The conferring of ghungroo takes place through a traditional ceremony of the type we rarely take the time to slow down for these days. The hall we rented was decorated with Indian cloths and garlands of flowers, the little stage transformed into an altar of sorts, with pictures of the dance gurus (the lineage of teachers of  Chhandika, our dance school), a statuette of Nataraja, Lord of Dance, an incense holder. Each dancer brought an offering of a coin, an element of nature and sweets or fruits to share. The bundles of bells are neatly lined up, each one wrapped in red felt and tied with a ribbon. Our teacher, Gretchen Hayden, sat cross legged on the floor in front of the altar and called up each student in turn, taking his or her bundle of bells, holding it to her forehead to symbolize the mind, in front of her mouth to symbolize breath and speech, and to her heart before handing it to the student who did the same. Despite the thousands of bells in the room, the dozens of children and parents, the video cameras and cell phones, there was peaceful silence in the room as everyone appreciated the significance of what was taking place, the connection with an art form that is so ancient and beautiful, the commitment we each make to carrying it forward, the gratitude we have for our teachers, our students, our children.

It is ironic just how much planning, organizing and running around had to take place just so that K and I could be present for this moment of stillness, tradition and meaning. This was a particularly chaotic weekend during which my other half, J, was away teaching at a black belt martial arts camp, I was enrolled in a two-day writing conference with meetings set up with my agent and possible editors, and apparently both K and her two year old sister required care and feeding. I started planning for the weekend weeks in advance, lining up a series of friends and relatives to tag team to be with S (and K the rest of the weekend), typing out a glossary of her odd vocabulary so that when she started frantically pointing to the fridge and yelling “DEE!” the kind soul who was with her would understand she was asking for cheese, or so that when she touched her nose and said “dodo” it would be clear she wanted to sleep. (Yes, I do have a two year old who asks to sleep, and yes, I do realize how lucky I am.) I had lists and piles everywhere, of things to bring to the conference, of items to bring to the ghungroo ceremony, of things to pack for the little one’s stay with a friend. I had to remember who to leave the stroller with, who would need K’s carseat when, where to leave the present for the birthday party she was going to attend in my absence, when to buy the flowers for the ceremony so that they’d still be fresh for the event itself. I had to remember to leave a change of shoes in the car for when I went straight from the ceremony to the conference, to pick up the ceremony program from the printer before they closed at 5:00 on Friday, to pack tissues and DayQuil in my bag because yes, of course I had to have a cold, to find time to rehearse the elevator pitch for my book, to pre-pack K’s lunch for the break between the ceremony and the class with Pandit Chitresh Das that she was going to attend as well.

And was it worth it? A hundred times over. And not just because of what I experienced for myself, which was augmented by something the lovely author Julia Alvarez said later in the day at the conference keynote address and which I’ll address in a separate post, but because it showed K that this was a matter of importance. Now, of course, she had no idea of the level of mad logistics involved which enabled her to receive her bells that day. She did not see the lists, did not notice the piles, had no insight into the complex logistics.

And that is the way it should be. She is seven. The fact that her parents were overextended that weekend, the fact that we had so many things to juggle all at once, that we are constantly feeling like we have to give one thing up in order to do the other, that is our own doing. Perhaps when she grows up she will be better than we are at finding the right balance. But for the moment, having her think of her attendance at the ceremony as a matter of course, having her find it a normal and fully-integrated part of her life, that is what matters the most.

And now here is what that little asterisk next to “ghungroo” is all about: As I was making edits to the ceremony program before sending it to the printer, I consulted with my teacher as to how to spell the word for the bells. There are so many ways that it is transcribed—ghunghru, gungroo, ghunghroo, ghungroo—and we wanted to pick one and be consistent with it. Then my teacher sent me an email with the following subject line: Is it a g or a gh, an u or an oo?!! And something silly was triggered in my brain:

The question is how do
You spell the word “ghungroo?”
Does it end with a U?
Or do O’s make the oo?
Is there one H or two?
If I only knew
We could then say adieu
To this pesky issue.
It seems the circumstances
Under which one dances
May well affect the chances
Of different types of spelling.
But when someone will choose
To use the O’s or U’s
Or downright refuse
The H–there is no telling.
But some advice for you:
Don’t put them on askew
Or up to your genoux
(for the French among you)
Or tie them to a gnu
Or EVER wear them to the loo!

