on the panel. She says:

329 … after the discussion …this friend of mine who was with me literally pushed me towards him. She said, just go speak with him and I was so embarrassed, [this was] the last thing they need… I’m sure they have all these aspiring authors [mobbing them]. She said it’s not going to hurt you, just go…ask him if you can send the manuscript.

Preeti’s recount points to the conflict around self-promotion — the desire to seize the opportunity to make contact with the prestigious publishing house, that must be balanced with the desire not to be seen as a pushy self-promoter. She overcame her hesitation, and went up and introduced herself. She tells us that the Business Head said, “Sure, send me your manuscript.” Meanwhile, another friend gave Preeti the email address of the Publisher in that same publishing house, another example of friendliness at play, the “other ways” that Sahara mentioned, noted earlier in this chapter. Preeti emailed both the Business Head and the Publisher, and she quickly received a favourable reply, followed by the signing of a contract.

As noted earlier, although Preeti waited a long time to find a publisher, she was able to secure a publishing contract very quickly after the initial email to the Publisher and the Business Head. However, this did not ensure a speedy publication process. She says:

My editor asked for some changes, which I made, and then, she quit. They didn’t have a replacement. So they got a freelance editor who just changed the meaning completely of a lot of things. It just went into cold storage.

Meanwhile, Preeti had already leveraged the anticipated publication to apply for a residency overseas. She was selected on the basis of her having a book published. However, two years after signing the contract, there was still no sign of the book being published. She said she was getting increasingly worried because she needed to take up the residency on “legitimate grounds.” She finally decided to speak up to the publisher, rather than continue to feel disempowered and at the mercy of the publishing house. She told the publisher that it was really embarrassing for her to take up the residency without having a book to show when she went overseas. In some

330 senses, although she waited two years, Preeti mobilised friendly-persistence as a subversion strategy, to subvert what was expected of her, namely passive acceptance of the slow unfolding of the publishing process. Her friendly-persistence resulted in a speeding up of the publishing process and the eventual publication of her book. In this way, she created a new position for herself, that of a published author of fiction.

On one level, Jehangir’s and Preeti’s accounts suggest similarities in that they both needed to lead a “double life” in order to earn enough of a living wage outside of the literary field, while trying to write and get published as they engaged in the literary game. However there are also some clear differences between their routes to getting published, and not just on account of the role gender may have played in a patriarchal society, or the impact of the choice of the novel v/s the short story form upon the encounters with publishers. The two main differences seem to be related to their positions in the literary field, and the survival strategies used as they reached for publishing success.

Jehangir’s position in the literary field, as a published non-fiction author and well- known journalist, was already strengthened through connections made with publishing houses. His “affinity of habitus” (Bourdieu, 2004 [2007]: 27) with the publisher of his novel, including similar positions of status, meant that he could interact with his publisher on a more or less equal footing. Although his road to publication was rocky, his publisher stuck by him, even as he moved through different publishing houses, providing some degree of security on this rocky road. Preeti’s position, on the other hand, although imbued with some social capital through the connections made when working as a curator of a small literary festival, was not influential enough in the literary field to secure a publishing contract. She had to deal with rejection on many occasions as well as fragile connections with people in the literary field, attesting to the precariousness that accompanies engagement with the literary game, characterised as it is by “a strong measure of uncertainty” (Lahire, 2010b: 456).

The survival strategies mobilised by Jehangir, such as friendliness through word of mouth as discussed in the previous section, are assertive strategies (see Bourdieu, 1993b: 83) aimed at creating a new position for himself as an author of literary fiction,

331 and consolidating his status in relation to the publishing house. On the other hand, Preeti had to rely on friendly-persistence as a subversive strategy in order to initiate contact with the publishing house, while simultaneously dealing with the need to ensure she did not come across as a shameless self-promoter. The conflict to maintain this balance was more keenly observed in Preeti’s account of the path to publication.

The dilemmas of consecration

As the writers in this study attempt to manage their quest for literary success and economic stability, they must grapple with various dilemmas once they have tasted publication success. These dilemmas, products of the precarious relationship between writers and money, present themselves as writers seek to be consecrated by the general public, by those whose opinions they value, and by the media. They are discussed in this section in relation to the book launch, writers’ festivals and social network sites.

