Minal Hajratwala's Blog, page 8

*Leaving India* goes to Beverly Hills

I was on a beach in Goa while my book received its fourth award — this one from Pen Center USA, a branch of the international writers' organization, at the Beverly Hills Hotel last weekend. An L.A. blog covering the event mentioned me and Hugh Hefner in the same paragraph:

In Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee's acceptance of the Research Nonfiction award on behalf of Minal Hajratwala, she reminded the audience that as we enjoyed our delectable cinnamon ice-cream, Arundhati Roy had received more threats for her work. Hugh Hefner echoed these sentiments in his very brief acceptance speech when he dedicated his award to Erwin Arnada, the former editor of the Indonesian version of Playboy who remains behind bars for publication of a non-nude Playboy issue.

Strange bedfellows!

Anyway, my friend Cecilia, an excellent writer herself, was kind enough to go, take photos, and send me an email about the glamorous event. With her permission, I'm sharing her report here.

Hey Minal,

It was a great time last night at the PEN awards. I met some nice people, didn't get to meet Hef, but here's a picture of him:

I'm very bad at taking pix unless I'm in photographer mode, so here's one of the chandelier in the reception room:

I didn't get to see The Fonz, since he only came via video feed. But I did meet Lin Oliver and Amy Catanzano, the woman who won the Poetry award this year. I have the program and a small stack of books for you, if you want them — "This Lovely Life" by Vicki Forman, "The Pastoral Clinic" by Angela Garcia, and "The Dunderheads" by Paul Feischman.

AND of course, your award.

Which is beautiful and a nice, heavy glass. It'll make a good paperweight and/or murder weapon, I'm sure.

The award presenter had a really hard time pronouncing your name. So I got up to the podium and just pronounced your name correctly and that got a good round or applause. And your speech got a good reception, too, a responsive and rapt audience — especially surprising for an awards ceremony that went past 11pm.

All in all a good evening. And now I have a copy of your book to read, which I'm excited about!

So, that's the brief wrap-up. CONGRATS to you!! It really is great that your book and you are receiving the accolades you deserve!

xx

Cecilia

Here's the full list of award winners and the official event pictures/slideshow.

And, just to make this a *really* long blog entry, here's the acceptance speech:

It's a great honor to be recognized here among so many distinguished writers and thinkers. I'd like to thank my families, both given and chosen, without whom this book would not have been written.

I regret that I can't be with you here tonight because I'm in Mumbai, India, where as it happens, the mission of PEN is incredibly relevant as right-wing politics are threatening the freedom of writers. In the past few weeks, Arundhati Roy has been subject to threats of jail time, and a mob has attacked her home. Rohinton Mistry's novel Such a Long Journey has fallen prey to censorship and book-burning; on that matter, I hope you all will consider signing the PEN petition, which complements efforts by Indian activists to uphold freedom of speech in the world's largest democracy.

Traveling as an American across the planet, I am deeply aware of the privileges we possess, and also how the work of authors worldwide is so very precious and so countercultural. We who write books –- these archaic objects that require hundreds of pages and hours of time to digest, let alone many years to write -– are always working against the dominant narrative. We are restoring complexity to topics which most of our culture and our media is devoted to oversimplifying.

In the United States, immigration is one such topic. We've just suffered through a political season in which, once again, immigration was invoked as a wedge issue.

Leaving India tells the story of my family of migrants, and the larger story of India's diaspora, of how and why 30 million people migrated out of India all over the world over the past 100 years. Through this process, I came to find my home here in the great state of California, which has seen countless waves of migration in its young life. At each juncture, ordinary people and their representatives have had to decide what kind of California they want, and they have not always chosen well.

A hundred years ago, a Government report described people of India as "the most undesirable immigrant in the state," absolutely "unfit for association with American people." Barred from owning property. Turned back at the borders. Denied citizenship when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that "the common man" would "instinctively… reject the thought of assimilation" with "the Hindoo." And for nearly fifty years, America's borders were closed to Indians.

But history is cyclical, and everything changes. Just over a week ago, President Obama was in Mumbai forging new partnerships, promising to work hand in hand with the people of India, guided largely by some of the 1.7 million people of Indian descent who now live in the United States.