Anyway. My process for the first book was a haphazard mish-mash of cobbled-together fumblings, in which I guiltily allowed myself to indulge in spurts, amid freelance work and baby and co-founding a non-profit organization. I was blundering in the dark, unaware, at first, that I was even researching a book at all. Now that I am fully invested in the research for the second one, I see that there are several stages, and they are akin to the stages of learning to swim. Like so:

Contemplating the allure of the water from the safety of land: Little bits of a story idea, of a different world, have landed on you, like droplets of water, on a summer day, leaving you wanting more. The water shimmers, entices. It is hot out, prickly hot, and the surface calls to you. The clouds are reflected in it, undulating slightly; it doesn’t look that deep. How refreshing it would be to take a dip, have a change in setting, explore this other world. You’ve heard there is a whole universe under there. Coral and colorful fish and strange anemones with scarlet tentacles. A pelican dives in, head first, and emerges with a fish. Other people make it look so easy, gliding through, cutting the surface with their arms. And fun! Splashing around, laughing. Standing on their heads, their feet waving, then toppling. Some of them wear snorkel masks, and you wonder what they see. You want to see it, too.

Pelican on Soliman Bay, Mexico

Near drowning: You jump in. Take the plunge. You launch yourself into, say, nineteenth century India. Immediately, you are overwhelmed. There is such a vast immensity of information available. Gasping, coughing, you gulp some of it down. You reach out and try to grab at anything you can hold onto. You read everything, or try to. You jot down a lot of facts, many of which you know you’ll never use, but you don’t yet know which ones those are, and you suspect the ones you don’t bother to record are the ones that will be critical to your story. History, politics, journals and diaries, newspaper articles, novels, academic papers, books on daily life, architecture, food and customs, sweeping summaries and minute details alike. They all swirl around you. You enter search terms willy-nilly into Google and Google Books, Amazon, Wikipedia, local library catalogs. You feel hopeless, yet determined. You keep flailing, hoping not to swallow too much water. It stings your nose and your eyes.

Treading water: After a while, you get the hang of keeping your head above water. You maintain the shoreline in sight, remember what this is all about. You manage to control your arm and leg movements. Vague story elements start to form. Not just India, but the city of Lucknow. The courtesan and merchant quarters. Not just the nineteenth century, but the years just before and just after the Great Rebellion. You manage to look down into the water and catch sight of identifiable shapes: a clump of rock, a tuft of sea grass. Some of your characters start to come into focus, and this helps dictate the specific settings for your story. You don’t yet see the details, but you begin to imagine them. You go from “he’s an artist” to “he’s a musician” to “he’s a sarangi player.” You are able to eliminate some of the sources for being irrelevant, and to replace them with others which you now know will be highly relevant. You organize the resources and the research—perhaps you use Scrivener—and you make lists. Many lists.

Doggie paddle: Now you are actually making forward progress. The plot starts to form. Getting from Point A to Point B. This is the exciting part, where you realize you are not only staying afloat, but you are swimming! It may be a basic form of locomotion, low on the totem pole of swim strokes, with a silly name, but it is a bona fide style. And now the development of the story feeds the research, and vice versa. You have direction. Instead of researching all festivals and religious celebrations of the time and place, you zero in on the specific one that will feature in your story, the one during which the betrayal, or the discovery, or the moment of forgiveness will happen. Instead of researching all forms of architecture and buildings, you picture and describe the specific ones your characters inhabit. You study maps, learn the layout of the setting. Now you know that it would take a good thirty minutes to walk from your main character’s home to La Martinière, the boys’ school across the river. Now you know that the shore is not that far away, and that you can keep up this doggy paddle thing for quite a while.

Front crawl: You hit your stride. You control when you come up for air. You cut through the water with purpose. You outline your scenes, and start writing some. Now you get into serious specifics. Someone is growing flowers on the roof. You look up exactly the types of flowers likely to be growing there, and the birds that will peck at the seeds. You imagine a specific meal, the food on the dishes, how it smells. You picture what your characters are wearing, feel the fabric, choose the colors. You go from “some European shopkeepers in Lucknow took orders for frivolous objects for their customers” to “Monsieur Carnonge insisted that a cucumber slicer be acquired for him from the latest shipment of European goods that had arrived that morning from Cawnpore by hackery.”

Scuba diving: This is it. You have your tank of air strapped onto your back, and you immerse yourself in this new world. You are no longer overwhelmed by its vast immensity, by the multitudes of lives teeming below you. You know how to navigate it. Now you can take your time, float a while, seek out nuggets of fact or possibility that others unfamiliar with the terrain would miss. There, in that clump of rocks, there is a crevice that you now know is likely to hide an octopus. (What? An octopus in Lucknow?!) You dive down and hover, peering in, slowing your fins, controlling your bubbles, watching, and you are rewarded by a pulpy display of tentative tentacles. Hello, you say in your head, and you smile—insofar as you can do so with your lips stretched around the regulator—delighted with your discovery. Momentary euphoria.

