But despite distraction and misfortune, there is one thing that always lifts my spirits, and that is the work, well done, of my fellow writers and friends. It’s been a terrific week for a slate of terrific Bread Loaf writers, so I’m going to dedicate this post to highlighting them. There is Danielle Trussoni, whose book Angelology (Viking, March, 2010) was reviewed in the NYT Book Review on March 3rd by Susann Cokal, (author of Mirabilis and Breath and Bones.) You can read the full review - and it is so well written you should! - but here are the closing lines:

“Sensual and intellectual, “Angelology” is a terrifically clever thriller — more Eco than Brown, without the cloudy sentimentalism of New Age encomiums or Catholic treatises. It makes no apologies for its devices, and none are necessary. How else would it be possible to bring together the angels of the Bible and Apocrypha, the myth of Orpheus, Bulgarian geography, medieval monastics, the Rockefellers, ­Nazis, nuns and musicology? And how splendid that it has happened.”

Danielle’s first book was a memoir, Falling Through the Earth, about her father who spent time as a “tunnel rat,” i.e. searching below ground level for guerrillas during the Vietnam war. That was the one from which she read when I first heard her at Bread Loaf and she was amazing then.

Eugene Cross (my fellow staffer, friend and “baby-bro,” BG), has a story, ‘430,’ out in Freight Stories as well as in Story Quarterly. Here are the opening lines:

“Route 430, a weathered run of highway, twisted through Clymer County like a dark river. Roddy Daniels knew its turns by heart. This was in western New York, where the state made its border with Pennsylvania in a sharp right angle. Roddy had lived here his whole life. Sometimes at night he would drive 430 and close his eyes for short stretches and let the road lead him.”

But that is not all for BG. He also won the 2009 Dzanc Prize which is given to a writer of literary fiction to further their work-in-progress while also being involved in their communities. BG will be setting up and running a series of creative workshops for refugees from Nepal, Sudan and Bhutan, in Erie, Pennsylvania. If you scroll all the way down on this post titled The Lush Life of Bread Loaf, you can actually listen to BG read from his story, ‘Hunters,’ which appeared in Hobart.

Tiphanie Yanique, who shared a few years of work with me at Bread Loaf all of which included blood, sweat and tears as well as writing, has her collection of short stories coming out this month. How to Escape from a Leper Colony (Greywolf Press, March, 2010), has been described by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (author of Sister of my Heart and The Palace of Illusions), thus: “In these powerful, poetic stories set in landscapes real and imagined, Tiphanie Yanique explores beautifully race, family, and the complicated movements of the heart.” You can read the title story here, but here are the opening lines - it also happened to have won the Boston Review Prize in 2006:

“The nuns said that it was pardonable because of depression and stress. But these are words used when we want to forgive a crime but know we cannot. Babalao Chuck said that young Lazaro was covered in his mother’s blood and body. Her red sari redder. The gun in the volunteer’s hands. Five shots in a young mother’s back leaves little room for sympathy. The volunteers at the leper colony were Trinidadian doctors and British journalists and criminals forfeiting time in jail for time among lepers and sometimes smooth-faced men who carried tiny Bibles in their pockets. No one ever told me which kind killed Lazaro’s mother.”

Dolen Perkin-Valdez who pledged a first $100 to an effort by two other writers (Mary Akers and Sara C. Harwell) and myself to establish a writing colony for mothers, had her first novel, Wench, (Amistad, January, 2010) come out to some pretty great reviews including a spot on NPR, a space she shares with another Bread Loaf former-waiter, Reginald Dwayne Betts, author of A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (Penguin/Avery, 2009), and Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books, forthcoming 2010). Dwayne’s essay in the Washington Post begins this way:

“When I was 16, I pleaded guilty to carjacking a man in a mall parking lot. In 30 minutes, everything can change; that’s what I learned from a wild night with a pistol.

Two years later, in July 1998, I was staring onto an empty tier from a cell in solitary confinement. Already serving a nine-year prison term, I had wound up in the hole, too. This meant I was more than wrong. It also meant that I was the last person many would believe deserved what education an open book could offer. “

James Arthur sold his first collection of poetry to Copper Canyon Press. You can get a taste of James’ work with the poem ‘The Death of the Painter’ here in the New Yorker. Meanwhile, the indefatigable Ted Conover, a non-fiction writer among non-fiction writers, had his latest book, The Routes of Man, appear with a terrific review in the NYT. Here’s one reason why, as explained in the NYT review by Vollmann:

“I especially recommend the book’s horrifying fourth chapter, “A War You Can Commute To,” which deals with the Israeli occupation’s interdiction and interruption of Palestinian travel, the retaliatory menaces to which Israeli checkpoint soldiers are subjected and their retaliations in turn upon Palestinian homes. I wish I had the space to consider Conover’s observations, and his reactions to them, with the complexity they deserve. Instead, I will have to settle for quoting from the caption of his aerial photograph of the 60 Road, which carries settlers between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, shooting straight and very high above the S-curves of the local road for Palestinians passing between its pillars: “In much of the West Bank, separate roads carry Israelis and Palestinians. . . . A series of concrete panels on the highway’s left side, near the top, serves to protect Israeli vehicles from projectiles.”

As I read this book, I grew increasingly impressed not only with Conover’s bravery and hardihood, which he underplays, but, more important, with that quality one associates with Steinbeck: heart. Here is a man who cares about people everywhere, not merely that convenient abstraction, humanity, but people in particular — not to mention this American toad and that Peruvian sloth.”

C. Dale Young, physician, poet, editor, blogger, friend, had his story, ‘The Affliction,’ published in Guernica, one of my favorite places to linger online. Danzy Senna (Caucasia, Symptomatic, and the memoir Where Did You Sleep Last Night?), joined Porochista Khakpour to jaw about ‘Race and Other Flammable Topics’ in this month’s issue of Poets & Writers where, also, the incredibly talented (and multi-degreed), Jennifer de Leon wrote about the Voices of Our Nation (VONA) conference.

And, also in Poets & Writers, were two of my favorite Bread Loaf poets, Robin Ekiss (a former Stegnar Fellow and a recipient of the Rona Jaffe Award ), and Kiki Petrosino (Fort Red Border from Sarabande Books), profiled in the annual Debut Poets issue. To top it all, Greywolf Press, a gem among independent publishers, announced today that the poet D. A. Powell won the prestigious $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his latest collection, Chronic. That’s the second consecutive year that a Greywolf author has won the award. Talking of awards, the brilliant Justin Torres won a $50,000 United States Artists Award. For a taste of Justin, check out this piece in Granta, ‘Lessons.’ I’m posting the opening lines to this story which I heard him read his waiter year at Bread Loaf.

