The epic journey of an Indian-American family which unfolds when men and women, Hindus and Catholics, histories and curses, collide In McLean, Virginia, Dr. Raman Nair lives a life of abounding satisfaction with his tiny wife, Jaya, and his harem of enormous and beautiful daughters. He has been away from his native Kerala, India for so long that he has happily forgotten the ancient Brahmin curse that follows his family like a black cloud, killing one girl for love in every generation. But his wife hasn’t forgotten, nor has his baby sister, Gita. Suddenly his daughters are up to no good and Dr. Raman Nair doesn’t know which way to turn. As It Was Written marks the arrival of a wonderful new voice in fiction, and a storyteller of the highest order.
I was raised inside a bell jar by scofflaws who left their homeland of Kerala, India to fulfill their destinies halfway around the Earth. They came in a wave of scofflaws, the great Brain Drain of India of the 1960's. All the scofflaws' children were born here in the States and raised in bell jars of differing proportions depending on the number of offspring. Our parents felt the encasement would keep us safe and close to home. It didn't really work, though we rarely fell down, because we were not allowed outside, because someone might kidnap us. This is true. They told us. We watched the world through the glass, and we were allowed to play with each other. We have either great fondness or great antipathy for our own kind. This is not true. We love each other to the point of tears, the same way our parents loved us. We are like the daylilies; you have to tear us apart; we are all knotted together under the soil.
None of this tells you anything you might want to know about me. Here is some very distilled essence of me: the only thing I ever wanted to be was a novelist. I have no interest in the truth as it really is, but rather what might be the truth if only this or that were thrown into a regular day. I even blog lies. My blog is entirely made up of made up stories, because my own life is uneventful, and my own musings so much like everyone else's musings. Except that I muse things like this: "What percentage of nuns do you think are disliked by other nuns?" This might strike someone as a researchable question. You can go into the sanctuary and take a poll. But to me it is one of those what ifs that makes an ordinary life extraordinary. I like to muse on things like that. The drama in the cloisters. You have a regular group of nuns going about their nun work, ministering to the poor and teaching class and then they go back to their nunnery and suddenly a new nun has arrived and she is gorgeous. She looks like Raquel Welch. The priest can't keep his eyes off her. Well...women are women...I think that's an interesting story. I'd like to write that book.
But though I always and only wanted to be a novelist, it takes guts I didn't really have so I went a more socially acceptable, parentally acceptable route, because I was raised in a bell jar...it takes a while to stretch out. I got a college degree and then a master's degree and then even a doctoral degree and I taught school and I joined a college faculty and taught teachers how to teach school, and then I joined a public school system and worked as an administrator. I got married, I had a boy I had a girl. I didn't get the courage to drop everything and write a book until I had done all that. I figured by then none of the scofflaws could say I was stupid and to get an education, to get married, to have kids, in case it all fell apart. So finally I quit my day job and wrote a book, which is all I ever wanted to do. That book is AS IT WAS WRITTEN. I always say that it's about Dr. Raman Nair and his five fat daughters and the ancient Brahmin curse that followed them from India to the States. But it is also a family saga and a love story and a story within a story. It's a sweeping tale and I love every word. I would like to think that though I wanted to be a novelist from the time I was at least seven years old, perhaps I didn't have anything to say till now. I like to think that all these years, I was collecting the stories I will spend the rest of my life inserting 'what if's' into and writing on paper.
There are a lot of stories that come from my life and the lives of the people I know, but most of them are made up of a little bit of real and a lot of what if Raquel Welch showed up at the nun dormitory.
