by Ginu Kamani
Perhaps the groundwork was laid 20 years ago by that A+ I received in ninth-grade speech. Perhaps I gained rock-solid confidence at my wedding, when I informed 150 people of the reasons I'd married my husband. But still, it took either bravado or blinders to begin touring with my book Junglee Girl in 1995 without ever having read my stories aloud -- to myself or anyone else.
So imagine the surprise of my husband, parents, siblings, and friends, who, having watched me write quietly for years, sat through reading after reading as I toured with my book from May 1995 to March 1996, giving 50 readings in 18 cities on three continents (not to mention answering questions for radio, TV, print, and live audiences).
The early readings were particularly revealing. My mother-in-law summed it up best after she'd sat through one event directly in my line of vision with a mysteriously intent look on her face: "Ginu, I had no idea about this side of you!" My father, who loves enumerating his observations, noted, "I've learned three things about you today -- you can act, you have a sense of humor, and you're an intellectual!" My husband started a pattern that has yet to cease of weeping at every reading.
Later I heard some of the horror stories of intensely private writers whose anxiety attacks about public readings had led them to fall ill or cancel tours. In my case, even though the first few readings had heart-thumping, adrenaline-pumping, laxative beginnings, enthusiastic responses from Bay Area audiences fortified me immensely and made my segue into public performance relatively smooth. The Bay Area supports local writers marvelously.
While touring the United States I found that my audiences were generally 20 percent South Asian. At practically every reading, two types of questions came up. The first, generally asked by a young South Asian woman, was, "How has your family reacted to your book?" This casual inquiry often cloaked a distinct undercurrent of anxiety: because of the book's sexual content and close scrutiny of family politics, they wondered if my relatives had disowned me, if they hate my guts, wish me dead, etc. At A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, where this question was first asked, I indicated to the woman that since my parents were sitting right next to her, she could find out for herself what they thought. I imagine she was shocked, considering that my parents had been laughing their heads off the whole time.
The second type of question, invariably from a non-South Asian, had to do with the Kama Sutra. The combination of sexual topics and a woman from India apparently triggers this knee-jerk response. The modern West seems to view the Kama Sutra as a text that all Indians are intimately acquainted with. What of the fact that your average couple in India literally has no private space in which to experiment or psychic space in which to be alone with each other, apart from other family members, let alone submit to mutual pleasuring? India thrives on paradox, and the average Indian citizen is unconcerned with the existence of that detailed manual in the current climate of sexual conservatism.
My U.S. reading tour was originally scheduled to take place between April and July '95, with 15 readings in 11 cities. The readings wound up continuing all the way through December, with more than 40 events in all. Response in the Bay Area was particularly high, and local bookstores, colleges, and literary venues invited me week after week, almost up to the time I left for India and the U.K. in February '96.
Returning to India with a book in hand was an emotionally charged experience for me. I knew I was in for some sort of adventure. The book was released in India in October '95, and the first set of reviews -- a bizarre mix of outright dismissal and eccentric euphemizing of sexual issues -- had left me stunned. Reviews notwithstanding, before leaving for India I received word that the first edition of 2,000 copies had sold out.
Once I got there I found that the media were as interested in writing about me as they were in writing about my book. My interviews made it into most of the English-language dailies, and practically every relative saw my picture in the paper and was suitably thrilled. India also provided the first of my television coverage, and friends and relatives sent word of "sightings" on different channels. Retaining a sense of humor under hot studio lights is not easy, but I did have a good laugh over the earnest TV producer who requested that I choose a "neutral" passage for his taping so as not to offend the notoriously paranoid Indian censors. Much to his annoyance, my book yielded no such passage.
I had wondered what it would be like to interact with audiences in India, but because the book had sold out, no bookstore events came through. In the end, friends were able to organize two informal readings. The one in Delhi was attended mainly by individuals involved with sexual-health issues in one form or another. While I read, the tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife. Even though most of those present were comfortable dealing with issues of power and sexuality one-on-one, broaching those subjects in a public setting brought out all manner of anxieties. The discussion that followed was emotionally charged and utterly stimulating, but came to a sudden end when a freak storm caused a power outage.
The reading in Bangalore was attended mainly by press and theater people. The notable exception was a pair of women who had tracked me down because they loved the book, and in the spontaneous way that things often happen in India, they fed and befriended my husband and me and will probably turn out to be lifelong comrades.
Promoting the book in London was a dream. I adore London, but this was my first experience "doing business" in that city. My husband and I were there for 10 days, with a heavy promotion schedule of three interviews practically every day. My interviewers were articulate and economical in that wonderful, very British way. The extensive historical connection between India and Britain results in a completely different treatment of Indian subjects there from that in the United States, where ideas of India are still rather nebulous.
I gave two readings in London. For the first one, in a private venue, my publisher sent generous quantities of wine, and everyone had a smashing time. An instructor from North London University showed up to tell me that coincidentally, she was teaching my book in her class. At the next reading a group of her scholars showed up with their notepads and jotted down my every utterance.
As I look back, some experiences still make me shake my head in wonder. The weekend that I arrived in Portland, Ore., the Oregonian ran a superbly eloquent endorsement of my book. Two days later, on a blazing summer evening, 80 people jammed into a small feminist bookstore to hear me read. My book sold out before the reading, and store employees frantically fanned out in search of copies at other bookstores, only to find that those had been snapped up as well.
The air in the overheated space was electric. On that day I learned about the power of crowds, the incomparably high of adrenaline, and sweat -- real sweat, like the streams that pour off the body in the pre-monsoon heat of Bombay.
In Toronto I read at the annual Desh Pardesh Festival, a celebration of the culture, politics, and activism of the South Asian diaspora. There were 300 people in the hip, young audience. Every sexual nuance in the stories was effortlessly picked up, and 300 South Asians stomped their feet and roared with laughter in a glorious, riotous celebration impossible to forget.
Perhaps nothing quite matches the special feeling of knowing that my book is being used as a university text. I have addressed several classes in which Junglee Girl was on the syllabus. The discussions have been nothing if not lively. A recent visit to UC Berkeley brought me face-to-face with a classroom full of South Asian students, and the first question, from a male student, was, "Why sex? Why write about sex?"
Hidden in the young man's challenging tone I heard the gentler, more confused question, "Why India? Why involve sex with India?" I sensed the embarrassment, and perhaps protective concern, that infuses our culture, because when a woman speaks of sex, in the Indian mind she sets off a chain of trouble leading to the heaping of personal and collective shame on herself, her family, her community, and society.
Because the United States is an immigrant culture par excellence, we are privileged here with the opportunity to reinvent ourselves. Whatever other problems immigrants bring here from our homelands, many of us are also sexual refugees. Whenever I am asked whether I could have written this book in India, I answer no. Even though most of the its stories are set in India, for me Junglee Girl is very much an American book, based on permissions and perspectives and tools of analysis that I acquired here. In my current incarnation I wish to explore my newfound permissions, tempering them with knowledge and compassion, rather than shame.