Until you have your first draft critiqued. But that’s a whole other story.

Yours truly diving off Harbour Island, Bahamas, many moons ago.

Take the other day, for example. It was not even a particularly, remarkably complicated day. Just an average one. But even with one child attending school and one with a sitter for a the morning, I was not able to extract myself from the household scene until 9:30 am, almost three full hours after getting up. There were lunches to make and pack, a full breakfast to cook so we could have a solid meal and some family time to get the day going, negotiations about attire appropriate for the weather and school activities, the spare crib to set up for the Next Doors child who spends Wednesdays with the sitter as well, dinner logistics to arrange, and so on.

When I finally managed to retreat upstairs with my twice reheated tea, leaving two babbling toddlers with the sitter, I found a slew of emails pertaining to my dance group’s performance, including logistics relative to costumes, the cues for the lighting and sound techs, the order of the dance items and more. I skimmed them, responded to as many as possible, and turned off my email program so as not to be distracted by the notifications of new mail. I averted my eyes from the pile of envelopes and papers in my inbox marked “To Deal With Now” which was leaning precariously because of something lumpy buried somewhere underneath, the identity of which I have not tried to elucidate for fear of causing an avalanche of papers that might reveal long overdue bills.

I put my teacup down and wondered if I should, instead of drinking it, go upstairs to practice my dance piece, then decided not to because a serious practice would then entail a shower, and the whole process would seriously cut down on my already dwindling and precious work time. Instead I turned on the music to the piece and went through it a few times in my head. Better than nothing, I told myself, although I still felt guilty. Guilt is a large part of trying to do so many things: one is never fully satisfied with the level at which one is managing to do any given one of them.

Finally, after running the gauntlet of aforementioned toddlers in my living room, I escaped to a coffee shop, settled in, was distracted for a while by the conversation at the adjacent table which I started mining for ideas for another story. By the time I opened the book I’d been toting around for days, a book that looked like it would yield some good research, it was 11 am.

I was right—the book I launched into, singer Sheila Dhar’s Here is Somebody I’d Like You to Meet, was, despite its unwieldy title and dreary cover, engaging, funny, smartly written and full of colorful anecdotes which drew me into the world of Indian classical musicians in the early to mid 1900s, their eccentricities, their art. (See her obituary here. I wish I could have met her in person.) I felt myself slip into that world, and ideas for my own characters started forming. I jotted down some notes, noticed that I was doing so, smiled to myself, then glanced at my watch. And the whole mood was instantly lost. I realized I had only one hour until school pick-up, and that before then I needed to check into my work email for edits to a cover letter for an overdue federal grant proposal. Ugh. I started despairing as to when I’d have another chance to enter that world and recapture the source of story and character ideas. (It’s now over a week later, and that chance has not yet come.)

This is the true challenge of the writer: to be able to create (or re-create) and inhabit a whole different world, to have lengthy and complex experiences in it, to see it in all its detail, and to fit all this into just an hour or two of actual existence. That space is like a dream, one that one can conjure up at will, in which a whole day’s events are compressed into a few minutes of sleep time, or like the cloud at the top of Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree which holds within it an entire universe in which Fanny, Jo and Bessie can have fantastic adventures with Moon Face and Saucepan Man, but be home in time for supper.

I want one of those clouds, one of those dreams. I want a place I can jump into for an hour, and experience ten hours of ideas and adventures. Someone mentioned to me recently that I should apply for a MacDowell Colony fellowship, and so I looked it up, and watched this video, and realized this is it. What a magical-sounding place, where for two weeks (more would be impossible considering children and such) I could be given a studio in the woods, quiet time, lunch delivered in a picnic basket by a kind soul on a bicycle, and the evening company of dozens of other artists with whom conversation would spark ideas and creativity and energy. I could get a year of work done in fourteen days. Of course, there’s the minor issue of being selected from amongst the thousands of applicants each year. But I think I’ll try. If not that one, which is so highly selective, than others, as long as they are open to all sorts of artists, not just writers. In a year or so, when a draft is hopefully well underway and Little One is bigger, I think I’ll try to enter that cloud for just a wee bit of time, and see what happens.

And now Little One is about to wake from her nap, Big One has been chatting at me for a while, and it’s my turn to make dinner. At least the grant proposal is in.

