Living in the US for the past 25 years, yet connected to her roots in Doon valley, an economist Nidhi Thakur reflects the trials and tribulations of the Indian diaspora through her writings. Her book titled, ‘When She Married Dr. Patekar And Other Stories’, published by Hawakal was launched recently at the Valley of Words Litfest book café in Dehradun and was attended by dignitaries and other writers and readers. The book showcases the identity crisis of most of the Indians who emigrated to the US almost three decades ago.
Indu Pandey, former chief secretary of Uttarakhand, Sanjeev Chopra, former State Secretary, Jagmohan Singh Rana, former chairman Lok Sewa Ayog (Uttarakhand), Professor Anita Rawat-Director USERC, Dr. Sharmila Pal, former faculty AIMA and other eminent people amongst others attended the book launch. In conversation with the author was Kulbhushan Kain, former Director of School Projects-Patanjali Group. To a hall full of rapt audience, Dr. Thakur read parts of the book, interlacing them with her personal experiences. She fielded questions from the audience, and recited parts of her Hindi poems.
When asked what inspired her to write, she said that while she was always a writer at heart, upon landing in the U.S. in 1999, the acute sense of alienation that she felt was something that was novel in a complex way. She noted down her thoughts and observations, sometimes on the margins of research papers she was reading as a doctoral candidate in Economics, and sometimes in a diary. Those notes went on to become the bulk of the seeds of the first draft of the stories. Her stories depict the emotional journeys of the immigrants they undertake which are universal. Thakur is fluently bilingual and chose to end each story with an original Hindustani couplet - translated in English.
Nidhi Thakur, an Indian American poet and writer is currently teaching in New Jersey. Her book is available on amazon globally and is also a part of the BCCLS library system of NJ. She is the finalist for the prestigious American Fiction Awards -hosted by Ambookfest. Her previous works have been published in anthologies, and her spoken poetry has been featured in various venues, including the Quint and the Jaipur Lit Fest-virtual. Alumni of St Joseph’s Academy and JawaharLal Nehru University, Nidhi moved to the US for graduate studies and did a Ph.D. at University of Arizona, and a Postdoctorate degree at University of Chicago. Now she teaches Economics and lives in Short Hills, NJ, with her husband and two daughters. She is an active community organizer on themes of climate and culture.
About the Book: A collection of short stories on desi-immigrant sensibilities in a post 9/11 and pre-whatsapp world of patchy connectivity between India and the rest of the world. Indian Immigrants in that time frame were going through the motions of settling in foreign lands with a sense of isolation since connecting with their ‘desh’ through the only predominant mode of long-distance audio calls is still ‘expensive’. One is faced with the quest for defining an identity. At times, the book takes an autobiographical flavour too.
The title story in the book is a fictional biopic of a Bollywood diva who leaves behind her world of tinsel town when she marries an Indian-American doctor and relocates to a small town in the USA. The fickleness of fame compels her to reinvent an identity. In another story, a young Indian IT worker is flummoxed at how hate comes literally from that unseen bend on the road, in the aftermath of 9/11. Personal anecdotes of his grandmother’s escape from the terror of Partition in a newly independent India in 1947 appear more real to him than ever before. Sarla, another character, grapples with the definition of 'family' in America as dark secrets of her childhood, and a foreboding memory of an Uncle in India haunt her. Every story ends with an original couplet in Hindustani language capturing the essence of many themes of the stories.