I'd like to thank Pen USA and the judges for recognizing the importance of these stories, the stories of migrants, and each of our personal and historical memories. Because, despite the rhetoric, it is our own intimate histories which add up to the real story, the complex story, the one we know in our bones to be true, which is that this land has been and will continue to be shaped by immigrants and the children of immigrants — with or without books to their names; with or without the right papers.

Thank you very much.

Award Roundup

Since not everyone is keeping track of my Facebook updates (I know! What's up with that?), I thought I should do the right thing, marketing-wise, and write up a post about the accolades that my firstborn has been racking up.  Leaving India has won four awards and was shortlisted for a fourth.

Want to know to make a first-time author happy? Give her awards! Yes!

So (drumroll please) …

Asian American Writers Workshop
Nonfiction Winner

The Workshop in New York has been a kind of literary home for me, so getting this award kind of feels like being a homecoming queen. (Except without the teen drama.) Some of my first published poems appeared in Workshop anthologies and in the Asian Pacific American Journal that this organization published in its early years. My very first book tour was with other Workshop writers back in the 1990s when several anthologies were published by the Workshop. And some of my dearest friends are people I met there at readings and at writing workshops. My lovely agent Anna Ghosh picked up the award for me in New York on November 7. To see the judges' comments and the list of finalists, including Arundhati Roy (!) and Bonnie Tsui, please click here.

Pen Center USA
Research Nonfiction Winner

This is a regional award of the "west of the Mississippi" center affiliated with PEN, a large international writers organization. A few years ago PEN USA split the nonfiction award into 'research' and 'creative' to respond to the surge in memoirs and other non-research-based nonfiction works.  The ceremony will be in Los Angeles in November. Here's the full list of winners.

California Book Award
Nonfiction Silver Medal

I was able to attend the lovely awards ceremony at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco with my parents. We were told that this year's nonfiction contenders were so strong that jurors decided to bestow an additional silver medal.  The gold went to Rebecca Solnit (A Paradise Built in Hell), the other silver went to William T. Vollman (Imperial), and the other two finalists were Dave Eggers (Zeitoun) and Ray Raphael (Founders).

Full list of winners: here.

Audio of the awards ceremony and short speeches by all the winners: here (scroll to last item; my bit starts around 43 minutes in). I talked about today's anti-immigrant backlash and its historical roots.

Lambda Literary
Bisexual Nonfiction

This is a national award from the largest LGBT literary organization in the United States. I posted my acceptance speech about why LGBT folks should care about immigrant rights here,  and Lambda published a nice interview with me here. The full list of winners in all the various Lammy categories is here.

Saroyan Prize
Nonfiction: Shortlist

The William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, at Stanford University, named Leaving India to its shortlist of 15 contenders for best nonfiction book published in 2009. Ultimately the winning book was The King of Vodka by Linda Himelstein.

Thanks so much, everyone, for cheering for Leaving India as it makes its way into the hands of readers.

The NaNoWriMo Marathon Begins!

Now accepting cheers and Gatorade from the sidelines!

NaNo who? Here's what this is all about.

Scared, but taking the plunge!

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, in which thousands of basically insane people attempt to write a novel-length manuscript in 30 days. That's 50,000 words or an average of 1,667 words per day!

For a slow writer like me, that's a helluva goal. So I've decided to give it a try!

I'm going to be traveling in November so I'm hoping to write a LOT in the first 10 days, not at all on my 2 airplane travel days, and then less on the remaining days. And maybe schedule in another 1-2 days off.

I'm still playing around with the math … does anyone have a handy NaNoWrMo algorithm or calculator that lets you play around with different ways of reaching 50,000?

Here's a rough plan so far:

What do you think? Does that seem realistic, or at least somewhat possible? Advice?

Also, I've decided to give myself permission right now to totally, absolutely, completely "lose" — that is, fail to reach the 50,000 word goal. Having just moved halfway around the world, adapting to a new climate and culture, testing my language skills to the max, etc, I'm not feeling that I need to prove anything. I want to be able to be present for whatever's going on in life, too. So if I end up not being able to write as much as all that, I figure I'll at least have several thousand words through the effort, which is more than I'd probably produce otherwise. Hooray for productive failure!