Looks deceptively tranquil, no? Let me disillusion you:

It is February school vacation week. We are staying at a house on this very beach. Little S is napping happily indoors (after spiking a fever during our much-delayed and logistically infernal voyage and throwing up in the rental car at 10 pm after we have driven unwittingly through Carnaval traffic on what turns out to have been Mardi Gras) while her father unhappily does some work, and Big K is sitting with me moping on his paradise-like beach, complaining that there is too much sea-grass in the freakishly warm and dazzlingly clear water in which swim beautiful tropical fish that she’ll never see because she refuses to put her head under water despite the semi-professional mask and snorkel we bought her at her insistence that she just couldn’t wait to go snorkeling. (Sometimes a run-on sentence is a necessity to capture the mood.) I would like nothing better than to spend the next hour strolling along the beach by myself, splashing my toes at the water’s edge and letting my mind wander. I’d like to think about the characters of my next book, about the dance pieces I’m preparing for an upcoming show, about the book I’m reading (Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones). Or maybe – gasp – about nothing at all. But I have this 7 year old child with me, and apparently this is entirely my doing. So I try to engage her.

-       Hey, I have an idea. Let’s go for a stroll down the beach and see what we discover!

-       Oh, yeah, great idea! [She jumps up.] Oh, wait. I don’t want to carry this camera. Let’s go upstairs to drop it off.

-       Nah, I don’t want to risk waking S. Why don’t you just put it in your pocket. It’s small enough.

-       Nooo! It will fall out.

-       No it won’t, it’s really small.

-       But Mooommy!

-       You can handle it.

-       Fine then. [Shoves the absurdly small digital camera she was given by an overly generous uncle into her back pocket, where it fits perfectly. We walk five steps.]

-       Mommy, I think I need to go pee first.

-       What do you mean, you think you need to? Do you need to or not?

-       I need to go to the bathroom.

-       [Sigh.] Ok, go ahead, I’ll wait here.

-       No, come with me, please. I need my sunglasses and I don’t know where they are.

-       K, keeping track of your belongings is your responsibility.

-       But Mooommy! The sun hurts my eyes.

-       Good grief. Ok, let’s go. [We go upstairs. Find sunglasses. K uses the bathroom. The wind causes the door to slam and I cringe, expecting S to wake up. Thankfully she doesn’t. J still at his work computer. K emerges.]

-       Mommy, I’m hungry, can I have a snack first?

-       No.

-       Please?

-       No. You will not starve on our walk.

-       But Mooommeee!

-       Gah! Ok, choose something quickly and bring it with you.

-       [K chooses one of those chocolatey, sweetened cereal boxes from the multipack that we get her as a treat on vacations. Looks like chocolate rice crispies. She crinkles the bag excessively, right outside the door to the bedroom in which S sleeps, to open it.]

-       Here, give me that. I’ll open it downstairs. [We head back down, through the breezy outdoor lobby with its comfy couches on which I could be curled up with a book, down the jungly walkway back out to the beach.] Which way do you want to go?

-       That way. [We walk five steps.] The sand is hot and pokey.

-       Pokey?

-       Yes! It’s poking my feet.

-       Why don’t you walk in the water with me?

-       [She scrunches her nose disdainfully at the rim of seaweed that lines the water’s edge.] Nooo. [We walk five more steps.] Actually, let’s go the other way.

-       Huh? Ok, fine. [We switch directions. We’ve now walked back and forth the same 25 foot length three times.]

-       Even though I have my sunglasses, they’re still letting the sun bother my eyes. [Note the way she blames the sunglasses for actively allowing this egregious affront to her eyes. I ignore her. She snacks loudly on her cereal packet. Suddenly, she is hopping around madly.] Ow! Ow! Oweeee!

-       What now?

-       [She holds her toe dramatically but is nonetheless careful not to drop her snack.] Oweee! I hurt my toe on something sharp!

-       Something sharp, or something pokey?

-       Mooommeeee! Stop! It’s not funny!

-       Hey, look at that pelican! It just dove down from up high to catch a fish!

-       Oh, where? [She puts the massively injured foot back down in the hot, pokey sand. We walk ten feet. She loses interest in the pelican and feigns a limp. I point out a fish jumping out of the water, which she fails to see. We discuss the use of hammocks as sleeping furniture. We talk about what constitutes a bay versus a gulf. There is discussion of the Caribbean Sea versus the Gulf of Mexico versus the Atlantic Ocean. She forgets to limp. I start thinking this might work out after all.] Ok, let’s turn back.

-       Oy! Already? What do you mean, turn back? That was nothing!

-       Yes it was. That was a walk. [She points to the house fifty feet away.] Look how far we went. Let’s go back and you can play Boggle with me.