“We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats, we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones, hollow and light, and we wanted more density, more weight. We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.”

In April I will be reading at Sunday Salon in NYC with Dwayne Betts and three other Bread Loafers including Charles Rice Gonzalez, whose novel Chulito will be out next month - watch for a post on that - and Emily Raboteau (The Professor’s Daughter), and Nina Swamidoss McConigley whose collection of short stories will be out soon.

Also in April, in Colorado,Women in Letters & Literary Arts (WILLA), will go live at the Denver Press Club during AWP, where I will be reading with many of the women mentioned here as well as fellow Loafers, Jennine Capo Crucet (How to Leave Hialeah), Antonya Nelson (Nothing Right, Female Trouble, etc.), Cheryl Strayed (Torch), Kara Candito (Taste of Cherry), and Mary Akers (One Life to Give and Women Up on Blocks).

As I was winding this up I got an email from my agent informing me that she had just sold the rights to my book in Mainland China; an interesting development just as the book comes out in Complex Chinese next month in Taiwan, and as I prepare to head to China myself with the Iowa International Writing Program. As a way of encapsulating what the highs and lows of our lives measure, here is Robin Ekiss’ poem, ‘The Past Is Another Country,’ which first appeared in the New England Review:

The Past is Another Country

I am no longer in love with the sand
that makes the pearl, or anything

grainy that hardens its beauty
by passing through pain.

Bone revisits the porous soil
and presses itself into coal.

Whole colonies of canaries
refuse to return from that mine.

Is there anything yellower
than their dark shaft of regret?

The past is another country,
all its cities are forbidden,

their borders closed to you
on every side, while here God

has many mansions, all too small
to live in. When I inherit his palace,

I’ll take my moat everywhere,
making difficult any crossing.

Addendum: This just in. And it beats everything that has pleased me today. Josh Weil (Rachel, Libby, you guys remember the wild reading and jam after with him at Borders/Rosemont), just won the The American Academy of Arts & Letters Sue Kaufman Prize in First Fiction for the best work of first fiction (novel or short stories) published in 2009 for his collection of novellas, The New Valley. And that’s the wrap.

As some of you may know, I am involved in a community effort to support the Lower Merion School District (LMSD). Apart from the ipetition that I co-sponsored with two friends, I have also written about this issue both on commondreams.org and for the Main Line Times. What is strange, however, is how many of the aforementioned haters have come out of the woodwork to rant and rave and decry this very apolitical and simple effort whose goal, already met, is that of gathering a significant number of parents together (771 at last count), who support the idea that we are partners with the officials and teachers in our schools, in raising and educating our kids.

Which made me think about the assumptions people make about one another. I’ve been accosted by innumerable “haters” during these past two weeks, one of the most bizarre and misinformed groups being the one which labels our ipetition in support of the Lower Merion School District (LMSD), as being the brainchild of those who supported the Unified Slate which was a term used to define our previous school board which chose to vote as a bipartisan unified group in order to secure the best for our schools. It’s called consensus, but apparently consensus does not wash with the haters in our hood.

So here’s a little tidbit just for those people who apparently cannot see beyond their own little universe colored in hues which apparently block sunlight and/or any light that might illuminate life for them: The other two women who joined me in creating this petition are also people like me, with full lives, who played no part in the acrimony surrounding the process of redistricting or the issues brought up by any of the warring factions. We neither supported nor opposed the Unified Slate. If these wing nuts actually read the accompanying blog they might have found out how this petition got started. Sometimes, people just have a good thought and go ahead and do it. Sometimes, people just don’t have an agenda. Sometimes, it really is what it is. Then again, when a person is engaged in nefarious activities, they find it extremely difficult to imagine that other people aren’t also doing the same. Well, here’s a word from the horse’s mouth: we don’t have any secret agenda, plans for political gain, fame or anything else you can think of. We are just people who wanted to express our support for the LMSD and were willing to be just three people saying so publicly if that was how it was going to be. Mercifully, most other people in this district appear to be relatively sane.

It always amazes me how vitriolic and stupid people can get when the underlying basis for their very existence - as a group, as an organization, as individuals - is unadulterated malice. Perhaps it is crazy of me to expect otherwise, but I do. I simply cannot imagine that such ignorance and idiocy can take root and flourish inside the minds of human beings. And yet, the evidence is all around - it can and it does. What does not surprise me, however, is that such people never have the guts to come out in the open. They are like the KKK, hiding behind masks, in their case, pseudonyms, taking their pot shots at their neighbors. Here are a few gems I’ve come across: Politeia, teadrinker, Stepford Wives, tea-for-two, Give Me A Break, Wynnewoodie, Haverford, Keep The Change, Ever Heard of the Bill of Rights and, a personal favorite, Get A Clue Ru.

On the one hand I have been accused of being everything from an “affluent entitled” Main Line parent, and a “Main Line frau,” to being someone who shares her politics with Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. Yes, it is laughable, but it is also sad. If this is the type of thinking that goes on in the heads of the so-called educated minority in America, is it any wonder we are where we find ourselves? If the raison d’être for a group is just to hate somebody else, spout negative hogwash and dismantle the reputations of educators who have given their lives to their careers, is it any wonder that American students lag behind nearly everybody else on the planet? If the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night is to spew your hatred as far as you can make it go, what, exactly, are you teaching your children?

And, by the way, I may not have any glory, but do, please, get my story before you decide to bust out your sabers. Otherwise, it just makes you look even worse than you are.

Addendum: Both “Politeia” and “Wynnewoodie” left comments on this post using their pseudonyms. I responded directly to both as follows:

“Are you willing to post this comment that you left on my blog under your own legal name? While I respect the opinion you have stated - and certainly feel it adds to a civilized conversation - I have no respect for people who don’t have the integrity to exhibit the sort of transparency they are demanding from their institutions. We may yet discover that our intentions are not that dissimilar, but we can’t get there from here when I am out in the open and you are in hiding.

Needless to say, I am still waiting. Funny thing, though. Apparently this whole initiative was a way for me to publicize my book. I’ll let the BBC know.

