WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.340 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.340 --> 00:00:05.125 align:middle line:90% I'm delighted to be in Tucson. 00:00:05.125 --> 00:00:07.810 align:middle line:90% 00:00:07.810 --> 00:00:11.050 align:middle line:84% I know it's raining, but I was born during the monsoon 00:00:11.050 --> 00:00:12.490 align:middle line:90% season in Kolkata. 00:00:12.490 --> 00:00:14.800 align:middle line:84% So rain isn't going to prevent me 00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:20.410 align:middle line:84% from enjoying a tour of both the city 00:00:20.410 --> 00:00:25.360 align:middle line:84% and the surroundings tomorrow and getting to know some of you 00:00:25.360 --> 00:00:30.840 align:middle line:84% in the colloquium, the next generation of writers. 00:00:30.840 --> 00:00:32.830 align:middle line:84% I knew from age three that I was going 00:00:32.830 --> 00:00:37.390 align:middle line:84% to be a writer because I came from the kind of neighborhood 00:00:37.390 --> 00:00:42.700 align:middle line:84% in Kolkata where if you don't know by age two or three what 00:00:42.700 --> 00:00:46.450 align:middle line:84% you're going to be, you will be told what you're going to be 00:00:46.450 --> 00:00:49.730 align:middle line:84% or your life is doomed to failure. 00:00:49.730 --> 00:00:52.990 align:middle line:84% What I didn't know though growing up as Clark 00:00:52.990 --> 00:00:57.310 align:middle line:84% has said in fiction scavenging from real life 00:00:57.310 --> 00:01:01.540 align:middle line:84% in that household of 40 to 50 people 00:01:01.540 --> 00:01:06.580 align:middle line:84% that I was going to be an American writer or writer 00:01:06.580 --> 00:01:09.160 align:middle line:90% of a globalized world. 00:01:09.160 --> 00:01:15.220 align:middle line:84% The world that I grew up in doomed 00:01:15.220 --> 00:01:18.460 align:middle line:84% us to be in the same neighborhood 00:01:18.460 --> 00:01:24.820 align:middle line:84% among very homogeneous people speaking only uniquely Bengali 00:01:24.820 --> 00:01:30.010 align:middle line:84% and following the same kind of social codes 00:01:30.010 --> 00:01:33.820 align:middle line:90% and political leanings. 00:01:33.820 --> 00:01:42.100 align:middle line:84% But fate or the serendipitous nature of one's life 00:01:42.100 --> 00:01:46.210 align:middle line:84% landed me in Iowa at the Writers Workshop. 00:01:46.210 --> 00:01:49.240 align:middle line:84% When I was 20 years old and again 00:01:49.240 --> 00:01:54.460 align:middle line:84% fate or serendipitousness made me fall in love 00:01:54.460 --> 00:02:00.010 align:middle line:84% with a man with blue eyes sitting in the row behind me. 00:02:00.010 --> 00:02:04.180 align:middle line:84% How I saw his blue eyes from when he was behind 00:02:04.180 --> 00:02:05.770 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:02:05.770 --> 00:02:10.240 align:middle line:84% And after a two week courtship I got married. 00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:14.990 align:middle line:84% And as a result during a lunch break by the way, 00:02:14.990 --> 00:02:17.930 align:middle line:84% while you're having soup and sandwich we said, well, 00:02:17.930 --> 00:02:18.890 align:middle line:90% why not? 00:02:18.890 --> 00:02:23.050 align:middle line:84% And we went to a lawyer's office around the corner 00:02:23.050 --> 00:02:28.360 align:middle line:84% and in five minutes I came down the stairs 00:02:28.360 --> 00:02:32.230 align:middle line:84% as Mrs. Blaise instead of Miss Mukherjee. 00:02:32.230 --> 00:02:37.600 align:middle line:84% Well, as a result of that impulsive act which 00:02:37.600 --> 00:02:43.990 align:middle line:84% now is about 39 years ago, I lost the culture 00:02:43.990 --> 00:02:50.620 align:middle line:84% and gained a wholly new vibrant world. 