-       Why don’t we sit here first for a while. Here, you can finish your snack. [I pat the sand next to me.]

-       [She looks down dubiously.] But my camera is in my pocket. I can’t sit.

-       [I bite my tongue, force a pleasant voice.] Give me the camera, please, and sit down.

-       [She complies. Munch munch.] Thanks. Hey, this is nice! [Munch munch.] Ok, now can we go play Boggle?

Nathan Bransford, blogger and former literary agent, put up a thought provoking post a few days ago titled “Why are so many literary writers technophobic?” He cites a number of literary writers’ comments—ranging from musings to rants—regarding ebooks, social media and the Internet. Ray Bradbury, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith are among those he mentions. His post elicited 69 (to date) responses, some of which are quite insightful and raise the notions of fear of change, academia, generational differences, mass culture, use of time, distraction, complacency and all kinds of other elements that may be contributing to the divide that seems to exist between writers of “literary” fiction and the adoption of new technologies.

I would love to see my book in print, a physical object, with a beautiful glossy cover and satisfyingly papery pages. Something I can bring to dance and writing events, pull out of my bag and leave in high traffic areas, sign and hand over to a friend or colleague or stranger. Something that a person can read on a subway and flip over to show the title to the person next to her who asked what she is reading. But I know this is not the only way to share my story, and I care immensely about getting it out to as many readers as possible. Thus I’ve been trying to educate myself on the various options that exist, the various publishing mechanisms that might be appropriate for distributing the story.

As a part of this effort, I attended a multi-hour session on ebooks, offered by Grub Street, the fantastic Boston-based center for creative writing. And while I entered the room with the notion that I could easily embrace the ebook thing, I left wondering if that is indeed the case. Two things happened to me during those hours: 1) I learned the nitty gritty of turning a manuscript into an ePub file, including the disheartening fact that one has to strip the manuscript of virtually all formatting, including any paragraph breaks not related to chapter breaks, any tabs or intendations, any centering of quotes or poems or other material not presented in simple paragraphs of prose. Talk about reducing the aesthetics of a book! Does this make me old-fashioned? I truly wonder.

The second thing was that I ran into a straight-talking, honest and successful agent who has been kind enough to read some of my chapters in the past, and when she found out which workshop I was attending, she said, verbatim: “Don’t do an ebook except as a last resort. Your book is too good. Your manuscript has only been on submission for 5 months? That’s nothing. Give it at least two years.” Wow. There is so much to parse out of that statement. I don’t even know where to begin.

One: an ebook as a last resort. This at a time when the blogosphere is rife with examples of writers, some of them already successfully published traditionally, who are choosing to go straight to ebooks for their next work. What to make of this?

Two: “Your book is too good.” Well, that is very flattering, for sure, but what does it mean? And what about trying to find a way to have an ebook AND a print book simultaneously? Surely that shouldn’t be a “last resort?” What was the agent really saying? Was she echoeing the phenomenon that Nathan Bransford was highlighting, of “literary” fiction—and presumably readers of such—not being aligned with technology?

Three: “Give it at least two years.” Well, this I can undersatnd. I’m willing to wait until I find what I feel is the right method to release my book. It took me eight years to complete, why should I rush now? And that gives me time to work on the next one, so there can be less of a gap between the publication of the two. (Yes, I’m ever the optimist.) This is the one part of the statement that resonates with me.

These are truly interesting times, my friends, in which to try to publish. And on an ending note: my mentor and one-time professor and employer, Paul Levy, most recently the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, put out his own book via CreateSpace just a few days ago. It’s a print book, not an ebook, but he has self-published it. In his words: “Entitled Goal Play! Leadership lessons from the Soccer Field, the book presents insights from sports, health care, business and government to help leaders get better outcomes.” Paul Levy is an unequaled leader with an illustrious career, including positions such as Director of the Arkansas Department of Energy, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and Executive Dean for Administration at the Harvard Medical School. One would think that he would easily get a deal from a traditional publishing house. He certainly has the proverbial “platform,” including a widely-read blog. (http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/) And yet, when asked why he didn’t choose that route, he says: “Publishers offer me nothing. They expect me to do all the publicity.  I have my own outreach arms.”

If this is true for non-fiction, why such a perceived difference for literary fiction?