The book launch

The book launch can be a site of the generation, conferral, and accumulation of symbolic capital in the form of recognition, renown, status, prestige, and honour. The choice of venue, the person launching the book, the guest list, as well as the type of food served at the launch, can contribute to the status of the writer and the book being launched.

All four book launches observed for this study in India were formal occasions and resembled the formats of many book launches in Australia. However, one peculiarity in all four launches was the way the book to be launched was presented. The book, always gift-wrapped and tied with ribbons, was unwrapped ceremoniously upon being launched and held up to the audience, signifying the birth of a new creation. This seemed to emphasise the priceless, sacred nature of the creative labour of the writer, now turned into a tangible object. However, this symbolically charged aspect of gift- giving and pricelessness was attenuated by a table of the books available for sale, in a corner of the venue, a visual diptych for the precarious relationship between writers and money. Additionally, most speeches made by the VIP launching the book

332 concluded with an exhortation to the audience to support the writer, the publisher, and intellectual culture in general, by buying the book,

Jehangir’s first novel was launched at a venue regarded as prestigious and exclusive. His account provides an indication of the symbolic importance of the book launch to some publishers. His book was one of the first books being published by a new, local publishing house, although with ties to the Big 5 in India and globally. He says:

Dinner was served and alcohol was served and that was not my decision at all. I feel they did this because it was one of their first three books so they wanted it to be splashy launches in three cities…sending a message that we are premium, we are not going to do just this book reading in a book shop with biscuits and chai afterwards…it was more marketing strategy than a book man’s strategy.

In providing a description of the exclusivity of the book launch yet noting that it was a marketing strategy (different from the Bourdieusian sense of strategy discussed especially in Chapter Two) and not his way of doing things, Jehangir points to the complexities inherent in practice as writers negotiate the dilemmas of consecration at the book launch. On the one hand is the awareness of the centrality of the sacredness of art and the symbolic importance of bringing a book into the world by memorialising it with a book launch. Yet on the other hand is the unavoidable dependence on the profanity of the market in order to achieve commercial returns, despite wanting to position oneself as “premium” and highbrow, positioned within the autonomous dimension of the literary field, disinterested in the market.

Writers’ festivals

Writers seem to participate in a system of reciprocal circulation of symbolic capital. The Jaipur Literature Festival, one of the world’s most prestigious writers’ festivals draws its prestige mainly from the celebrity writers who speak at its events. It may be said that the writers confer prestige upon the festival. However, most writers, especially emerging, early-career and mid-career writers, participate in the festival for

333 free, some forgoing travel costs and a speaker’s fee (they receive free accommodation and meals) because the festival confers prestige, status and honour upon them in turn.

In a field that is increasingly mediatised especially through SNS, with shrinking marketing and publicity budgets for each writer signed by a publisher, writers are often required to play a more explicit role in promoting their books in order to maximise their own chances of both economic and symbolic success. At the same time, some writers are concerned about being seen as immodest or as interested in economic profit.

Preeti’s narration of her experiences at writers’ festivals reveals the way in which she negotiates the need to be proactively promoting herself and her work in order to boost sales of her book so she can earn a living from writing fiction, gain recognition and renown, and also interact with her readers, while at the same time maintaining the persona of the writer slightly removed from the mundane and the profane. She says that she gets very nervous and has stage fright at writers’ festivals, but feels that it is important to participate in them in order to build awareness of her work and boost sales. She says:

Initially it was very traumatic for me to be up there and have to speak, read from your work and all that. But I realized that it works. It helps. People have actually written to me and said, you know, I could relate to that real estate agent you write about and is it based on a real life character and if it is, I am looking for a flat. [Laughter]…it’s really nice to know that people really engaged with your work.