00:02:50.620 --> 00:02:54.880 align:middle line:84% What has I discovered over book-- 00:02:54.880 --> 00:02:57.310 align:middle line:84% a couple of books and over decades 00:02:57.310 --> 00:03:01.690 align:middle line:84% is that what fuels my writing, what 00:03:01.690 --> 00:03:06.250 align:middle line:84% fuels my passion as a citizen of the world 00:03:06.250 --> 00:03:13.600 align:middle line:84% and citizen of a country is the rerouting from one 00:03:13.600 --> 00:03:18.520 align:middle line:84% set of beliefs, being uprooted and then being 00:03:18.520 --> 00:03:21.260 align:middle line:90% transplanted into another. 00:03:21.260 --> 00:03:25.630 align:middle line:84% And so I have chosen to read two little excerpts 00:03:25.630 --> 00:03:31.840 align:middle line:84% from "Desirable Daughters" and one very short story 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:35.980 align:middle line:84% in order to show the different ways in which 00:03:35.980 --> 00:03:39.130 align:middle line:84% different characters choose to deal 00:03:39.130 --> 00:03:47.230 align:middle line:84% with the fact of voluntary transplantation. 00:03:47.230 --> 00:03:52.270 align:middle line:84% Iowa was mentioned by Fenton in his marvelous introduction, 00:03:52.270 --> 00:03:56.620 align:middle line:84% an introduction which made me feel like a world class writer. 00:03:56.620 --> 00:03:59.530 align:middle line:84% So I want to take that introduction 00:03:59.530 --> 00:04:01.450 align:middle line:90% and take it back with me. 00:04:01.450 --> 00:04:11.260 align:middle line:84% But Iowa is where sitting on a very gloomy day in a farmhouse 00:04:11.260 --> 00:04:15.280 align:middle line:84% at a very low point in my life, low in spirits, 00:04:15.280 --> 00:04:16.139 align:middle line:90% low in finances. 00:04:16.139 --> 00:04:18.640 align:middle line:90% 00:04:18.640 --> 00:04:23.320 align:middle line:84% I received from our mentor and teacher 00:04:23.320 --> 00:04:30.070 align:middle line:84% Bernard Malamud early copy of his selected stories 00:04:30.070 --> 00:04:34.600 align:middle line:84% which was showing me inadvertently, 00:04:34.600 --> 00:04:37.780 align:middle line:84% again fate or serendipitous of life 00:04:37.780 --> 00:04:40.870 align:middle line:84% sent this book to me at just the right moment. 00:04:40.870 --> 00:04:46.120 align:middle line:84% And the book showed me how the Jewish American community 00:04:46.120 --> 00:04:49.930 align:middle line:84% of writers of Bellows', Malamud's, 00:04:49.930 --> 00:04:53.380 align:middle line:84% Roth's generations had also dealt 00:04:53.380 --> 00:04:57.040 align:middle line:84% with similar kinds of transitions, adjustments 00:04:57.040 --> 00:04:58.510 align:middle line:90% that had to be made. 00:04:58.510 --> 00:05:01.300 align:middle line:84% And that suddenly was such an inspiration, 00:05:01.300 --> 00:05:05.970 align:middle line:84% but my writing took off in a very, very different direction 00:05:05.970 --> 00:05:08.340 align:middle line:84% than it might have if I had thought 00:05:08.340 --> 00:05:13.230 align:middle line:84% of myself as a post-colonial expatriate stranded 00:05:13.230 --> 00:05:20.430 align:middle line:84% by an accidental, impulsive, hormonal surge in North 00:05:20.430 --> 00:05:21.060 align:middle line:90% America. 00:05:21.060 --> 00:05:25.080 align:middle line:90% 00:05:25.080 --> 00:05:29.790 align:middle line:84% So the first little clip is from the narrator's point 00:05:29.790 --> 00:05:31.320 align:middle line:90% of view of Desirable Daughters. 00:05:31.320 --> 00:05:32.920 align:middle line:90% She's 36 years old. 00:05:32.920 --> 00:05:37.170 align:middle line:84% She's been well brought up in Kolkata in a fancy family. 00:05:37.170 --> 00:05:40.230 align:middle line:84% She's been married off through arrangements 00:05:40.230 --> 00:05:48.780 align:middle line:84% by parents to a very successful engineer who comes to Stanford 00:05:48.780 --> 00:05:54.390 align:middle line:84% and who makes a lot of money in Silicon Valley, 00:05:54.390 --> 00:06:00.930 align:middle line:84% but who the narrator Tara leaves because she's pursuing 00:06:00.930 --> 00:06:06.360 align:middle line:84% personal happiness in her perhaps 00:06:06.360 --> 00:06:13.770 align:middle line:84% misguided concept of what it means to be American. 