Or, hey, the process could end up being totally exhilarating and exciting, and I could actually "win." And of course, I do want to win. Who doesn't want to win?

Either way, I hope to be able to establish a good rhythm of writing in my new environs… a pattern that will serve me well in the months to come.

I welcome enthusiastic messages, cheers, etc., especially mid-month when I know I'll be most tempted to quit, because I'll be on a beautiful beach in Goa!

If you're a WriMo too, please find me as "minalh" on the NaNoWrMo website, so we can be writing buddies.

Apartment C + What I'm Reading

I chose Apartment C (thanks for your input and good wishes, everyone — pictures below!). All's well and I can tell I'm getting settled in because I'm acquiring books.

I bought a bunch of great stuff at the Queer Ink Book Fair, where I did a "talkfest" was really fun, at least for me! I talked about my book and read a couple of short sections. (Photo: me with some of the other writers & organizers.) I was ready to do some writing exercises too, but I think people were intimidated or feeling shy, so instead we ended up having a great conversation about writing process, courage, telling one's own and other people's stories, creativity, etc. Later there was an open mic where I read a couple of short pieces that people seemed to like.

Also bought a hot-off-the-presses "limited edition hardcover" of Samit Basu's latest at his book launch last night. I was super excited because his Gameworld Trilogy is the best thing I've read, EVER. The reading was quite a shindig, with multiple television cameras, brand-name liquor, and celebrity host Cyrus Sahukar who introduced himself as a neurosurgeon-gynecologist-actor and then did a fake reading from the book that made it sound like a Danielle Steel/Shobha De novel. That was followed by a real reading by the author, as well as some jokes about Chetan Bhagat (maybe India's most prominent mass-market writer) who was in the audience. Rumors of film offers for Samit's novel already. Anyway it was all pretty entertaining.

Here's some what's on my shelves and nightstand now:

• Aditi & The One-Eyed Monkey — set of 12 kids' books by Suniti Namjoshi — love these, so fun and playful and magical (thanks Queer Ink for gifting these to me!)

• Shame by Jasvinder Sanghera — stayed up late last night to finish this powerful story about a girl growing up in an oppressive family in England; the author went on to found a shelter for Asian women

• The Body & other stories by Hanif Kureishi — haven't started this yet, he's the British Indian author of My Beautiful Laundrette, The Buddha of Suburbia, etc

• Cinnamon Gardens by Shyam Selvadurai — gay Sri Lankan diaspora author of Funny Boy

• Zero Degree by Charu Nivedita — experimental short fiction

• Nuns, Yoginis, Saints & Singers: Women's Renunciation in S Asia (anthology)

• Turbulence by Samit Basu

• Hindi-English Dictionary

• Teach Yourself Hindi

The great thing about being a writer is that all of this is "research."

Mumbai apt – getting warmer, maybe?

Looked at more apartments all day yesterday, got a blister despite wearing my Keens — so you know that's a lot of tramping around! It's actually a great way to get oriented to the layout of the city and see different neighborhoods, especially because I had a chance to stop in at a bookstore and pick up my new best friend, the Eichler Mumbai City Guide, a street atlas.

I see why I don't understand where I'm going most of the time since, as the atlas reveals, the same road within a few blocks is called Turner Road, Gurunanak Marg, Perry Street, and a couple of other things besides. And mostly the street names are not posted.

But I'm already getting better at knowing sort of where I am, and I'm even able to direct a ricksha driver to my hotel now without having to stop and ask the way. Hooray.

I think there are three top contenders.

Apt A

This is the apartment of a family friend in the Gujarati neighborhood that I mentioned yesterday. It's still in the running because it's reasonably cute. But it has water damage and probably won't be ready for a couple of weeks at least – possibly as long as a month since it needs to be repaired, then painted, and there are holidays in between. Doable, but not terribly appealing because I'm really eager to settle in and start writing; lots of ideas are popping into my head just being here. And other things, like where I take yoga and which bank I choose and what kind of Internet service I get and so on, will depend on where I live.