Preeti’s account suggests she values the interaction with and feedback from readers at festivals. She also notes that she understands the importance of a brand for writers in our digital age of SNS sites and online reciprocity. However, she is reluctant to find opportunities to do this herself. She says that she is uncomfortable with hiring a public relations (PR) agent to publicise her book, even though she notes that many writers employ such agents to increase their profile and boost the sales of their books. This is because she cannot afford them and also because of the need not to be perceived as arrogant or merely concerned with increasing sales. She says, “I’m just a

334 little uncomfortable with the publicity aspect of it…I am not sure I like to do it in that way.” Preeti’s sense of the ignominious act of paying for publicity by hiring a PR agent resonates with what Bourdieu calls “the taboo of making things explicit” (Bourdieu, 1998: 96). She is aware that the literary field rewards humility, what Bourdieu calls “seeming to refuse the law of selfish interest” (Bourdieu, 1998: 98). In an economy of symbolic exchanges it is only the sacred, creative work that can be discussed explicitly, while discussions related to the profane market must be left implicit and discussed only in euphemistic language. Preeti seems to be happy for publicity to be conducted on her behalf by others in the literary field, such as her publisher, as long as there is no perception of her conducting her own publicity, promotional and branding work.

The account Preeti provides about her experiences at writers’ festivals, also points to an embodied aspect of the difference between the autonomous and heteronomous dimensions of the Indian literary field. Preeti describes an initial sense of distress associated with being physically present on stage. While this distress may be related to inexperience, or an introverted personality, the various writers’ festival events observed for this study reveal the differences between the “bodily hexis” (see Bourdieu, 1977: 93-94) of writers positioned within the autonomous and the heteronomous dimensions. Some ‘literary’ writers displayed a sense of being set apart from the audience, answering questions in an aloof, even a supercilious manner. In contrast, the “bodily hexis” (ibid.) of ‘pulp fiction’ writers often manifested itself in the production of a friendly body, as discussed on Chapter Three. One commercially successful ‘pulp fiction’ writer at the Jaipur Literature Festival, engaged with the audience as if he were one of them. He leaned towards each questioner, addressing each one by name, praising each one for the intelligent question, his relaxed comportment suggesting he were in conversation with his closest friends. This concurs with the struggle that Bourdieu points to, between the autonomous and heteronomous principles, that involves the “relationship to the audience” (Bourdieu, 1993b: 46), as noted in Chapter Four. Thus dilemmas of consecration also extend to the ways in which different writers engage with their audiences at writers’ festivals. Writers need to present themselves in a favourable light in order to increase the chances of the audience buying their book. On the other hand some ‘literary’ writers feel the need to present themselves as autonomous from and unconcerned with the

335 market, while the ‘pulp fiction’ writers mobilise the friendly body which may be seen as an embodiment of the value they place on the market. This provides a telling contrast between the aloof ‘literary’ writers, at arms length from the audience at writers’ festivals, and the ‘pulp fiction’ writers with their friendly, egalitarian engagement with audiences: one set of writers needing to participate in the literary game and lead a “double life” because they are unable to participate fully in the literary field, and the other displaying an explicit interest in the market, and having no need for leading a “double life” because they participate as full earning members, so to speak, of the Indian literary field.

Social network sites

Some writers in this study effectively use the tools provided by social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs etc in order to control the online information about themselves, to present themselves in an appealing light, to increase their exposure online, in the hope of maximising their chances of literary and economic success. In today’s digital age, the social relations between individuals and the ways in which friendships are encoded, assembled and organised on social network sites, have led to what Taina Bucher terms “programmed sociality” (Bucher, 2013: 480). The popularity of social network sites have fostered a collapse of private relations with the public sphere, especially through the public availability of privately generated data about friends and social relations. This collapse has been exploited by corporatised social network sites and commodified for corporate profit (Fuchs, 2014: 171). Some writers in this study have been attempting to mobilise what Granovetter called the “strength of weak ties” (Granovetter, 1973) especially through online reciprocity such as Facebook etiquette involving ‘likes’, ‘shares’ and ‘comments’ within the ecology of ‘friends’, in an effort towards self-promotion. Liking’ unto others as you would have them ‘like’ unto you; blogroll my blog and I’ll blogroll yours — these are strategies of friendliness that writers mobilise to create and maintain social relations, and to avoid the risk of oblivion in the current mediatised literary culture.