00:06:13.770 --> 00:06:16.620 align:middle line:84% And so she's working as a teacher's aide 00:06:16.620 --> 00:06:23.430 align:middle line:84% in elementary school or preschool 00:06:23.430 --> 00:06:27.450 align:middle line:84% in the upper Haight area of San Francisco. 00:06:27.450 --> 00:06:31.050 align:middle line:84% "There was a message waiting for me at school on Monday morning. 00:06:31.050 --> 00:06:34.140 align:middle line:84% Bogside special ordered for the first grade. 00:06:34.140 --> 00:06:36.570 align:middle line:84% I handled the multicultural acquisitions 00:06:36.570 --> 00:06:40.170 align:middle line:84% as a school voluntee--were being held for me at the bookstore 00:06:40.170 --> 00:06:42.630 align:middle line:90% down on the Haight. 00:06:42.630 --> 00:06:45.450 align:middle line:84% I can't teach lacking the certificate, 00:06:45.450 --> 00:06:48.090 align:middle line:90% but I do need time and money. 00:06:48.090 --> 00:06:53.760 align:middle line:84% The little kids are 90% Asian, Latino, and African-American. 00:06:53.760 --> 00:06:56.430 align:middle line:84% The teachers at least during the two years 00:06:56.430 --> 00:07:01.110 align:middle line:84% that I volunteered here are all European Americans. 00:07:01.110 --> 00:07:05.490 align:middle line:84% The rhetoric of modern San Francisco makes me invisible. 00:07:05.490 --> 00:07:10.200 align:middle line:84% I'm not Asian which is reserved for what in outdated textbooks 00:07:10.200 --> 00:07:13.230 align:middle line:90% used to be called Oriental. 00:07:13.230 --> 00:07:15.420 align:middle line:90% I am all things. 00:07:15.420 --> 00:07:18.870 align:middle line:84% When the little kids climb on my lap to be read to or just 00:07:18.870 --> 00:07:21.120 align:middle line:84% listen to, I don't think they see 00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:23.940 align:middle line:84% me as anything different from their parents or the school 00:07:23.940 --> 00:07:26.730 align:middle line:90% nurse or their teachers. 00:07:26.730 --> 00:07:29.370 align:middle line:90% I thrive on this invisibility. 00:07:29.370 --> 00:07:34.350 align:middle line:84% It frees me to make myself over by the hour. 00:07:34.350 --> 00:07:38.430 align:middle line:84% In the last municipal election it empowered me to canvass 00:07:38.430 --> 00:07:42.450 align:middle line:84% enthusiastically for a gay Chicano candidate running 00:07:42.450 --> 00:07:45.120 align:middle line:84% on his work in homeless shelters, needle 00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:48.750 align:middle line:90% exchanges, and AIDS screening. 00:07:48.750 --> 00:07:50.640 align:middle line:84% There's no explaining this collusion 00:07:50.640 --> 00:07:53.820 align:middle line:84% with the other anywhere in my background, 00:07:53.820 --> 00:07:58.830 align:middle line:84% yet I'm still too timid to feed my Bengali identity 00:07:58.830 --> 00:08:01.530 align:middle line:90% into the kitchen garburator. 00:08:01.530 --> 00:08:07.230 align:middle line:84% That dusty identity is as fixed as any specimen in a doctor's 00:08:07.230 --> 00:08:12.840 align:middle line:84% glass case confidently labeled by my father's religion, Hindu; 00:08:12.840 --> 00:08:19.440 align:middle line:84% caste, Brahmin; sub caste, Kulin; mother tongue, Bengali; 00:08:19.440 --> 00:08:22.830 align:middle line:84% place of birth, Kolkata, formative region 00:08:22.830 --> 00:08:25.560 align:middle line:84% of ancestral origin, Mishtigunj, 00:08:25.560 --> 00:08:30.090 align:middle line:84% East Bengal; education, postgraduate and professional; 00:08:30.090 --> 00:08:34.230 align:middle line:84% and social attitudes, conservative. 00:08:34.230 --> 00:08:35.909 align:middle line:84% Playing with the pre-school children who 00:08:35.909 --> 00:08:39.600 align:middle line:84% teach me nursery rhymes and languages I don't speak 00:08:39.600 --> 00:08:42.150 align:middle line:84% or inside the bookstore on Haight street 00:08:42.150 --> 00:08:45.870 align:middle line:84% where I immerse myself in heavy terms of history or science 00:08:45.870 --> 00:08:51.360 align:middle line:84% or cosmology, I feel not just invisible but heroically 00:08:51.360 --> 00:08:54.360 align:middle line:84% invisible, a border crashing claimant 00:08:54.360 --> 00:08:57.990 align:middle line:90% of all people's legacies. 