Should I be more patient? Or should I move on? It's smaller than the other places I'm looking at, but somewhat cheaper. BUT, it's not quite the bargain I was thinking it might be, especially since I'd need to move to (and pay for) a temporary place and then move again.

Apt B

This one is by the sea, on Juhu Beach, the neighborhood I liked a lot last time I was here. The space itself is similar to many others I saw, but it has huge, nearly floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room and the main bedroom, with unobstructed views of the beach and sea.

Don't picture something tropical; Mumbai pollution is so heavy that even the ocean is quite grayish. But it's fresher air than probably anywhere else in the city. I can definitely imagine being happy waking up there looking at the ocean and beach every day. It's on the 5th floor; higher up means quieter, for sure. It also has a smaller 2nd bedroom that would be quite nice as an office/guest room.

But it has some serious drawbacks. The price is quite a bit above what I'd hoped to spend. Not impossible, but it does mean that I probably wouldn't be able to save much money over the year — something I was really hoping to do. Or I'd need to cut into my travel/fun budget. The rent is nearly double the first place, and about $400 more than Apt C (below).

It has no refrigerator or stove, meaning I'd have to figure out how to buy or rent those (probably around $250 to buy a refrigerator), and possibly also a mattress. Of course people make such purchases all the time but since I never have, it feels a little scary.

It's also a place I saw through a broker, which means a broker fee of one month's rent, and more paperwork which might also take some time — a day or two, I think, though, not weeks.

And it might feel a little isolated. It's the furthest north of any of the places, further from the train lines, probably about an hour into the main city unless there's absolutely no traffic (right).

Apt C

I'm leaning toward this one. (I wish I'd taken pictures as I was touring the apartments!) It's on Altamount Road, a very nice ("posh," according to Giselle) neighborhood in the heart of the city. (The other two places were in the northern suburbs.) It's on the 8th floor so it's quiet; the owner calls it a little haven in the city, and I think that's right.

I liked it right away when I walked in; after everything we'd seen on Thursday, Giselle and I were both wowed. It's airy, spacious, with high ceilings and nice windows. The owners live in the UK and it comes fully furnished with all the appliances, even wifi.

But (you knew it was coming) … it would be shared space until the end of the year. A bit complicated to explain: It's a 2-bedroom. One bedroom is usually closed up and the owner use it when they visit, which is 1 month a year (December). The other bedroom, the one they usually rent out, is occupied until the end of November. So basically I'd move in, stay in the owners' bedroom from now until Nov 30, and then shift to the other room for December. So it would be January until I really had the place all to myself.

I was really turned off by that idea until I saw the place — no way would I be able to afford a place like this if it weren't for the fact that the owners have this sort of special arrangement (and, I think, prefer to rent to expats). It's pretty great compared to everything else I saw in that price range. It's big enough that the spaces are separate and I don't think I'd feel too cramped… but the bathroom is shared.

And I'll be traveling for about half of November anyway. And maybe I could use December to do some of the research travel I need to do?

And — although I've been used to living by myself for a long time — maybe it would actually be good to be around people for the first couple of months, especially people who really know the neighborhood/place where I'm living and how to do stuff.

I wonder if I could also ask to pay reduced rent — half, even? — for the months that I'd be sharing the place?

It also has the benefit of being around the corner from my favorite bookstore/cafe in the city, where I had my book launch last year. Although of course that's not a reason to choose an apartment, it did feel nice to pop into the familiar spot afterward and have lunch and feel sort of a sense of ownership of the neighborhood. And it's in the main city, which means it's near museums, performance spaces, etc., even though I know the "in" thing now is to live in the suburbs.

It's a reasonable walk to Marine Drive, i.e. the shoreline; not really a beach but more like a promenade.

I talked to the owners by phone and they seem nice enough. I'll talk to the other tenant in the morning; she's apparently an Aussie who writes for the Indian edition of Vogue. She has a visitor staying there until Tuesday afternoon, though.