When my novel appeared in its Dutch translation, my publisher asked me to write a note to accompany its release which referred to our shared history. After ranting in the privacy of my home, I sat down and wrote a note that mentioned the fact that many Dutch public works as well as the tombstones of the old Dutch Governors are preserved in Colombo and that the journey of one of the chief protagonists begins in Matara where the Dutch fort, Van Eck, still remains. I tempered my sense of outrage with the request that, at some level, was asking me to celebrate the colonization of Sri Lanka by the Dutch, with my understanding that my modern day publisher may (a) have been unaware of the extent of her country’s involvement in Sri Lanka and (b) was not, herself, responsible for the doings of her compatriots and (c) did not intend to cause me any distress but, rather, was trying to personalize the publication of a book that was being released alongside hundreds of others, and therefore give it a little more heft. That is the nuance that tempers the black and the white.

At a festival that offered such a range of skill, expertise and intellect, I was disappointed that I was unable to attend several of the conversations and panels that I would have liked to be at, when the writers featured were excellent and there was much to learn from them. Gillian Slovo, Rana Dasgupta, Amit Varma, Shyam Selvadurai, Michelle de Kretser, Ian Rankin and Sybil Wettasinghe were all people I wanted to spend more time listening to, as they spoke formally, but with whom I did manage to have interesting and fairly lengthy conversations off-scene. Unfortunately, there were many others - Wendy Cope, Iranganie Serasinghe, Artemis Cooper and Michael Frayn among them - whose insights and perspective I missed altogether. My inability to go to all the panels/conversations had little to do with the festival organizers except to the extent that I was also trying to participate in the fringe festival - which showcased, for the most part, the breadth of local talent writing and speaking in English - which then made everything a conscious choice that posed the following question: Am I here for myself? (in which case I must go to all the panels and lectures and conversations taking place on site), or am I here for my fellow Sri Lankans? (in which case I must support them in whatever way I could, but primarily by being attentive to the events that highlighted their work, many of which were off site)

To be a Sri Lankan writer published overseas by the kinds of publishers that I have been fortunate to have, is, to me, both blessing and responsibility. The accomplishment, as I see it, is not mine alone, it is also that of the country to which I owe my particular world view; that fertile soil, rich in culture and heritage and custom and religion, which grounds me and gives me the right to say, I am a Sri Lankan American writer. I see myself, then, as an outpost of sorts, a vessel that contains all that I have left behind in Sri Lanka, and, also, as a spokesperson for others of my kind. How, then, would it be possible for me to converse and befriend my fellow predominantly foreign-based writers and not give equal attention to the writers who, based as they are in Sri Lanka, do not have access to the publishing world in quite the same way that we do? How would they get critical attention for their work if those of us who are a little further down along the road not only leave no signposts, but forget that there are others making this same journey?

As I walked around going from one session to another, I was struck also by the fact that this desire to immerse myself in the literary talents and preoccupations of a host country, even when it is my own, is probably shared by the other writers who come to Sri Lanka, in the same way they do when they go to the Jaipur Literature Festival or to the Perth International Arts Festival or the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival. For a writer anywhere, there are two things that are manna from heaven: the company of other writers and exposure to new worlds. I would hazard a guess that writers like Slovo and Dasgupta and Adebago would be just as interested in listening to and interacting with a multi-ethnic cross section of Sri Lankan writers as well as Sri Lankan culture (a need that the fringe festival addressed whenever possible with panels such as ‘The Literature of Post-War Sri Lanka’ which featured writer and photographer Pradeep Jeganathan, journalist Malinda Seneviratne and former-soldier and writer, David Blacker, as well as the event titled ‘Stories at Sunset’ at the Closenberg Hotel which was organized by local author, Ashok Ferry, alongside the equally commendable offerings of the main festival such as the panels on art, photography and architecture and the drum and dance performances), as they would be in having meaningful conversations with each other. Indeed, such engagement is what gives a festival its particular character and distinguishes it from any other event at which these same writers may have occasion to gather together.

It is always easy to criticize an initiative that is taken by someone else. And it is easy enough to disparage the work of one or the other group of writers within a multi-language system such as ours. Slings and arrows are easy to unleash, it is the building blocks that take work and separates the slouch from the citizen and neither Sunila Galappatti nor Subha Wijesiriwardena is a slouch, clearly bringing a wealth of experience in theater and writing to their work and giving heart and soul over to managing every last detail of a large festival involving multiple personalities, some of them split! In that regard, I was disappointed by the way in which journalist Rajpal Abeynayake summarily dismissed the entire - albeit recent - canon of writing in English as being garbage. There is garbage. We all know it and we can all manage the delicate art of discussing garbage without throwing it around, in the interest of preserving human dignity. But there is also solidly accomplished writing and, more importantly, there is a serious attempt on the part of those writing in English to both reach their full potential as well as to translate into English those works from the Sinhala and Tamil canon that are translatable. (I admit I came late to this session - again, I was torn between listening to the panel on post-war literature I mentioned above and the one being facilitated by Sunila at a festival venue with Rajpal; both panelists had reached a point of testiness and there was a sort of restive fatigue apparent among the audience as well.)

The criticism that there is insufficient attention given to the work of the host country, the best of which is, probably, written in Sinhala and Tamil, is valid, but is is one that ought to be leveled with the understanding that any initiative is dynamic and changing; the festival has evolved from the first in 2007 to what it is today and will, I am certain, continue to change. I comment on this aspect of the festival, therefore, in full knowledge that this year it has grown to include genres not part of the festival in previous years both in terms of its panels and conversations but also in terms of the off-site events and the cultural and childrens’ programming, and that such changes auger well for other, even more significant adjustments to be made to the makeup of the festival next year. It is true that, as David Blacker put it in a blog post he wrote last year, this is not a “Sri Lankan literature festival.” However, it is disingenuous to refer to a festival as being “international” if it quite deliberately excludes, for the most part, Sri Lankan writing in translation, particularly when the current trend among all of the publishing giants and anyone worth their salt in the field of international literature is toward translation, an effort to which the organization Words Without Borders has made a mighty contribution as have the various International PEN organizations in the UK, USA and elsewhere. This is the first paragraph of the mission statement for Words Without Borders and it is a far better description of why translation is important than I could manage:

Words without Borders translates, publishes, and promotes the finest contemporary international literature. Our publications and programs open doors for readers of English around the world to the multiplicity of viewpoints, richness of experience, and literary perspective on world events offered by writers in other languages. We seek to connect international writers to the general public, to students and educators, and to print and other media and to serve as a primary online location for a global literary conversation.