Preeti’s second book of fiction (and her first novel) was published in March 2015. Not wanting to rely solely on the “facework” (Goffman, 1967) of her publishers, Preeti

336 chose to conduct some promotional work herself, but without appearing to do so, as is the practice of numerous writers observed for this study. Preeti’s announcement of the publication of her new novel came was disguised as a status update relating a conversation she had with a member of her family. While this may point to her sense of humour, it may also be seen as a way of self-promoting without being seen as explicitly self-promoting. Numerous friends cottoned on to this announcement in the guise of a recount of a family conversation, and began to like her post, and post their own comments of congratulations. In the space of a couple of days she had 191 likes, and tens of comments. Preeti liked each and every one of these comments, thanked some commenters, and replied to some with information on where the book was available for purchase. She proceeded with further status updates on a regular basis, sometimes every day, sometimes every second or third day, mainly with more announcements of the forthcoming date of publication and points of sale of the book. When friends commented on these subsequent posts she would like their comments and respond to select comments. In this way she mobilised friendliness through online reciprocity in order to increase recognition, and hopefully increase the sales of her book. This was not done through explicit promotional tactics. Rather, this self- promotion needed to be disguised, as required by the field and totally in keeping with the field’s unspoken rule not to make explicit the terms of economic transaction. In an effort to legitimise her own work, or mitigate any perception of naked self-promotion, she also provided context by linking to a You Tube video and a magazine article thematically related to her recently published book. The importance of the sales of the book was thus presented as if it was incidental to the event of publication itself. This does not suggest any deceit on Preeti’s part. Rather it points to the way the logic of the field bears upon the practices of writers: writers must ensure they do not come across as self serving in a field that rewards those who seem to reject “selfish interest” (Bourdieu, 1998: 98), while at the same time they must try to maximise their chances of recognition and status in a field marked by the paucity of economic reward.

This chapter has discussed the ways in which writers reach for different kinds of success in their pursuit of a literary career in India. In seeking symbolic success and economic reward, writers mobilise numerous survival strategies as they engage in the literary game, such as in their interactions with literary agents and publishers. Once they have been published, they seek to be further consecrated by the field, to be

337 conferred with prestige, recognition, renown, honour, status, at the book launch, at writers’ festivals, and through social network sites. Through this process they are constantly confronted with various dilemmas in relation to consecration. They must hold these complex elements together, trying to maximise economic reward after the long years spent creating their work, while seeking recognition and honour from the literary field, yet being careful not be seen as greedy for fame and fortune, sullied by the temptations of the market. Thus they attempt a balancing act between the quests for literary and economic success, just as they attempt to balance their double lives, their lives both inside and outside of the Indian literary field.

338 Chapter Seven: Conclusion — Writers vs. money

Writers of literary fiction across the world share the experience of leading an inherently plural life in the pursuit of a literary career. In addition to working on their fiction, writers must engage with others in the field to get published and to gain recognition and status. They often also need to take on other paid jobs in order to survive. This dissertation has focused on the experience of literary writers in India who work in the English language, and how they cope with the unique features of the Indian literary field. As described in Chapter Four, Indian writers have to deal with the complexities of a rapidly growing but uncertain market, in a field where the readership for literary work has been partly opened up by the phenomenal success of commercial fiction. Nevertheless, writers are poorly supported and must address the contested position of the English language in India. As writers negotiate this field, they come to understand that the pursuit of a literary career and the pursuit of economic stability contain elements that are opposed to each other. These complex aspects of the relationship between writers and money are summarised below in relation to the writing self, the path to publication, and encounters with success.

The writing self and money

Some of the complex elements that are embedded in the public perception of Indian writers affect the way writers think of themselves, as discussed in Chapter Four and Chapter Five. On the one hand there is am awareness that writers need to rely on a day job or family support for economic security especially in the absence of support from the state and academia. On the other hand there is an expectation of the glittering possibility of economic reward, fueled by the rapid growth of the field, the international attention received by some Indian writers due to large advances and rich prizes, and the unprecedented sales of the work of some local Indian ‘pulp fiction’ writers. In practice, most writers in this study weigh their options when faced with these complexities. They engage in the literary game (Lahire, 2015: 79), as discussed in Chapter Three and Chapter Five, by alternating their investments in the pursuit of a literary career with investments in the extra-literary and para-literary aspects of their

339 lives in order to make ends meet. They understand that the hope of earning a living from writing fiction may not be realised in the short term, or may even be a mirage, and so they must work in a day job or rely on the financial support of their families. Writers often make pragmatic decisions to ensure economic security, usually by leaving the field temporarily to take on paid work such as in journalism and advertising, and then reentering it to pursue a literary career, while continuing to nurture the hope of handsome economic reward from writing fiction. In this way they sometimes invest at an economic loss in the literary game (see Lahire, 2010a: 459) as they pursue recognition, renown and prestige, while at the same time holding the hope of financial profit from their writing as glimpsed through recent Indian literary history.