00:08:57.990 --> 00:09:00.030 align:middle line:84% The moment I step outside the bookstore 00:09:00.030 --> 00:09:03.660 align:middle line:84% onto crowded Haight street, I lose the heady kinship 00:09:03.660 --> 00:09:06.930 align:middle line:84% with the world that I feel through my reading. 00:09:06.930 --> 00:09:10.170 align:middle line:84% Nobody pays attention to me other than to ask 00:09:10.170 --> 00:09:15.570 align:middle line:84% for spare change or press a hand bill to my closed fist. 00:09:15.570 --> 00:09:18.360 align:middle line:84% I'm not the only blue jeaned woman with the pashmina 00:09:18.360 --> 00:09:21.780 align:middle line:84% shawl around my shoulders and broken down running shoes 00:09:21.780 --> 00:09:23.310 align:middle line:90% on my feet. 00:09:23.310 --> 00:09:26.190 align:middle line:84% I'm not the only Indian on the block. 00:09:26.190 --> 00:09:30.210 align:middle line:84% All the same I stand out I'm convinced. 00:09:30.210 --> 00:09:34.920 align:middle line:84% I don't belong here despite my political leanings. 00:09:34.920 --> 00:09:38.310 align:middle line:90% Worse, I don't want to go on. 00:09:38.310 --> 00:09:41.520 align:middle line:84% Tourist buses mostly German and Japanese 00:09:41.520 --> 00:09:44.940 align:middle line:84% still stop at Haight-Ashbury to take pictures of the street 00:09:44.940 --> 00:09:47.640 align:middle line:90% sign and of hippies. 00:09:47.640 --> 00:09:51.090 align:middle line:84% The free spirits, the revolutionaries, the flower 00:09:51.090 --> 00:09:57.240 align:middle line:84% children dropouts have grown up, grown old, maybe grown bitter. 00:09:57.240 --> 00:10:00.090 align:middle line:84% The tourists snap away all the same. 00:10:00.090 --> 00:10:03.050 align:middle line:84% The street people pose often profanely 00:10:03.050 --> 00:10:05.930 align:middle line:90% and scrounge for money. 00:10:05.930 --> 00:10:13.070 align:middle line:84% And he is Tara's lover who is a Hungarian immigrant, ex biker, 00:10:13.070 --> 00:10:17.490 align:middle line:90% ex Buddhist and husband. 00:10:17.490 --> 00:10:20.780 align:middle line:84% Andy, who keeps shocking me with little disclosures of his pre 00:10:20.780 --> 00:10:23.840 align:middle line:84% Buddhist youth, spent sweet times, 00:10:23.840 --> 00:10:26.810 align:middle line:84% he says, on the Haight 30 years ago, 00:10:26.810 --> 00:10:28.370 align:middle line:84% more and bigger than a hippie, he 00:10:28.370 --> 00:10:33.740 align:middle line:84% says, a distinction I'm unlikely to be able to clarify. 00:10:33.740 --> 00:10:38.360 align:middle line:84% To me, there is a small army of America's Untouchables, 00:10:38.360 --> 00:10:43.241 align:middle line:84% a mockery of everything immigrant behavior stands for. 00:10:43.241 --> 00:10:46.670 align:middle line:84% For every Bish Chatterjee, that's my husband, 00:10:46.670 --> 00:10:49.100 align:middle line:84% there's a cluster of green haired waifs 00:10:49.100 --> 00:10:52.130 align:middle line:84% with pit bulls outside the new kiddie Gap 00:10:52.130 --> 00:10:56.900 align:middle line:84% and Starbucks begging for cigarettes and drug money. 00:10:56.900 --> 00:11:00.710 align:middle line:84% I feel guilt and sorrow when I walk past them, 00:11:00.710 --> 00:11:04.760 align:middle line:84% but a few blocks later rage takes over. 00:11:04.760 --> 00:11:09.380 align:middle line:84% The marginality is rooted in the deep and profound ownership 00:11:09.380 --> 00:11:11.660 align:middle line:90% that I will never know. 00:11:11.660 --> 00:11:14.420 align:middle line:84% The families in Atherton who worked their way 00:11:14.420 --> 00:11:18.470 align:middle line:84% to the big houses behind iron gates and posted guards 00:11:18.470 --> 00:11:22.330 align:middle line:84% could lose it all in a single minute." 00:11:22.330 --> 00:11:23.000 align:middle line:90%