Literary achievement is never a zero-sum game and the respectful inclusion of each others work ought to be seen as a way of bolstering the foundation of our shared interest in the life of the word, rather than as a way of distracting or otherwise reducing the worth of a single person’s contribution. If it was possible to give Michael Meyler the opportunity to conduct an engaging and illuminating discussion about the well produced trilingual book, Keerthihan’s Kite, is it not possible, also, to present Sri Lankan work in translation using the same audio/visual devices? It is entirely conceivable to me that the festival organizers could ask for the help of accomplished bi-lingual writers and translators like Malinda Seneviratne, Dr. Lakshmi de Silva, Thambiaiyah Thevathas and others like them, to handle that particular aspect of the GLF in future years or, at the very least, serve in some sort of advisory capacity to facilitate that conversation. If the festival is, as it has become, the international face of Sri Lanka with regard to its literature, then I do believe that it is obliged to represent the country’s breadth and depth of writing, in all its languages. And that is a responsibility that ought to be embraced as a privilege, not a hardship.

The issue of festival access has been raised often and, during the Q&A with Rajpal, I was aghast to hear a member of the audience (I was told later that this was Antony Beevor but since I never met the man I cannot confirm that), question the government of Sri Lanka for requesting that a festival which is largely private, pay taxes that are due to the country. The issue raised by the individual was that “there is no literary festival in the world that is expected to pay taxes.” Well, the truth is, as always, not quite so simple. Festivals that are free to the public are not taxed. Whenever an event, that involves as much private enterprise as does this particular festival, excludes - because of its fee-charging design - a large portion of the resident population, it must necessarily be treated differently. One way to avoid this is to emulate our closest neighboring festival, Jaipur, and make it entirely free although I realize that this would involve a significant degree of fund-raising to take place prior to the festival. And since I dislike making a criticism without offering some solution, might I suggest that the festival offer the option of named patrons, as is done with regard to so many other ventures involving the arts (the Aukland Writers & Readers Festival operates along these lines) something I would imagine would be just as enticing if not more so, than purchasing tickets to private events? That would also make it possible to offer a choice of the ever-popular literary dining experiences to such individuals while reserving an equal number of seats to be awarded to festival goers by lottery.

(Which, by the way, is not to say that those who have paid the fees thus far ought to be condemned as being “air heads” (as referenced in Yasmine Gooneratne’s article on the festival), quite the contrary; I found most of the Colombo socialites to be well read and more than able to engage in knowledgeable discussions about literature and writing: Sri Lankans, after all, are a highly educated populace and the possession of wealth does not automatically exclude a person from that national character!)

The lasting impression of the festival for me is one of valiant effort - chiefly by its executors and volunteers - and one of learning to distinguish the writer - eminent or fledgling- who is willing to immerse themselves in place, moment and literary endeavor from the writer who is simply there to soak up the perquisites of a festival hosted in the near paradisaical setting of Galle, which is very tempting, given its history, location, Lighthouse Hotel, Sun House and everything in between. Mercifully, there were more of the former and, refreshingly, all of the writers from the subcontinent belonged fairly and squarely to that group. It was good to discover that eating kottu at an unsavory roadside stall with Amit Varma, downing pittu and katta sambol with Rana Dasgupta, walking to the kite-flying activity on the Galle Fort with Michelle de Kretser and stopping for tea and laveriya at Monis Bakery on the way to Galle with Shyam Selvadurai blended seamlessly with our conversations about our writerly lives, with signing books and holding microphones on stages which elevate us and our accomplishments, often only artificially and almost always only momentarily, from those of others. When human endeavor permits the human being their humanity, that is the true measure of success.

Note: The two photographs of me used in the first and fourth paragraphs were taken by Sharni Jayawardena

This is the first time I’ve been home for an election since I left for the United States, and it is absolutely thrilling to be here. Sri Lankans are deeply and passionately engaged in the process and in campaigning and if you want a beautiful description of what a country means to someone who loves it, read ‘Reflections on my Country’ by my brother, Malinda Seneviratne. It doesn’t hurt to have a household divided between the two candidates, my father taking up the solitary stand on behalf of the Opposition. I accompanied my journalist brother, Malinda, on travels around the city and down the Southern Coast and observed a process that had none of the problems that were being threatened us by those supporting the opposition candidate. The term “blood bath” has been tossed about, but I’m hoping to avoid that as well. It is a clear victory, and there is no doubt as to why the President remains popular among the people even if some of the Colombo elite despise his status as an outsider. Here are a few of those reasons:

1. He put an end to a war that has blighted the country for 30 years, something none of the leaders of other parties including those contesting him in this election were able to do.
2. While conducting the war, he did not compromise the welfare of ordinary Sri Lankans, or sell any of the country’s assets.
3. While pushing on with both a war and the post-tsunami reconstruction, he engaged in massive development projects throughout the country, including in the North and East; highways, ports, telecommunications and web access were all part of this effort.
4. He has subsequently repatriated most of the Internally Displaced Persons, the North and East have vast areas that have been demined and are being inhabited by people native to the land and there’s a sense of breathing freely in the entire country.
5. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, he put Sri Lankans in charge of Sri Lanka. As my sister in law put it, “In the past foreigners came in as consultants to us, now they consult us before they try to do anything in the country. He has given Sri Lankans the space to insist that the slogan “api wenuwen api” (i.e. us for ourselves), is the national standard.

Many foreign governments have attempted to push Sri Lanka in one direction or the other without the good sense to understand the context in which they were here or, worse, the damage they could cause to thousands of people including the loss of life. To have a President who is willing to stand firm against such pressure, including tremendous pressure from the United States, is simply fantastic.

Which brings me to the letter I received - it was addressed to all of us who are participating in the Galle Literary Festival - from the director of The Campaign for Peace & Justice, asking us to make all sorts of noise about the allegations he puts forth regarding abuses he has not substantiated. I’d like to say go fly a blooming kite. Instead I’ll say this: “In Sri Lanka the average voter turn out is 80%, education and health care is free, women are liberated and smart, and we have a President able to end a war and rebuild his country (while fending off ignorant individuals who want to keep enjoying their NGO junkets on our beautiful island and triviliazing our tragedies by turning our complexity into sound bites for your rabid 24/7 news media). I don’t need you to tell me what to say at a festival being held in my country. I don’t need your talking points. I don’t need your advice. I don’t need your cautionary tales of doom and gloom, mister. I’m too busy celebrating our good.” Outside in the streets I can hear firecrackers. Salut!