I came across this as I did what I should have done two years ago, which is post my own book trailer on YouTube. It’s been available since its creation in 2010 on Vimeo and the web site for Faint Promise of Rain, and on Facebook, but for some reason I hadn’t yet posted it on YouTube. As I did so, I wondered what the state of the Book Trailer is these days. Every six months or so, I take a look at what else is out there in this form, to see how other writers are using audio-visual media to entice readers. And I’m still struck by how the majority of book trailers out there use a fairly flat combination of still images (sometimes “animated” to float across the screen, or fade in and out, but nonetheless essentially still) with a soundtrack and some words on the screen (not necessarily taken from the book itself, which baffles me) and maybe an awkward appearance of the author him/herself being interviewed in a mock-improvised setting. Even those for books by successful and well-known authors, even trailers created by publishers, who presumably still have a (albeit dwindling) publicity budget for the books they put out.

And yet, the trailers that are the most enticing to me are the ones that are themselves artistic works of creativity, and which tell a story on their own. The story of why one must pick up the book and read it. The story of why one should care. There are purists out there, those who decry the use of video to promote a book, but why shouldn’t one do so? At the fingertips of writers now are so many means through which to communicate a story, to have it take root, take life, in someone else’s consciousness. Isn’t this the whole point of writing? To be able to say: Look, here is this story, it is gorgeous, it is magical, it will give you goose bumps, it will lighten your heart or wring it dry, it will make you laugh and make you cry, it will send you skipping in the sun, it will reduce you to a trembling heap when done, it will live with you always. Maybe it will change your life, maybe it will help you with a decision, maybe it will give you a necessary escape. Maybe you will see yourself in it, or your father, or your friend. Why not embrace all the possible ways of conveying it?

I will always put words first in my own storytelling. I love playing with them, the rhythms and cadences they create, mellifluous or staccato, susurrating or jagged. But in my efforts to share Faint Promise of Rain, I am looking forward to including images with the words, and not only images but movement in the form of dance and sound in the form of music. And if I could also add smells to the experience, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Have you seen any book trailers lately? Any particularly good ones? Does the term “trailer” put you off, or entice you? Do they seem like gimmicks, or a good way to draw in a potential reader?

During this time, I’ve had ample opportunity to remember seeing my own mother read the very same book, about 25 years ago. One image in particular stands out in mind: my mother in a low-slung, striped chaise longue on the rough and uneven terrace of a spare, stone house atop a hill in Corsica, France. Her hair is dark, her short sleeved top is brown, maybe reddish, she’s wearing cream-colored capris, and she’s sitting in the shade of the house near a the long wooden table at which we took most of our meals. The image is vivid because of all the other impressions associated with it. A long, timeless series of beach days stretching endlessly ahead of me in the way that summer days—back when they were blissfully unstructured—appeared to me as a child. The hot, dry aroma of thyme and rosemary growing wild on the scraggly Corsican hillsides. The moist coolness of the inside of the house with its sparse and rugged wooden furniture and occasional bats. The wild hogs and ambling donkeys who came to root about the house and knock at the shutters with their snouts and muzzles. The clammy-and-rough feeling of removing a one-piece, sand-filled bathing suit after the last dip of the day in the sea, and the way the bathing suit ends up all rolled up onto itself and inside out and unpleasantly cold against sun-warmed skin. The sparkling turquoise of the Mediterranean waters lapping at the strip of golden beach at the bottom of the hill. I knew nothing of the contents of The Far Pavilions at the time, and in fact they bear no relation to this setting since they take place in 19th century Northern India, but these are my memories of my mother reading this book.

Fast forward to now. Seven-year old K has noticed the book, given how long it’s been sitting around. She’s delighted in the fact that I am using a bookmark of her creation, a white and red laminated strip of paper with her name crookedly spelled out in crayon, affixed to which is a piece of twine strung with five brightly colored plastic beads. She’s asked me “So what is The Far Pavilions about anyway?” She’s noticed that the cover has become warped with use. We are not in a locale with a particularly striking set of sights or smells, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, upon seeing this same tome many years from now, she has a sudden memory of her sister at the age of 20 months, eagerly extending her chubby fingers to try to grasp at the beads that dangle so tantalizingly from the bookmark. Or if she recalls the peaceful quiet of Sunday afternoons with her father on his computer and her mother reading, spending companionable “quiet time” together while the baby naps, and then having tea time all together, with a proper set of china cups and of course some cookies.

Perhaps I’m romanticizing the whole thing, perhaps she won’t have a single memory of it, but there are other books from my past whose physicality brings me back to very specific times and places (for example my stained copy of Watership Down which I read at the age of 11 in a train cutting through the French countryside, and on which I spilled a bottle of apple juice), and because of this I suspect she’ll have similar memories.