The apartment also "comes with" someone who cleans every day and someone else who cooks three times a week — mixed feelings about that, as noted yesterday, but at the same time that'd be one less decision to make. And at least they're not live-in staff, which would feel *really* weird to me … although there is actually a "servant's bedroom" behind the kitchen (that's currently semi-storage). Yeah, whoa.

Apt ?

Now it's Sunday, as well as a holiday for Hindus, so the realtors etc aren't working. I had lunch with a family friend and am having a mellow day and thinking about this all. Tomorrow I need to make a decision about whether I'm going to choose one of these places, or keep looking and move to temporary digs for 1 or 2 weeks. I'm supposed to check out of my hotel on Tuesday… I could stay longer on my own dime, of course, but at $100/night that seems like the least desirable option.

So I could spend Monday seeing more apartments. There is a woman agent I haven't worked with yet who I'd like to give a try; would love to be able to give my business to her.

But I'm not sure I'm going to see anything that gets me beyond these choices. I think I've seen about 10 or 12 in addition to these, at both higher and lower price points. There are lots of apartments in the "hmm I guess this would be ok" category, but now that I've got my standard-setters, I'm not sure how much more time I want to spend looking, vs. getting settled in already.

But (on the 17th hand), what if there's a fabulous apartment that is just waiting for me to keep trying another few days?

Or I could just make a decision and then spend Monday getting the paperwork ready, exchanging the money, etc. … and move on to writing, living, etc.

Right now the latter seems appealing! But I'm giving myself at least till noon Monday to decide.

Do you have a vote?

Bright Lights, Big City, Bombay-Style

Dear diary,

Last night I was invited to dinner by a friend of a friend who told me that she'd just finished reading my book. A couple of nights earlier, she'd had a party and they were cutting lines on the book. The Indian cover of the book is like a patchwork quilt, and one of the guests, a writer, was making the lines of coke line up with the stitching in the patchwork, so that it was hard to tell where the drugs were, and they all kept sniffing at the wrong parts of the book.

While the writer was doing this, he recognized my name on the cover and said, "That's my student!" Yes, many years ago I'd taken a writing workshop from him in New York.

And just when you thought print was dead. Can an e-book do that? I think not!

Meanwhile, the university where I'm supposed to be affiliated is embroiled in a book censorship controversy! A rightwing politician's kid took offense at a novel by one of India's best writers that's been taught for many years. It's a big brouhaha, in the headlines every day, and I will see how much I can bite my tongue when I go to visit the campus and meet the head of the English department next week.

My journey was fine and actually quite charmed. In the security line at SFO, I was whisked forward by a TSA staff person who told me to bypass the long line and take a shortcut all the way to the front. In the line in Frankfurt, a cute security woman teased me about my bear/neck pillow (Mr Takiyu, pictured), saying, "Oh you are carrying a dangerous animal!" And in Mumbai, at 2 a.m. after a 24-hour journey, a customs officer asked me a couple of questions ("Do you have an iPad with you? Any meat?") and then waved me past the long "Nothing to Declare" line where they were x-raying everyone else's suitcases.

Along the way I ate the fabulous food my mom had packed for me, watched the Karate Kid (not bad, but definitely not as good as the original with Ralph Macchio), and read Malinda Lo's ASH, which I'd heard about when we were at a book awards ceremony together — a gorgeous re-imagining of the Cinderella story for young adults.

Here in Mumbai/Bombay, I have a "facilitator" assigned to me by the Fulbright agency, a lovely young woman named Giselle who is studying to become a journalist. She's been teaching me to do things like ride the city trains and get out of rickshaws on the curb side rather than the traffic side. Always get in the ladies compartment, etc. Someone really needs to write a whole novel set in the ladies compartment; surely someone has?

I nearly gave Giselle a heart attack by getting out at the wrong stop (she said "next" and I thought she meant … anyway), and then suddenly I was on the platform and she was on the train, and the train started up again, and without thinking I ran alongside the train and swung myself back on, exactly like in Slumdog Millionaire. Ohmygod Ohmygod Ohmygod, said Giselle.

