India bound, on a visa and a whim

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni tells FYI how being stuck on a freeway when hurricane Katrina struck Houston, made her pick up the pen to write One Amazing Thing

Never mind the author-of-fifteen-books tag, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni isn't the sort to boast, especially when it comes to her familiarity with the Indian diaspora.

Ask her how she manages to write about the community sans stereotypes and she does so with humility. "That's because I'm living the diasporic life myself.

The Indian immigrant experience is multifaceted. The 1960s immigrant's experience is very different from the contemporary immigrant's experience," she explains, in an email interview from the US.



Hurricane and back

One Amazing Thing's underlying theme looks at people's reactions when faced with death and how a community emerges from disaster, which was where Chitra's personal experiences steered the plot.

"We had to evacuate my hometown, Houston, in 2005 when Hurricane Rita approached the city.

Stuck in a huge traffic jam on the Freeway I experienced panic, among a range of other emotions. I wanted to explore those feelings further and it was from that, that One Amazing Thing was born."

Chitra's challenge was to give her characters equal importance. "Into the claustrophobic space of the collapsed building, I wanted to bring in a diverse group, each of whom had a compelling reason to go to India."

While most of her characters were imaginary, their physical and psychological characteristics were borrowed ufffd "that way, I wasn't limited by reality.
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Though, some of them have backgrounds I can relate to. Like Uma Sinha, who like me, is a student of literature, and whose family came from Kolkata.
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However, others like Cameron, the Buddhist African-American ex-soldier, whom I grew to like, I have no idea where he came from!"

For reel life

Will the book take the filmi route, like two of her previous novels?

"Only if an intelligent director approaches it, originally, and I hope he/she is reading this and will pick up the book! It would be a challenge to balance nine trapped people's lives.
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There are great possibilities ufffd of striking visual scenes, of character creation and interaction, of creating tension, of bringing in different worlds through their stories," she signs off.

One Amazing Thing, Penguin India, Rs 450. Available at leading bookstores.