Meanwhile, last week, I wrote about Independent Book Stores for the Huffington Post Books blog about. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning:

“To reach the reading space at the independent book store owned by Mary Cotton and Jaime Clarke, Newtonville Books in Boston, a writer has to pass through a slim corridor accessed by a few steps, and the process puts one in mind of the entire work of writing poetry or fiction; the narrow access-way of anecdote or memory cleaved into the facade of the mind breaching, eventually, and giving way to robust characters and full lives containing singular pathologies. Make it through and one is rewarded by a soft lit showcase of the bookstore’s First Edition Book Club picks which reads like a who’s who of the writing world both established (Dave Eggers, Samantha Hunt, Salman Rushdie, Stacey D’Erasmo, David Sedaris, Julia Alvarez, E.L. Doctorow, Margaret Atwood, Edward P. Jones, Ha Jin and Lorrie Moore among hundreds of others), and new (Margo Raab, Josh Weil and yours truly). At last check, one could purchase one entire collection of signed First Editions for $10,000. But what is even more thrilling than the presence of those books upon the shelves are the signatures that fill the walls and trim of the waiting room and staircase. Spontaneous witticisms from the pens of Jonathan Lethem (a creature of uncertain origin with the accompanying statement: “Tiger or giant rat, you decide, chronically yours, J. Lethem”) and doodles from Bret Anthony Johnston (a surfboard beside which Amy Hampel issues a dire threat: “Look out Bret, I just read here!”), testify to the deep camaraderie among writers as well as to their humanity.”

Please click on this link to read the full article (complete with the actual links!), and do leave your comments on the Huff Po site. I’ve been working on several blog-worthy pieces, but have a tough travel schedule coming up and have not been able to get them up. I do hope to write from home about the Galle Literary Festival and, also, about what happens during the Presidential elections which take place the day after I get there.

On Sunday, the NYT put Sri Lanka at number one on its list of places to go in 2010:

“For a quarter century, Sri Lanka seems to have been plagued by misfortune, including a brutal civil war between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority. But the conflict finally ended last May, ushering in a more peaceful era for this teardrop-shaped island off India’s coast, rich in natural beauty and cultural splendors.” (NYT, January 10th, 2010).

It seems, however, that the Obama administration is not quite as delighted with the peaceful state of affairs in Sri Lanka.

On January 26th 2010, Sri Lankans go to the polls. They vote for the first time in thirty years without the looming threat of terrorism. The incumbent President, Mahinda Rajapakse, is tipped to win this one, albeit by a closer margin than many imagined possible given the extraordinary support he had in conducting the war against the LTTE militants both from the public and moderate Tamil politicians. That war ended on May 18th, 2009 and, unlike in most countries where such victories are followed by the consolidation of power, President Rajapakse devoted his time, among other things, to the internal matters of clearing landmines from previously rebel-held territory, repatriating the displaced Tamil population and inviting the Diaspora to return and participate in the rebuilding of the North. Despite the extraordinary powers held by an executive presidency, the kind of power that could lead to equally widespread abuses and has in other countries where a head of state has had such tools at their disposal (Robert Gabriel Karigamombe Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Than Shwe of Burma and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia– a country with which the U.S. continues to have close ties - come to mind), Sri Lanka’s president chose to put his presidency to the test in the space of six months, announcing the election in November of that same year. Meanwhile, nearly a decade after 9/11, America’s searchlights mark the skies each September as if searching for help from God while its memorial honoring the victims of terrorism remains unbuilt, the 9th Ward lurches from day to day with its dispirited inhabitants flung across several states looking to recourse from Brad Pitt and the Make it Right Foundation, and we shall not even begin to discuss Iraq because America’s efforts at compensating that nation for its assault on its soil is, actually, laughable.

During the last year and a half the United States, perhaps due to its own preoccupations with the distribution of power between the Man of the Century, Barack Obama and the equally redoubtable Hillary Clinton, played two games. On the one hand, its back-channel negotiators attempted to maintain that they were against terrorism (as Senator Clinton did during her elections), and would welcome an end to the vice in which the people of Sri Lanka and, thereby, those within the Diaspora on American soil, were being held by the LTTE. On the other hand, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made successive statements decrying President Rajapakse’s government and expressing “concern” based not on fact but on conjecture, and pushed international organizations to sanction his government. (Hillary Clinton’s ability to be undiplomatic is, par for the course, as demonstrated by her comments about Pakistan on the eve of her visit there). Meanwhile, not far from Sri Lanka, America launched a new and improved war in Afghanistan, assaulting it with indiscriminate aerial bombing and pressuring the government of Pakistan to crackdown on so-called Islamic militants in exactly the same way in which it was asking Sri Lanka not to crack down on its lunatic fringe. But perhaps that was just American tunnel vision.We cannot seem to look at more than one country at one time and, like the multitude of Americans who are routinely diagnosed with dissociative disorder, our leaders cannot seem to remember what they learn in one place and use it to address a problem faced in another.

Given the dissatisfaction among the rank and file of America’s military (think Major Nidal Malik), and the security breaches on its airlines (think Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab), one would imagine that America’s foreign policy makers might consider the lack of prudence evident in deciding to back a ruthless former General, a military man with no experience at political leadership, to run what is, for now, a relatively stable landing-ground for American diplomats and personnel – both by air and by sea - in the supremely important neighborhood of America’s new war. America has had difficulties with President Rajapakse, there is no disputing that. Its difficulties arose not only because it presumed to dictate the conduct of internal affairs in Sri Lanka, but by its blocking of a much-needed loan from the IMF and by its determined effort to scuttle the end of the war even as the LTTE remains proscribed in the United States and even as its ties to the ongoing piracy on the high seas around the Horn of Africa – which has affected American industry - and its history of training suicide bombers in other regions of conflict with which the U.S. professes to be concerned were being established by America’s own intelligence personnel. But most of all, their relationship with President Rajapakse was strained by America’s obstinate refusal to engage with him as an equal and because they began to exert pressure on him by turning his top General against him.

American has had and continues to have some difficulty in understanding the vital role of cultural knowledge when it comes to dealing with countries whose beliefs run counter to its own. The failures in Iraq (after the original sin of invading it), can be traced back to that shortcoming and the continuing failures in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iran and in Palestine all leave a clear and uncluttered trail that demonstrate the fact that American policy makers choose to shoot now and ask questions later. A policy which leaves nothing resolved and many people dead; a policy which, sadly, overshadows the considerable good intentions of many within the State Department who take up their positions with great faith in the power of diplomacy. The response of South Asian leaders as well as those who lead predominantly Islamic countries has always been to close ranks behind family when threatened. President Rajapakse’s response to American pressure has taken that familiar route - he looked to China, Pakistan and Japan, countries with which Sri Lanka has deep and long ties and, at home, to his closest advisers, including his family. The only people reeling with surprise and feeling betrayed are the Americans.