This mobility in and out of the field (see Lahire, 2010a: 447, 449) is such an ordinary aspect of writers’ lives that it is easily taken for granted, its significance easily missed. Yet, what it reveals is that the creators of contemporary Indian literature in English are unable to invest themselves wholly, to dedicate themselves completely, to the task of expressing a nation’s story, in all its diversity and complexity. The “double life” that writers lead, partly in and partly out of the literary field, is necessary because they are unable to “keep both feet in that field, but rather keep one foot outside: the money-making foot that allows the other one to ‘dance’” (Lahire, 2010a: 448). The two sides of this “double life” are not complementary to each other, but often conflict with each other. This is in no small part because the time and effort spent earning a living outside of the literary field takes away from the time and effort that must be spent developing one’s writing skills and producing work. This necessity of mobility in and out of the field significantly affects the practice of writers. For example, as discussed in Chapter Five, Jehangir took 25 years to finish his book and get it published because while he was writing a novel, he needed to leave the field for long stretches of time to earn a living by giving mathematics tuitions and working in journalism, before re-entering the field to engage with publishers and literary agents to get it published.

Further, even an ostensibly straightforward decision to call oneself a writer is infused with inconsistency and conflict. As discussed in Chapter Five, although the writers in this study think of themselves as writers from a young age, and have a more or less regular writing practice, they hesitate to call themselves writers in public. As Razia’s

340 account revealed, although she thinks of herself as a writer, and she invests time and other resources into her daily writing practice, she says she will feel comfortable calling herself a writer only once her writing can pay her bills.

Publication and financial reward

The complex elements that writers must come to terms with in the field are further observed as writers navigate the path to publication. As writers seek out opportunities for publication, the choices they must make are tempered with the expectation and experience of economic uncertainty, and riddled with conflict. They must gauge the possibilities of accumulating symbolic capital in the form of recognition, renown, honour and prestige, as well as pay attention to the possibilities of financial reward. As Preeti’s and Bina’s accounts suggested in Chapter Six, some writers refuse to even consider the possibility of paying to be published, or of self-publishing, even though it may ensure publication and thus some amount of literary success. Publication, in Bina’s opinion, must involve some economic reward, however inconsequential it might be. Some writers, like Jehangir and Preeti, despite receiving favourable reviews and media coverage, continue to work in day jobs in order to sustain themselves financially. For them, literary prestige in the form of publication and honour from the literary establishment did not bring sufficient financial reward to enable them to stop working in jobs outside the literary field.

The post-publication path reveals further complexities and inconsistencies in relation to money. The Bourdieusian sense of “interest in disinterestedness” (R. Johnson, 1993: 20) expressed by some writers reveals another aspect of why the relationship between writers and money is complex and insecure. As discussed in Chapter Six, the way Preeti engaged with social media when her latest book was published, as if the sales of the book were not as important as the event of publication, reveals two opposing needs: the need to ensure that she is not perceived as a shameless self- promoter while at the same time needing to ensure that details about where her book can be purchased were publicised. Many writers in this study hesitate to promote themselves, because, as consistent with all fields of cultural production, any explicit interest in money and the market is scorned by those who are positioned within the autonomous dimension of the field.

341 Literary success and economic success

Writers’ quests for success are similarly peppered with mutually opposing and precarious circumstances. As discussed in Chapter Six, the seemingly priceless gift- giving aspect of the book launch, as evidenced by the Indian practice of holding up a gift-wrapped book to be launched followed by the ceremonial unwrapping and presentation of this physical manifestation of the creative labour of the writer, is contrasted with the table in the corner stacked with newly printed books-turned- commodities, ready to be sold to readers at the launch for a price determined by the market.

The relationship between writers and money is complex in India also because of the anti-climactic economic consequences of literary success. Salma’s account, as discussed in Chapter Four, provides a glimpse of this sense of economic uncertainty that accompanies symbolic success. She notes that one of India’s most prestigious literary awards, the Jnanpith Award, comes with a purse that will be unable to sustain a writer even for a year in an Indian city. Thus prestige and honour are not accompanied by commensurate economic reward in the Indian context.