Thus far I've been feeling very well. I accidentally drank some non-bottled water this morning so I am hoping my digestive system doesn't have a tantrum. I surprised the Fulbright staff by showing up at their office on my first day, as I was strangely awake despite getting to sleep at 4 a.m. and waking up at 7 a.m. They've just shifted to a new office so the head of the agency from Delhi was also there for the inauguration of the new space. I had a nice chat with him and I think I managed not to say anything delirious. They offered me lunch but I wasn't hungry at all, and instead drank a juice box, for the first time in at least a decade. How fun to drink from a box with a poked-in straw!

I thought I'd packed everything I needed very carefully, but somehow several items didn't make it, or at least are hidden away somewhere in my suitcase, including A) small notebook to carry around — no idea what I did with that, B) wattage converter (had to go get one immediately, as trying to run my 110v personal massager on a 220v current was really a bad idea), and C) pants. What happened to my pants? For some reason I seem to have only brought yoga pants and jeans. So far that's ok, but I will need to go get some proper pants soon.

Happily, the cell phone I'd bought last year in India worked right away and even had plenty of minutes remaining, so I can be in touch with everyone easily. The hotel has fast broadband wifi in the lobby for about $1.50/hour which is just fine for email and looking up things, although not really private enough for Skype conversations, I think. Anyway it's nice to feel connected.

I'm staying near the airport and I've been tired enough that it took me till now, day 3, to realize that the planes flying overhead at night are quite loud. Thank goodness for ear plugs and a natural ability to sleep. I'm getting in a lot of good research for my nap book, as I'm remembering important categories such as the jet lag nap, the afternoon heat nap, the post-apartment-searching nap, etc.

I'm not too homesick yet, but the apartment search is naturally an anxiety-provoking process. My hotel is in a neighborhood called Ville Parle, and apparently it's a very Gujarati area. Lalaji, the first taxi driver I had on a day when I wasn't with Giselle, was half-Gujarati and assured me that Vile Parle is 80% Gujarati while other areas are merely 30-40% Gujarati. Since my Hindi is really quite atrocious, it's always a relief to find someone who speaks Gujarati, and we had a nice long discussion in which he gave me housing recommendations and inquired about my mother, father, brother, husband, etcetera.

From here to Bandra, which is the trendy area where all the expats and artists and queers like to stay, it's approximately 6 rupees on the train, 90 rupees by rickshaw, or 250 rupees by taxi. That's 15 cents, $2, and $6 respectively. Of course it's all cheap if you have US dollars but it is truly exciting to be able to travel somewhere for less than a quarter.

Bandra, according to Giselle, is a traditionally Catholic area but since the Catholics are "more tolerant," Bandra has become more cosmopolitan. By contrast, for example, in the Gujarati areas she says you won't find meat. (Meat vs no meat seems to be an important organizing principle.)

So anyway, I'm pondering the benefits of living among the Gujus vs in a "cosmopolitan" area where I might have to speak more Hindi. And at the same time I do want to improve my Hindi, and be where the cool kids are, so…

I've got 7 nights in this hotel so I've been looking at lots of apartments. One was on the same block where Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan (unrelated) live, and the real estate agent made sure to point out their houses, easily recognizable by the crowds of common folk lingering about, gazing up at the terraces, waiting near the driveways, etc., hoping to catch a glimpse of Bollyroyalty.

We have two close family friends in the Mumbai suburbs, both of whom I've stayed with before, but both are in the process of moving themselves. I do have a place I can stay transitionally if need be, which is awesome, although I'd prefer to get settled sooner rather than later.

Once I choose a place, moving two suitcases in won't be a big deal. But learning how and where to acquire the things I need feels a bit daunting. Simple things like where to buy groceries and cleaning supplies are a complete mystery to me. Sometimes apartments don't come with things like refrigerators, and apparently one is supposed to hire a maid — we'll see. I'd certainly need to clean the bathrooms, mop the floors, etc much more often here, because of the high levels of pollution and dirt (?) in the air and on the streets, and to keep the indoor insect population down. Progressive middle-class people feel a bit guilty or conflicted, but I've only ever met one person who totally did without household help. Others opt to try to raise the standard of living by paying double or triple, or what they consider a living wage, and offering things like paid vacation days, bonuses, and so on.