To work with the leader that the Sri Lankan people chose to take them out of the dark ages of terrorism into the freedom of peace, no matter the points of disagreement, would have been the way to go. Instead, America now finds itself anointing a military man with no experience in statesmanship, with a track record of brutality against the Tamil people and who, unable to stand on his own abilities has cobbled together a motley collection of dissatisfied political groups including the UNP and the JVP (which were, together, responsible for the murder of thousands of youth, most of them students, and whose combined shenanigans closed down the universities of Sri Lanka for the large part of two years). But it ain’t no entrance if you cannot make one on your own and you can’t lead – much less unite - a country when you are nothing more than the puppet of several warring factions who have merely come together for the purpose of ousting the one man who managed what none of these groups could: end the war and make it possible for Tamil people to once again speak their language freely in the streets of Colombo. It also finds itself in the surely untenable position of saying that it is alright with America to have people with American permanent residency vie to become head of state in a different one although here in America one cannot stand for election without first renouncing such fealty to any other places of domicile.

But perhaps a stable Sri Lanka is not in America’s best interests. Its former president was clearly comfortable with not merely making lists of bad countries and checking them twice, but actively attempting to shove the “good” ones over to the dark side. And our new President, deep though my support runs, has proved that he is not that different from the last with regard to his foreign policy. Either that or we are living with two presidents: the one who runs the country, and the other, Hillary Clinton, who is ruining the world. On January 26th, Sri Lankans may yet prove that she does not. If and when they do, the only hope lies in those top tier American policy makers who have had the opportunity to live and work in Sri Lanka and therefore understand, perhaps, a little more about what it takes to build a partnership with the leader of a nation whose literacy rates, equality of pay between the genders as well as the inclusion of women in positions of political office, thriving media, highly educated trilingual third estate and all round civic participation places it, in all these respects, above the United States.

When the first wave came in, we were happy that we were seeing something that was really strange, but it was a very mild wave. Then the sea receded back, and we didn’t know what that meant. It was like someone had pulled the plug on the ocean, and crags and outcroppings of rock inside the sea were visible for the first time in years. We just watched it, and I was taking photographs of it. Then came this massive wall of water…The night before, I had been dancing. It was Christmas. We danced into the wee hours of the morning. With everyone, everyone bonded. There were Finns, there were Dutchmen and Dutchwomen, there were Brits, there were Japanese - I actually won a dance competition. The next morning it was like it was a whole big family of 150 people…I was on top of the continental ridge on the Rocky Mountains when 9/11 happened. I saw only one thing. What I saw, was what I heard - silence. You know what that the silence was? The silence was that all the planes had dropped out of the sky - and in America, at any given moment, if you look up into the sky, there are at least 10 planes up there. There’s a drone, that nobody really notices, until the drone stops. My nation is silent right now.

Over the next year, thanks to a phone call from the then pastor at the Universalist Unitarian Church in Waterville I directed the Sahana Project, a tsunami-relief effort from the state of Maine. When I say I directed, it was mostly a matter of traveling around Maine speaking to people about my country and receiving in return, not only the donations that people sent in, but acquiring a clear understanding of how easy it was, in every situation, to find our common ground. Easy even when I was talking about Catholic convents teaching Buddhism to Buddhists to the Congregational Church in far Northern Maine, in Rangely. Easy when talking to the sixth graders who raised $2000 on their own by giving up their class trip and soliciting their donations. Easy when chatting with the high school students who gave up a dollar for the privilege of wearing a baseball hat to school. As easy when speaking to Maine fishermen who go out to sea in frigid waters unlike their Sri Lankan brethren, as it was to speak to the hundreds of people who sent in books and toiletries for the kids of the village we had decided to rebuild on the Southern coast of Sri Lanka, and the ones who sent celebratory gifts, individually tagged, with personal letters, to the thirty-five families who were moving into their new homes a few days before the first anniversary of the tsunami.

I recollect all this today because of all that was right about the Sahana Project. It had a fiscal agent, the UU Church, and it had a volunteer board comprised of individuals who had a history of commitment to community causes, including Mark B. Tappan and Lyn Mikel Brown of Colby. It had someone “from there,” i.e. myself, who could talk not only about the need at hand but about the country and culture, and make it a real place for the donors. It had a small state where people were willing to trust in someone’s word, to believe that if I said I was going to use this money to rebuild a village, that is what would happen. It had a local organization in place, namely the Green Movement of Sri Lanka, willing to channel all of the funds collected toward rebuilding and none of it for administrative or operating costs. It had someone we trusted, my brother, to liaise between the Greens and us.

It was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life to watch civic organizations, community groups, private and public schools from Mt. Desert Island to Waterville to Kennebunkport, colleges like Bates and Colby, businesses like the Flatbread Company in Portland, churches and individuals who often did not have much in common with each other, come together to place their bit of the puzzle in the frame. Was ever a village rebuilt with such love? I don’t know. What I do know is that those thirty five homes contain the music of the zils and hip-scarves of belly-dance troupes, the laughter of Maine-born kids and the compassion of adults from age 18 to 90 who may never see what they made possible.

Visiting Sri Lanka for the opening ceremony in 2005, I wrote back thus:

(We) drove down the path that is being re-constructed by another group, with assistance from USAID, to the site of the old village. The road is bordered on both sides by the sanctuary, so there were a lot of wild birds to be seen, though the peacocks weren’t in sigh perhaps because it was late in the day. The drive to the ocean was also lined on the last stretch with the devastation that is still very much in evidence. Rasika (the matriarch of the village), named the people who had lived in each of the homes, and the ones who had died. The homes were either shells, entirely gouged out - literally plucked by the roots - or just foundations. There were roofs hanging like cloth from the sides of frail structures. It was unlike anything I could have imagined - even with the photographs. The village was between the estuary and the ocean, with parts of the marshy sanctuary in between. The villagers therefore were really hammered from both sides. The ocean rushing up the estuary as well as the ocean coming straight at them. I picture it being something like a volcanic eruption of water, with the villagers trapped in the middle. Seeing all this, I cannot fathom how the young woman who was two days away from delivery her baby, managed to escape with her young, three year old son. In fact, I think that if not for the trees in the sanctuary, we would have had no villagers to help at all.