The converse of this dilemma is, as Preeti notes in Chapter Five, that even if she achieves commercial success, her own sense of success is tied to literary accomplishment rather than only economic reward.

Thus writers engage in a continuous balancing act involving the management of multiple investments in different social worlds — the literary, the symbolic, and the economic — at the cost of higher productivity as a writer. It is a central, if often overlooked, feature of the lives of Indian writers.

Contributions of this study

This study has examined the inherent plurality of writers’ lives and the economic precariousness that surrounds the creation of post-millennial Indian literature in English. Bernard Lahire’s specification of Bourdieu’s theory has provided useful tools to understand how writers cope with the unique features of the Indian literary field in

342 their pursuit of a literary career. His formulation of the literary game provided ways to understand the nuances of writers’ practices as they attempt to manage their investments in the literary field while simultaneously investing in other fields in order to earn a living. His conceptualisation of the “double life” was useful for understanding the lived reality of writers in India, their multiple social memberships and investments, and the way they manage the numerous complexities they encounter in relationship to money. By drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis, this important aspect of contemporary Indian literature in English has been explored throughout this study. This study suggests that Bernard Lahire’s revision of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework can be useful for analysing the experiences of writers in a non-Western environment, while emphasising the importance of paying attention to the specificities of the Indian literary field. In this way, the study has moved the study of writers and publishing away from the Euro- American centre towards the periphery, which may one day become the new centre.

Limitations of the study

A major limitation of this study is that it focused on a small sample of writers in the Indian literary field. By focusing on the English language it did not include the rich linguistic diversity of Indian literature. Given the limitation of time and resources, research participants did not necessarily represent the full range of English literary writers in India (see Chapter Two). As a result of word count restrictions, an even smaller sample of participants has been represented in this dissertation; this limits an appreciation of the diversity present in the larger sample of this study. This study did not include a discussion of readership, so that the circle of creation, distribution, consecration, and consumption of literary fiction is left incomplete. For all these reasons the findings of this study are indicative rather than fully representative of the experiences of Indian literary writers.

Directions for future research

As noted in Chapter Four, there are numerous challenges that beset the Indian literary field. One fruitful direction for future research would be a survey of the field in relation to the various languages in which literature is created in India, specifically

343 focused on the work and income of practicing writers, similar to the work of David Throsby and his colleagues (Throsby & Hollister, 2003; Throsby & Zednik, 2010, 2011). This would provide useful information about the state of the field and guide policy and strategy on the part of publishing houses, the state and other non-state actors in the literary field.

Another important direction for future research would be a focus on the Indian readership, taking into account its diversity in terms of language, gender, religion, caste, and class. What are people reading? Where are they spending their money? Do readers move easily between reading literary fiction and ‘pulp fiction’? While Nielsen Bookscan provides some information on sales of books in India, it has numerous limitations, including its data sources being restricted to tracking only a limited number of booksellers that does not reflect the diversity in the Indian market (see Nielsen, 2014). The National Book Trust of India conducts some readership surveys but these are not easily accessible and their terms are not clear (see NBT, 2014).

A third direction for future research would be a focus on inequality and the ways in which caste, class, and gender enable and constrain the local and global success for writers, possibly revealing even more perilous conditions for writers without privileged access to the English language.

A fourth direction for future research would be a focus on the ways the post- millennial sharing economy, and its attendant complications of copyright and piracy issues, have influenced the practices of writers and their “double life”.

Concluding comments

This study has provided empirical evidence to support Bernard Lahire’s specification of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework. In doing so it revealed the precarious economic existence of Indian writers in English and the “double life” (Lahire, 2010a: 445) that writers must lead as they journey through the constraints posed by the distinctive features of the Indian literary field in their pursuit of a literary career.

344 The pleasure that the reader derives from engaging with a work of contemporary Indian literature in English often comes at a huge cost to the writer of that work who has most likely engaged in a contest, a battle, with money in various ways as discussed in this study. This cost, a sense of “suffering linked to the discrepancy between an individual’s subjective definition of self (as a writer) and a large part of that individual’s objective life conditions” (Lahire, 2010a: 445) is hidden amidst the recognition, renown, and prestige that accompanies publication and literary success.