But only for a while. For in the age of e-books, the collection of memories associated with a specific copy or edition of a specific title—not the memories of its contents but the memories of the time and place in which one read them, of the person one was at the time—will be moot. I don’t mean to sound like a Luddite here; I’m ready to embrace certain aspects of the whole e-book wave, and it’s entirely possible that my own book will come out as an e-publication. But no one can tell me there isn’t some nostalgia in which to indulge here.

What are some of your own memories associated with your reading of certain books? Do you still have those volumes on your shelves?

Below is the short result of this work. Take a moment (1:29 minutes, to be precise) to appreciate the simplicity of the scene, the peaceful atmosphere despite the pounding feet, the understated grace and integrity of the teacher, the sheer joy of simply being present that emanates from her and the students. There is nothing dazzling in the movements themselves, nor in the outfits—this was a series of informal practice sessions and classes with a mixed level group of students—but the overall effect is powerful. This is what our classes are all about, keeping something so special alive.

for the love of dance from Varsha Yeshwant on Vimeo.

The sunlight streaming onto the hardwood dance floor, the harmony of thousands of ankle bells in unison, the other-worldliness of the singing and movements, the red tassles of the bronze-colored hand cymbals, the warmth and dedication of the teacher, Gretchen Hayden, these images and feelings that Varsha captured are precisely what drew me in to class eleven years ago.

And yes, that’s me in one of the first shots. A side view of my pregnant self in 2010. Enough said.

My story is locked in some kind of fortress and hasn’t offered me an access point. All I am looking for is a little opening, a crack in the wall that lets me catch a glimpse of a specific scene, a snippet of dialogue, a view of a character in emotional turmoil, a whiff of a thali of food in someone’s home. All I need is a catalyst for words to start lining up in my head. Is it because I have yet to visit the specific locale and am lacking the visceral experience of place that I had for my first novel? But I should be able to break into some scenes regardless. Any good writer should be able to do this, no? Is it because I’m frozen by the knowledge that I’m setting out to write a book, as opposed to simply noodling around with an image and some words? Should I consider that perhaps this is just not the story I should be writing, if I can’t even find a little loose thread on which to tug? Is it possible that I’m not, after all, a writer?

I don’t think so. A quick Google search on “starting a new novel” (yes, such are the ways of procrastination) reveals two equally universal and parallel sets of feelings: hope and possibility on the one hand, and paralysis and panic on the other. So it’s good to know my symptoms are those of a normal sort. The inability to get started, the focus on research because it is easier than writing from scratch. The fear that I might not know how to write a good story, even though I have already done so.

So here’s the goal for 2012: to break through the wall. To put writing first, and not just writing in a vague sense, but actual put-words-on-paper writing. Not just mulling over characters under the pretext that they need to be fully formed before they can start acting. Not just gazing at gorgeous albumen prints of 1860s Lucknow saying to myself this is necessary in order to create a sense of place in my mind before I set my characters down in it. Not just outlining all the scenes of the first few chapters in order to feel I am making sensible progress.

And on the subject of breaking through walls, the second goal for 2012 is to crash through the barriers to publication and get my first book out there, into the hands of readers, whether a traditional (or “legacy” or print or “p-” or whatever) publisher wants to be the one to do it with me or not. It’s time to be the people, and take matters into my own hands. I have a wonderful, enthusiastic and creative agent by my side, and together I know we can make it happen. I look forward to sharing my first novel with you.

Here’s last week:

Monday:

Adults: Leftovers from a local Indian restaurant. I’ve found that, contrary to some expectations, it’s harder to cook on weekends than on weekdays, perhaps because I’m “on” all day on weekdays, but try to relax a bit on weekends, and spending time in the kitchen after ferrying kids to activities and doing my own extra-curriculars doesn’t qualify as relaxing. (Although K recently asked why I’m so tired often, when I have “plenty of time to rest.” Huh.) Hence there are sometimes leftovers from a weekend take-out night.

Kids: Leftover “sausage pasta,” as it’s come to be known in our house, and sauteed okra. (I use the chopped, frozen kind. Both kids like it. Says K: “I like how okra has slime in it. It gives my mouth a massage.”) One could go on a tangent about how kids should really just eat whatever the parents are eating, but I’m not going there right now. Besides, the Indian leftovers were pretty spicy.

The “sausage pasta” is a simple concoction, liked by all 8 of us (our family and Next Doors) and easily made in large quantity. For 4 people: Saute a chopped onion with two cloves of minced garlic and a sprinkling of hot pepper flakes. When the onion is translucent, add in a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes, with juices. Simmer, uncovered, until most of the liquid has evaporated, approx 20 minutes, stirring now and then. In the meantime, place 5 sweet Italian sausages in a pan and pour in a half cup of white wine. Prick the sausages with a fork first. Cook, covered, until sausages are cooked through. Make whatever quantity of pasta you need (I tend to use rotini or fusilli). Mix everything together, and sprinkle with grated Pecorino Romano. The whole thing takes about half an hour, if you have three burners going at once.