Just a few months ago, I had a note from the UU Church that there was, still, a further $10,000 left in the account that had been set up. Although the village was now rebuilt (the picture here shows the village at the time of the opening ceremonies; there are now thriving home gardens there), and many other projects completed with the aid of USAID (which built a road leading from the new village beside the bird sanctuary to the old within it, by the sea), and the Norwegian Development Fund as well as other groups, there was still some left over, and it was sent to the Greens to use for one of the community development projects at Kalametiya. It was easy enough for us to get the money to them; my brother now works for the Greens, having given up his job in the for-profit sector.

Sri Lanka has gone through many changes. In 2004, the current President, Mahinda Rajapakse was not in power, but, as the Minister from Hambantota, and passionately committed to the protection of the country’s resources, it was he that blocked the efforts of multi-national hotel corporations from securing the pristine coastal area next to the sanctuary and, instead, handed it to the Greens. A year later he was President and the country embraced a new effort to address a thirty-year engagement with terrorism. Back then, in the aftermath of the tsunami, there was a time of goodwill toward each other that helped us all disregard the effect of terrorism. Jeff Greenwald wrote an essay, A Full Moon Over Sri Lanka, for Salon.com which speaks of that time and of the ways in which Sri Lankans cope with tragedy.

Today, five years on, there are still parts of the country which need to be rebuilt. There are parts of the country which also need to be de-mined and resettled and reunited. Success in all of these endeavors will not come because of speeches, declarations and focus-groups, even among the erudite and professional diaspora communities. It will come because of individual human beings doing what is right, because of compassion, trust and the ability to recognize the vastness of our common ground.

“‘Tis the season when people who have things to sell - be they Chop-Yer-Own-Fir Farms or Independent booksellers or, indeed, authors - have to give their wares an extra push. I know. But after the zillionth status update in the course of three months about one book or another streaming onto my screen via Facebook’s live news feed, I realized that we were all descending, en masse, into a vast swamp of self-promotion that is just not becoming of the writerly class. So, with the blessings of a few good people who happen to be authors, I have come up with ten-step pathway to grace for writers. Here goes:
…
Rule #4. Don’t join Facebook because you’ve heard it is a Good Way To Promote Your Book. It is a good way to promote your book, but it is primarily a - say it with me - Tool for Networking. That’s right. It’s a bar. It’s a soirée, it’s a gigantic party, it’s a flat out junket, but it is not Ebay, it is not Etsy, it is not LastMinuteDeals, it is notAmazon.com.”

You can read the full article over on the blog site. And do comment. The discussion over on Facebook is wonderful, and the personal emails and messages are even better, but it’s okay to let it all out.

Women writers are rarely profiled with baby on hip and hand upon spoon within tureen of soup on stove. Unless they are writing cookbooks. Men, on the other hand, appear to pop up willy nilly next to stoves, babies and batches of muffins as though they relied on nothing less than full domesticity in order to create the brilliant fictions of their mind. Perhaps they do. Female writers either look glamorous or imposing. Male writers can be handsome, lovable, bashful, quirky, and fully domesticated, an entire smorgasbord of possibilities denied to women. More than one blogger even questioned why this summer’s profile of me the Poets & Writers Debut Fiction Issue did not include my age. Did I have something to hide, she asked. Apparently, if I were as youthful as my publicity photo implies (am I? aren’t I?), why would I not flash my actual age? Presumably, along with my thigh.

Why does age, gender, and marital and maternal status impinge so greatly upon the reception accorded to female writers? Why does it impinge so little upon the status given to a man of equal merit and competence? That is the companion question for all of us women who find ourselves debuting on the rather uneven stage of literary fiction, and one which I hope will cease to be relevant sooner rather than later.

Please visit the site and join in the discussion. And do support Women in Letters & Literary Arts (WILLA) if you don’t already. And if you would like further reading on the topic, check out Francine Prose’s article in Harpers, waaaay back in 1998, Scent of a Woman’s Ink. Classic.

Finally, thank you to the debs for inviting me to write this post - it prompted me to write something new, which is good news for my own blog which I have been unable to update. The idea of the current post not being about my mother was too distressing to contemplate until now. She would certainly have approved of the post that takes the place of my remembrance of her.

In an article titled ‘Estrangement,’ in a summer 2008 issue of AARP, the writer, Jamaica Kinkaid articulates her attempt to come to terms with the fact that she stopped speaking to her mother three years before her death. Her effort, however, is not full of regret, but incomprehension that she misses her mother, incomprehension that she does not wish to be buried next to her and, also, does not know if she wishes that her own children be buried beside her someday. She ends with the words, “I do not know, I do not know.”

My life is filled with a similar unknowing. My mother was, as her favorite student described her during his heartfelt and perfect eulogy, difficult. And it was the difficulties that my brothers and I, as adults, responded to, not her ease. I learned to dismiss every concern she brought up, about my brothers, their wives, her grandchildren, me, my life, my father, and her health. Her own regrets and sorrow were so deep that I feared that I, too, would fall into that bottomless well and never come up for air, or that my affirmation of those sentiments might seal her forever in that tomb of despair. Had I been listening harder, perhaps, I might have heard the mothering behind what she said, might have assumed, rather, the role that she wanted of me, of a gentle and caring child, of the never-grown-up companion I had once been, of being again the girl whose goal in life had been to wear her clothes and do what she did for a living, teaching literature and Greek & Roman Civilization to armies of devoted boys.

Instead I was the opposite of her. I prided myself in taking no shit from anybody. I was flamboyant where she was conservative, boisterous where she was quiet, and forswore the undying affection of school boys and replaced it with the fickle attention of grown men. I frolicked in the man’s world that had circumscribed her life and I laughed when she spoke of devotion, consistency and simplicity, never letting on that in act though not in word, I was all those things. Whereas she had waited, as refined women of her time did, to have their appearance or clothes or work admired by other people, I paid myself compliments. I wrote about politics when all she cared about was the pride felt in seeing her childrens’ bylines. Somewhere during all those shenanigans I recall seeing both delight and fear in my mother’s eyes. She seemed to both love the cloak of freedom that I had flung so seemingly easily around myself, and feared for my life. I was not a good woman, I was not a good wife. Somewhere down the line, my husband was bound to leave me. Somewhere down the line, I would need something besides flair and flourish and did I have those other, inner resources? I did, I do, but I was not going to let her see those aspects of myself that were so similar to the strengths she possessed. All I would say in response to her “he might leave you,” was, “and if he did I won’t spend my life running after some man who doesn’t want me.”