When a book is bought and sold, it is not just the reader but often also the writer who has paid a price. As discussed throughout this dissertation, a consideration of the complexities of this idea by the state, by academia, and by others connected with Indian literature, would no doubt be welcomed by writers. Indian literature in English would be the better for it.

345 Appendix A: Publications and presentations arising from the writing of the thesis.

Literary fiction and non-fiction publications

1. Gonsalves, Roanna. (2014). The Skit (short fiction). Mascara Literary Review, May 3. http://mascarareview.com/the-skit-by-roanna-gonsalves/ 2. Gonsalves, Roanna. (2014). Friending and Trending. In M. Bharat & S. Rundle (Eds.), Only Connect: Short fiction about Technology and Us from the Indian subcontinent and Australia. India: Rupa. 3. Gonsalves, Roanna. (2014). Friending and Trending. In M. Bharat & S. Rundle (Eds.), Only Connect: Short fiction about Technology and Us from Australia and the Indian subcontinent. Australia: Brass Monkey Books. 4. Gonsalves, Roanna. (2013). The Patron Saint of Excess Baggage (literary non- fiction). In K. MacCarter & A. Lemer (Eds.), Joyful Strains: Making Australia Home. Melbourne: Affirm Press. 5. Gonsalves, Roanna. (2012). The Skit: Edited extract (audio featured on January 19). Varuna Writer-A-Day App. from https://varunathewritershouse.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/writer-a-day- roanna-gonsalves-reading-from-the-skit/

Peer-reviewed scholarly publications

1. Gonsalves, Roanna. (2015). The Survival of the Friendliest: Contemporary Indian Publishing in English at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Cultural Sociology, 9(3), 425-446. doi: 10.1177/1749975515590244 2. Gonsalves, Roanna (2016) Trails of Breadcrumbs: On Being Indian and Australian. In Sareen. S, S. Pal, GJV. Prasad, M. Bharat, (eds) Indo-Australian Relations: Retrospect and Prospects. Pinnacle Learning. 3. Gonsalves, Roanna (2011). Multiculturalism and Mainstage Australian Theatre. Journal of the European Association of Studies on Australia, Vol.2. No.2.

346 Seminars / invited presentations

1. The Survival of the Friendliest: Illuminating the process of learning to become a writer in contemporary India. Seminar presented at the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, University of Canberra, 13 April 2015, and at the School of the Arts and Media, UNSW, 31 March 2015 2. Notes on becoming a writer in contemporary India (a historical focus), Invited presentation at Moving Ideas: Methodological Challenges of Chasing Post- National Histories A Symposium with Professor Benjamin Zachariah, University of Heidelberg, Germany, School of Humanities and Languages, UNSW, 13 February, 2015 3. Creating the Creators: Stories about writers in contemporary India. Seminar, School of the Arts and Media, UNSW, June 3, 2014. 4. Borders and Shading and other minor matters: Invited presentation as an emerging writer at the Australia India Literatures International Forum (AILIF, UWS) at the State Library of New South Wales, September 3-6, 2012

Conference papers

1. The Survival of the Friendliest: Learning to become a writer in contemporary India. Paper presented at the Literary Networks Convention, University of Wollongong, 7 July, 2015 2. A ‘Literary’ Literary Review, Paper presented at The Idea of a Literary Review Symposium, Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia, UNSW, Australia, 2 October, 2014 3. A Trail of Breadcrumbs: Tales of the Indian Australian Spatial Imaginary, Conference paper presented at the conference of the Indian Association for the Study of Australia, Thiruvananthapuram, India, January 23-25, 2014 4. What is the Capital of Frankfurt? Indian Publishing at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2012, Conference paper at the Journey of the Book Conference, University of Pune, India, Sep 23-25 2013 5. What is the Capital of Frankfurt? Indian Publishing at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2012, Conference paper at the European Sociological Association conference, Torino, Aug 28-31, 2013

347 6. All’s Fair at the Frankfurt Book Fair: An ethnography of a literary space. Conference paper presented at the Cultural Studies Association of Australia conference, University of Sydney, December 4-6, 2012 7. Creating the Creators: Conference presentation about the literary world at the Scenes of Reading Conference, University of Sydney, May 25-26, 2012

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