Tuesday:

Crêpes. This was a bit of an extravaganza. Delicious outcome, but I don’t recommend doing it unless you have a couple of hours to devote to it. We had friends over, which is how I justified the effort to myself. But I was beat by the end of the evening.

I made about 40 crêpes, using the basic crêpe recipe from the Joy of Cooking, and quadrupling it. (A crêpe pan is not necessary, as long as you have a good non-stick pan.) Everyone had two savory ones and two sweet ones. For the savory ones, I prepared a variety of fillings, and made them to order, as it were. Gruyère, fried eggs, ham, sauteed spinach with garlic and red peppers, and sauteed mushrooms with fresh thyme. A slight sprinkling of fleur de sel in each. Accompanied by salad for adults, and steamed broccoli for the kids, who seem to object to lettuce.

Side note: Admittedly, “crêpes” is a difficult word to pronounce if you are not a native French speaker. But hearing “crayps” is painful to me. Try saying “creppe” instead. (The “s” is silent, and the “e” is a short “e”, as in eggs.) Although then, I suppose, you run the risk of not being understood by most people.

Wednesday:

Sauteed salmon with balsamic glaze, recipe from Epicurious.com. Quick, simple and delicious. Accompanied by quinoa, and green beans steamed and then sauteed with shallots. If you organize things right, this whole meal can be made in about half an hour. A bit longer if you have a baby clinging to your leg. Consider opening a bottle of chilled Vouvray. If aforementioned baby is in the picture, consider chilling it (the wine) in time to partake of it while cooking.

Thursday:

I was out at a meeting with my writing group. Husband had a leftover portion of boeuf bourguignon that I pulled from the freezer (recipe next time I make it) and egg noodles, with a salad. The kids had a couple of chicken drumsticks briefly marinated in olive oil, lemon juice, ground cumin and salt, with okra and egg noodles. I had a lovely evening out talking about books and writing, and eating good food with whose preparation I had nothing to do. And no, I don’t dangle my participles.

Friday:

Another good meal to feed all eight of us, with leftovers: Mark Bittman’s “anti-roast-chicken” as we call it. This is a good alternative to a roast chicken, with more going on, yet not much more effort. I’ve become a huge fan of Mark Bittman, who has the New York Times Magazine food feature now. This recipe was printed in the March 13, 2011 issue. Bittman calls it “Braised and Roasted Chicken with Vegetables.” The recipe is like so (copied here in case it disappears from online accessibility):

2 tbsp olive oil or butter (he actually calls for chicken fat, reserved from chicken-skin croutons, but good grief.)

2 skinless chicken leg-thigh quarters

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 skin-on chicken breast, split in two

3 leeks, trimmed, cleaned and chopped

4 carrots, chopped

6 celery ribs, chopped

12 to 16 oz cremini, shiitake, button or other fresh mushrooms, quartered or sliced

3 to 4 sprigs thyme or rosemary (I tend to use both.)

Chicken-wing meat (I don’t find this necessary)

Chicken stock (Bittman recommends making your own. Which is great and all, but in the interest of time, I use the boxed stuff.)

1. Heat the oven to 350. Put the butter/olive oil/chicken fat in a roasting pan or Dutch oven over medium heat. Sprinkle the leg quarters with salt and pepper and add them to the pan, flesh side down. Cook, turning and rotating the pieces as necessary, until well browned on both sides, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove, then add the breast halves, skin side down. Brown them well, then flip and cook for just 1 minute or so; remove to a separate plate.
2. Put the leeks, carrots, celery, mushrooms, herbs and chicken-wing meat in the same pan and cook until the vegetables are tender and beginning to brown, 10 to 15 minutes.
3. Nestle the leg quarters among the vegetables, meaty side up. Add enough of the stock to come about halfway up the thighs.
4. Put the pan in the oven and cook, uncovered, for about 1 hour. (Stir vegetables if they threaten to brown too much.) When the thight meat is tender, raise the heat to 400 and lay the breast halves on the vegetables, skin side up. Continue cooking until they are done, 20-30 minutes longer.

Bittman recommends transfering the vegetables to a platter, slicing the breasts and shredding the leg and thigh meat, and placing on the vegetables. I forego all this presentation, and just serve out.

Accompaniments: brussel sprouts sauteed with butter, pancetta and lemon juice, and mashed potatoes.

Bon appetit.