In more ways than one, I was trying to define for my mother a life that I wanted her to live. I wanted her to be more like the person I was playing for her. I wanted to rub away the timidity that overcame her whenever she boarded an airplane to America, the kind of thing that would lead airport officials to fling her bags around and deny her compensation for lost luggage and which I could secure on her behalf with no greater skill than a simple steady glare that would leave her full of awe at powers she believed I had; powers she was glad I had, in this strange, unfriendly, place, but whose acquisition she regretted for, as far as she could tell - and she did tell it! - it had exacted the price of tenderness. I wanted to nullify all of her regrets and fears, to drag her into the future where everything was impossibly hard and yet also possible and full of loveliness. I wanted to put make up on her face, I wanted her to wear the beautiful clothes she owned but never put on, falling back constantly on her worn saris, the old skirt, the tattered nightdress.

But I held that tattered nightdress to my face a few weeks ago, and breathed in not what it showed to the world - its faded, overused fabric - but the sweet perfume it had earned for itself and still held. My mother’s life was full of a doing with which mine could never compare. She had no time for the kind of self-creation with which I had become so adept; she was too busy making a living, staving off hopelessness and, more than everything else, helping the people who came looking for her in a ceaseless stream… People who did not care that she wore no make up, that she traveled in buses and scooter-taxis in a country where such travel is perilous even for the young and healthy, that she sometimes opened the door to them with a smile, sometimes - quite often - with a scathing, unfiltered criticism, did not care that her home was an uncertain refuge where sometimes the gate was padlocked, and the phone unanswered and nobody could find her, or that she was awash in eccentricities that lead her to scream for Brand’s Essence of Chicken as though it was a cure certified by the pantheon of multi-origin Gods whom she worshiped, drive her children out of her house “to go live anywhere,” or hang a sign on one of her precious plants with the following statement: “We are very poor and we have no money for your religious festivities. If you have any money to spare, please leave some here - Happy Vesak, Happy Christmas, Happy Ramazan, Happy Deevali!” That spirit perfumed her clothes, her hair, her life. It did not make everybody admire her, indeed many people - most specially her students - were terrified of incurring her wrath, but it made them love her and unabashedly. It made them write to her and come and visit her carrying the cakes and sweets she was not supposed to eat, willing to forgive her moods. That spirit frayed her clothes, splashed them with mud, ripped at their seams.

Over the course of the two days before she died, my mother had hauled a chair to be mended (so the set could be given to my oldest brother), cleaned her house, given her sister money for an operation, called up all her friends, all her relatives, all her favorite students, and all of our friends, and, of course, secured for herself a bottle of Brand’s Essence of Chicken. She had given away much of her wardrobe of beautiful, unspoiled saris and dresses, and most of her vast collection of perfumes. Whatever precious jewelry had not already been given away had been robbed. On the day she died, unbeknown to any of us, she was so weak she had to ask the woman who worked for her now and again, to boil water for her and bathe her. On that day, after that bath, she used whatever strength she had left to sit down with one of her students to help her with a college application. She climbed into a car carrying two saris she wanted to give to the servant of the friend who came to pick her up, and spent most of the journey laughing. She suffered a heart attack right as she was trying to field a telephone call from another student’s tennis coach. She left mid-thought, mid-act, mid-goodness.

I can tell myself a variety of things to stave off the grief that I feel. I can say my brothers were there, their wives were there, she was not alone. I can accept what other people say to me, that a mother does not remember the disappointments, but rather the good times. I can say that she knew, she knew, that though I did not write and did not call, my inner conversations were always with her, that every time I stood before a crowd, or walked down a street or performed some good work or signed a book, or sang to my daughters, what I felt was her presence, her glad acknowledgement that yes, heaven be praised, he had not left me yet, I was still the most beautiful person in the room, the smartest one, the best, in all things the best. In her absence I will never again be that “best” that she saw whenever she looked at me. In a crowd full of women, in my mother’s eyes, I was always more than any of them. On a shelf full of books, mine was better. My words were articulated more clearly, my clothing was more stylish, my deeds were greater, my husband was perfect, my children flawless. I can tell myself stories but they are as useless as my wearing the cardigan that I had bought for her during her last visit, as futile as my attempt to fill it up with her, to feel her around me.

What I remember now is not all the things that I did not affirm in my mother, all the things that I wished she hadn’t done or said, but the things she did do. What I remember is that she brought me music, theater, literature, language, a sense of humor, confidence, strength, joy and a model of motherhood that runs in my veins as naturally as my blood. I remember that she found it funny when I placed 38th in a class of 40 students and asked flippantly if I had failed math too, as we walked hand in hand away from the Convent I attended. What I remember is that when I was expelled from that convent for an array of irreverences but subsequently invited back, my mother - though she screamed at me in private and threatened to cut off my hair which, she said, was the source of all my problems - dismissed the offer from the nuns and enrolled me in a “school more suited to (her) daughter’s spirit, intelligence and interests.” What I remember is that she paid for piano lessons when we did not yet own a piano, swallowing her pride and letting us go next door to practice. I remember her voice pouring song after song into all of us, bringing Ireland, England and America to us through lyrics and melodies and that those songs still take the edge off the acts of governments that were also discussed in the house. I remember that she polished the floors of our house on her hands and knees with coconut refuse and kerosene and now and then with polish, that she planted every blade of grass in the garden and pruned her lawn and hedges with hand-held shears that left blisters on her piano-playing fingers and that out of the arid earth that surrounded our city home, she could make flowers bloom. I remember that she gave me a girl-only space in a house that held so many permanent and transient visitors, and that it contained a dressing table, a fan, an almirah, a bed, a table, a bookcase, and the silk bedspreads that had once been gifted to her, and that all of these things made my room magical in a time when magic rarely translated into concrete evidence. I remember that she listened to me read, that when I asked her if she was sleeping, the answer even when it took a while for her to say it was, always, a comforting “no, of course I’m not sleeping!” I remember that she encouraged me to wear my hair short and climb our roof and play French Cricket and run faster than the boys and, also, to steal guavas and skip school to attend cricket matches…

And I remember that she spent a teacher’s salary on buying bolts of fabric that she stored in a suitcase, beautiful cloth waiting to be turned into dresses by the best of seamstresses according to designs I sketched in ballpoint pen. I remember that except for there being no compromising on decency and modesty, she put no restrictions on the clothes I chose to put on, literally and metaphorically. She stood by and let me be everything that she was not. I wish I had done the same for her.