I immigrated to the United States in 2001 for college.
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Apparently, the city of Delhi is a 'character' in my novels. I'd argue that it's a ... city... in my novels.
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If India hadn't become a troubled space for me, somehow I wouldn't have any reason to write about it. So the fact that it's a lost love, or something, is why I keep thinking about it obsessively.
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I remember returning to Bangalore after a few months of travel and seeing it as a first-world city, like New York or San Francisco. This may be obvious to some people, but I grew up in Delhi, and I had no experience of how someone from a 'Tier 2' city may view a 'Tier 1' city. You really do emigrate between worlds when you come from those towns.
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I see flaws as a kind of beauty.
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When I had worked on my first book, I had readily shown bits and pieces to everyone - for encouragement, to force myself to write.
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Cobain the writer is funny and self-aware and snotty with a knack for off-the-cuff profundity. Remarking to a friend that his band will be called 'Nirvana,' he scribbles next to it the words 'Oooh eerie mystical doom.'
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If Asian America exists, it is because of systemic racism.
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I had a thick accent, and people didn't understand me, and I was ashamed, and I fumbled. I radiated an uncertain energy; sometimes baristas sensed this and wouldn't try to talk to me, and then an insecure voice in my head would cry, 'He's racist!'