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AI: Well, I wanted to ask also, you had mentioned briefly that after your book was published, you went on tour --

PJ: Yeah.

AI: -- and had some speaking engagements and readings, and I was wondering what kinds of audiences you had spoken to, if some of them were with South Asian immigrant and American audiences?

PJ: Yeah, it was amazing to me. I, I just thought nobody would read my book. I really -- you can't write a book just thinking about who's gonna read it. You just have to write it and hope that it's gonna be interesting to somebody, and of course you have to do a marketing thing where you say, "This is who I think is gonna read it." But I went on a national tour so I went to the East Coast and to the West Coast, not really in-between very much. And it was really a lot of South Asian American young people, a lot, and older people as well. And Westerners who had been to India and loved it and were trying to find a way to articulate what they loved about it, because it's both incredibly frustrating, I mean, I think the dualistic portrayal that I try to present in the book was very much what people who know India, they get it. And so, the audience was really mixed but there were a lot of South Asian American young people. And I realized this hunger for literature that represents both fictional and non-fictional, that represents who they are. And that's what they kept telling me all the time. You know, people would say, "I felt like I was writing the book," which is an odd thing to hear as a writer because then you feel like, "Well, is my experience singular in any way, or could it just be applied to anybody?" [Laughs] But I understood what they were saying, which is it speaks to the experience that we've had. And many of them, unlike me, were born here. But I think those identity issues are really similar. And for the older people, I think they really connected with the pieces of the book that talked about all the things in India that they miss, because those were so real for them, being here. So it was really quite a diverse audience but I was amazed at how universally appealing it was to South Asians.

AI: That must've been incredible for you to hear back this response and to hear from people that they felt that you had captured feelings of their own.

PJ: It was incredible. It was a real honor. It really was, because I wasn't expecting that at all. I think what I was expecting was more the reaction... it was interesting, the book was picked up by Penguin, India and published in India. And the reaction there was much more mixed, where... for several reasons, I think. But it got very good reviews from all of the national review places. But I think there were a lot of individuals who were... felt it was trite, or trivial, because, of course, it wasn't geared for them, it was geared for people who don't know India, and it was published exactly as it was here in India. But I think it also brings up the issues that Indians have about why is it that somebody from the United States has to write about India, even if it's an Indian. There's a lot of tension there in terms of publication because a lot of Indians feel that the only authors that really make it big are the Indian authors who are from the United States and not the ones, you know, because India has such a rich collection of literature, both regional languages as well as Indian. So I think that -- I mean, as well as English. So I think that comes into, into play quite a bit. But I expected much more of that and I just didn't get it here.

AI: Well, I also wanted to mention that -- just to place the context of the year and the times -- that in 2000, when your book was published, that was also the year that the stock market took a dive.

PJ: Yeah.

AI: And then, of course, later on, that was the year of the United States presidential election with George W. Bush having a controversial election.

PJ: [Laughs]

AI: And so, just to place that time and the year and some of your activities, and all of this was all going on at once in the year 2000.

PJ: Right, right.

AI: And you were... you mentioned you were preparing to write another book.

PJ: Right.

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