This weekend: More apartments and maybe I'll catch a bit of the Navratri celebrations, and/or catch up with friends I'd made last time I was here, and/or meet some of the other Fulbrighters who are already in Mumbai. May try to take a yoga class too if I feel up to finding my way around.

I will keep asking questions and learning stuff. And of course, reporting back.

Signing off for now,

Minal "my book is a party" Hajratwala

PS just got word that LEAVING INDIA has received another lit award. I'm not allowed to say more for a week or so, but it's exciting!

Mumbai apartment search

If all goes well I will be in Mumbai next week, October 13!

Want to help me envision and manifest the ideal place to live?

(Royal court in palace at Chittor, Rajasthan )

This is my list so far:

Top criteria:

• beach view and/or easy walk (2 blocks?) to a shoreline … I decided on this while at the beach in San Francisco a few weeks ago, realizing how VERY HAPPY the ocean makes me. And since Mumbai is basically a string of islands, with shorelines all around, I'm hoping this will be easy to find and also will help me narrow down neighborhoods.

• 1 or 2 bedroom apartment. Aside from my living space, I do need a separate space to write, that I can close off. I also would like to be able to put up an occasional guest.

• At least one room with air-conditioning. Cuz, yeah, it'll be hot. I have no illusions about my stoic-ness when it comes to the weather. I am a wimp.

• Reasonably quiet since I'll be writing there.

• Wired for internet/wi-fi, or easy to acquire internet access… I've heard it can be kind of difficult/complicated/frustrating to get hooked up.

• Aiming to stay under 50,000 rs. That's around $1100 US. Rents seem to be all over the place; I know people who are paying $100 and people who are paying $18,000 a month (seriously? yea). I'm hoping I'm in the ballpark but I am prepared to be flexible and take the advice of locals.

• Furnished or lightly furnished (bed, stove, refrigerator).

• 9 month lease (but I'm flexible if I need to sign something a little longer-term).

I'm open to all areas of Mumbai proper as well as the trendier suburban area up north - that's Bandra, Khar, Juhu Beach. Everyone seems to want to live in Bandra now, and there's an emerging queer neighborhood there (that may be overstating it, though?). I will be affiliated with the University of Mumbai in Kalina, but I probably won't need to be on campus too often, so I'm not worried about commuting.

I am not really interested in having a roommate although I would consider the right situation.

Extra bonuses would be:

• Upper floor / terrace space

• Wi-fi

• Near someone/some folks I know; queer-friendly

• Landlord / neighbors who are helpful without being too nosy

• Convenient neighborhood for groceries, restaurants, art, community, necessities, getting rickshaws & taxis, traveling to other parts

What else should I think about?

I guess there are some basics — reasonably safe building/neighborhood, reliable plumbing and electricity, regular water — that we don't think about much in the US but that I should probably make sure are on my list. And from what I understand, some apartments "come with" live-in domestic staff; I wouldn't want that.

I sent out this list to a bunch of friends and family friends today, so I'm also taking heart today from my friend Renata's excellent blog post on "Wanting" and gratitude. Check it out.

Sometimes I write as strangely as Dali paints

Q.

What kind of publication could list dead white guy Franz Kafka, live-wire comedian Rachel Bloom, and me in its table of contents?

A.

A literary journal!  Specifically, this month's Moon Milk Review, an online magazine that manages to be both cohesive in vision and wild in content.

I'm in it because I won a contest. Each month the editors post an image and solicit what they call "micro-fictions," or "prosetry":  pieces of 500 words or less that blend poetry and prose, and engage the image...

Un-Leaving India

So it's official:  I am moving to Mumbai.   The visa has arrived, the medical clearance has cleared, the cat has a new home, and all that's left to do is get an airline ticket and start packing.

image from Meter Down, a friend's award-winning blog of interviews with Mumbai taxi drivers:

http://meterdown.wordpress.com/about/

FAQs:When are you leaving?

The first week of October 2010 if all goes smoothly (fingers crossed).

For how long?

9 months, or possibly longer.

Why?

To work on a new project f...