In the Convent of Little Flowers (23 page)

A few years ago,
Seattle
magazine, our local monthly, called for submissions for its second annual fiction competition. One of their (not unreasonable) conditions was that the story have some “Seattle” connection, either in setting, or characters who once found their homes here, or
something
—they were very generous.

Having decided to submit for the competition, for the first time in my writing career I had to write a story to fit a specific theme and a market. This Seattle story of mine wasn’t an easy task, for the simple reason that until then all my fiction—novels and short stories—had been set in India. I had completed both
The Twentieth Wife
and
The Feast of Roses,
both set in seventeenth-century Mughal India, and had written numerous contemporary short stories, drawing on my experiences from my childhood and college years. It
was a daunting task, all of a sudden. I had no wish then (and now) to write about the immigrant Indian experience—I was living the life and didn’t feel I had lived it long enough to sit back, draw a breath, and view my experiences with a writer’s eye, from all sides, prejudiced and not.

I began and let waste a couple of short stories because they were going nowhere; the characters seemed flat, the voice insipid, the plot sluggish. When the weekend came around, my husband and I went to dinner at an Indian friend’s home. At the table, our hostess began a story about one of her colleagues at work. My friend’s colleague had just received a call from her sister in Belgium, married to a Belgian man, who had adopted a little girl from India (actually the city of Chennai) some twenty-odd years ago. A few days before, a letter had come to them from the orphanage at Chennai, with the request that the girl come back to India to see her mother who was dying. The Belgian parents, and their now-Belgian daughter, had not returned to India after the adoption and knew no Indians at all. So the mother’s phone call to her sister (and my friend’s colleague) in Seattle was to ask her to find out from my friend if she thought if the letter was legitimate, if they should indeed go to see this woman who had given up her child to the orphanage … if …

My friend has a mobile face and a rhythm to her voice, especially suited for storytelling. She can mimic and mime, be grave and irreverent in turn, but I was, at best, a preoccupied audience that evening. The dinner ended, we went
home and to bed, and I worried myself to sleep. The next morning, I awoke and began to write “Shelter of Rain.”

I wrote steadily over the next three days, let the story rest for another three, and revised for another three days before I sent it in to
Seattle
magazine. A few weeks later, they returned the story to me with thanks and their regrets—they had decided to cancel their second annual fiction competition. All that fretting for nothing! But I still had my Seattle story, after all.

Sometime before this, I had picked up a copy of
India Today,
India’s weekly news magazine, at the local library and remember staring at the cover picture for a long while— it was a photo of a gray-haired man and woman lying on the concrete pavement where they had fallen. They looked peaceful, almost asleep, faces turned to the side, but a ribbon of blood zigzagged out from the man’s head onto the concrete. When I eventually turned to the accompanying article, it was to read about (my) Meha and Chandar and their son, (my) Bikaner, and how they had flung themselves from the balcony of their flat to stop their son’s abuse. Neighbors said that it was because the son wanted the flat they owned in Mumbai. This is about all of what I remember from the article.

It took me months of thinking about Meha and Chandar and Bikaner, of who they were, where they came from, why … why … why … before I could write “Three and a Half Seconds.”

From the first writing of the story, I had structured it
around the jump, and my initial title, chosen for no reason, was “Nine and a Half Seconds.” Optimistically, as it turned out. With a great deal of help (such terminology not being part of my normal vocabulary), I calculated the coefficient of friction for a falling human body, the drag (or lack of it, since it was warm weather and they would not have been clad in cumbersome clothing), whether they would reach terminal velocity (no, not enough of a height), a more reasonable distance for them to fall (from the sixteenth floor), and the title was pared down to “Three and a Half Seconds.” This is one of my early stories—I think it might predate all the stories in this collection—but it is the most difficult story I have written.

Most Indian readers will probably recognize the premise of “The Faithful Wife.” I read this story of a Sati in my local newspaper, while drinking my coffee, just before leaving for college in the late 1980s. It was a little article, tucked away into a corner reserved for late-breaking news as the paper is being put to bed for the night. Since, of course, the Deorala Sati and Roop Kanwar have been written about, discussed, and analyzed. But I wrote “The Faithful Wife” from that one memory of that little article, so my facts (my fiction, really) aren’t accurate (and they aren’t meant to be), other than the fact of the Sati taking place. I remembered that a reporter had arrived at Deorala the morning after, and this reporter (my Ram) became the focus of “The Faithful Wife.” What would he have done if he had arrived just before the event? What would he have done if his grandparents lived in the village—if they were somehow complicit in the Sati?

