Book Club Indian Style

Last night we finally had our meeting to discuss For Ganesh, Remover Of Obstacles that had been iced out last week. After a flurry of emails we decided to eat at an Indian restaurant to have our discussion which is good and bad - good for my taste buds but a bit more challenging to stay on task. Due to its location we chose Copper, an Indian fusion restaurant in the Dillworth (older, affluent) section of Charlotte. It was very nice and our waiter, when he kept hearing us discuss things Indian, began to linger near our table and eventually joined in the conversation from time to time.

I was the host of this book and did my research well on the issues, locations, and historical facts surrounding the story and its characters. I was able to contact the author via FaceBook (gotta love the internet) and Sujoya gave me so much personal information that made the discussion that much more meaningful since this story is semi-autobiographical.

Her mother, Krishna, which is a traditionally male name, was 'accidently' accepted into Princeton in the 1950's which was closed to females at that time. She came from a strict Brahmin family in Mangalore who really just wanted her to get married to continue and preserve their particular sect of the Brahmin line. She, instead, learned Bharatanayam, a classical Indian dance, and was so good she received scholarships to go to university first in India, next the The London School of Economics, and then the fateful accidental term at Princeton (they did let her stay but wouldn't let her graduate - they transferred her credits to another university and let her graduate from there!)

What a great story, and I liked the way Sujoya interspersed Krishna's early life with her modern life, both of which were told by her daughter Sushila. Sujoya wrote me that her mother only had two regrets about the book: 1) that she used Krishna's real name, but Sujoya explained that she had to use it as it was so crucial to the explanation for how she got into Princeton, and 2) that the character that was Krishna's father back home in India was written as a bit of a tyrant, when actually was a pretty nice guy. I guess that's where the semi in semi-autobiographical comes; Sujoya admitted that she had to exaggerate some things to make the novel work.

I loved it. Five stars.