When I married into a Hindu Brahmin family, I began to write seriously as a way to penetrate the protocol of another culture. My Bombay Trilogy explores South Indian life, particularly the stage referred to as samsara. The term haunted me for awhile— samsara--the sibilance of a word that can connote drowning. I had been reading Indian writers—Lahiri, Desai, Divakaruni-- and was drawn to the stories of immigrant families thrashing in their domestic seas. The plight of characters who straddle more...