There is some background, such as these, in all the stories of
In the Convent of Little Flowers.
A tale told over dinner, an article read in a newspaper, even a much-forwarded email with a “can you believe this is happening in
India
?” as in the case of “The Key Club.” Everything triggers a thought, some thinking; sometimes this develops into a story, if I can find enough of a motivation and conjure up a history. Sometimes, as in the case of “The Chosen One,” I set out to write another story and this is what I ended up with.

It’s easier to cram only craziness and eccentricity in a short story rather than a novel—there it would be simply exhausting. Novels need lulls, breathing spaces. In the short story, the lull comes afterward, when the story has been read and put away and there is time for reflection. So if there’s one thing the stories have in common, it is that they all deal with that intense moment in which people confront disturbing events in their lives. I didn’t put these stories together with a theme in mind, and there is none really, I think, other than perhaps my reminiscences, old and new, of my homeland.

Indu Sundaresan

January 2008

Acknowledgments

This collection was created over a period of some years; consequently, I’ve shown the stories, in one avatar or another, to members of my critique groups. Thank you, for your thoughts, questions and comments, which have helped shape these stories into their current form.

My agent, Sandy Dijkstra, has a steady and wise guiding hand, and everyone at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency is brilliant and efficient—it’s such a pleasure working with all of you.

It has been awhile, eight years or so, but I still remember that stunning happiness on hearing that Judith Curr, my publisher at Atria Books, had agreed to publish my first novel. I’ve worked with Malaika Adero, my editor at Atria Books, only a few years less, and I’m grateful to both of you for your support and encouragement, especially with this
book, which is something new from my pen. My deepest thanks also to the Copyediting Department at Atria (for stellar copyediting), the Art Department (for spectacular covers), and the Publicity Department (for believing in my work and championing it to the outside world).

To Uday and Sitara: just this; you make all of this, and indeed everything else in my life, worthwhile.

Finally, a note to readers around the world, who have written in to keep me company with their stories and had kind words of praise for mine—I appreciate your letters more than I can express.

Readers Club Guide

In the Convent of Little Flowers

Introduction

In this collection of stories, celebrated author Indu Sundaresan departs from her body of historical novels to explore themes of significance to Indians today. These nine works of short fiction tell the stories of contemporary Indians challenged by ancient traditions and culture, struggling to find a place and a way of life in a world that offers some women more opportunities than ever while denying others even the most basic freedoms. With Sundaresan’s trademark lush prose, vividly rendered settings, complex and appealing characters, and compelling narratives,
In the Convent of Little Flowers
illuminates the lives of Indian women living at home and abroad, embracing and rejecting modern lives.

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. In “Shelter of Rain,” why is Padmini so angry to hear from Sister Mary Theresa, the woman who practically raised her until her adoption at age six? What reasons does the nun give Padmini for her mother’s abandonment and neglect? How does Padmini feel about those reasons? Do you sympathize with her mother at all?

2. Indian culture has long emphasized the importance of respect for elders, particularly with regard to aging parents. In “Three and a Half Seconds” and “Bedside Dreams,” we witness the devastating effects of the rejection of this tradition. Why do Meha and Chandar ultimately choose death over asking for help or standing up to their cruel son, Bikaner? What does “Bedside Dreams” say about the effect of Western culture on young Indians with elderly parents? Do you think the nameless narrator and her husband, Kamal, did in fact
“go wrong” raising their twelve children to be cast off so readily?

3. Compare and contrast the way Payal’s grandmother in “Fire” and Kamal and his wife in “Bedside Dreams” are treated. Describe the situations these elderly characters face at the end of their lives and explain how they got there. Do you think they deserve their fates? Why or why not?

4. Banyan trees appear in several of the stories in this collection. Identify which stories this symbol appears in and discuss the ways in which the characters use the banyan tree. What do you think the tree symbolizes?

5. Though not all of the narrators in this story are women, the stories do seem to center on one or several women’s experiences. What do these stories tell you about the traditional roles of women in Indian culture? What is expected of women in their roles as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers? How do you feel about these expectations?

6. The idea of an arranged marriage often seems cruel to modern minds and hearts. But these stories portray another side. What are the benefits of an arranged marriage as experienced by the characters of
In the Convent of Little Flowers
? What are some of the detriments?