The folks at Hartford sure know how to organize an event! They chose "The Death of Vishnu" as their "one book" for 2008, and on Oct 24, I had the privilege of giving a talk at their brand new library. This was the culmination of events that had been going on since August - see their website. Great questions from the audience, and a lavish buffet of Indian delicacies afterwards for everyone who came.

It gave me great pleasure to join five other South Asian writers: Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai, Suketu Mehta and Akhil Sharma to put on a benefit reading for Obama on October 4. The event was organized by author Meera Nair, and emceed by film maker Mira Nair. Suketu had a great party at his house afterwards. We ended up raising $56,000 for Obama! Here's more on it on Sepia Mutiny.

On October 3, I participated in a fiction panel at the New Yorker festival. I was a little horrified by my cartoon in the catalog, but I suppose that's supposed to be the point. Enjoyed the party afterwards!

Here's an account of the session on emdashes.com.

At the Brooklyn Book Festival, I was asked to do a reading and then perform something risky/embarrassing afterwards. Decided to do Helen's immortal Bollywood number from the movie Caravan, "Piya Tu Ab To Aja." Figured something this over the top would help me to not take myself too seriously. Glad to see it up on YouTube!

In April, I had a stimulating three hour conversation with Claudia Dreifus, a writer for the Science section of the New York Times. Here is the article based on this conversation, published in the New York Times on June 17, 2008. Read Interview

It seems like I've been traveling for months. First came the Indian book tour in January, where I went to five different cities: Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi and Jaipur. I wrote an article about this which just came out in the June 2008 issue of Outlook Traveller (India).

Next came a 15 city US tour, which took most of February and a little of March. The most memorable part was, as usual, the Bay area - lots of good friends and good food, not to mention great weather. (I keep asking myself why I don't live there.) I had tough competition during the tour from an unexpected quarter: the Obama Clinton contest was in full swing throughout. But I got some great coverage - for instance a radio interview on New America Media.

After that, a couple of cities in the UK and Ireland, followed by a quick dash to Toronto for a reading at Harbourfront on March 26.

In April, I only did local events, but come May, I was back on the road. Back to Mumbai to do a Math/Writing event at the American Center (a powerpoint presentation called "The Mathematics of Fiction" which went really well), followed by a reading at Oxford Bookstore. From there, I went to France to meet my French editor (also my French translator). Then on to Wales, for the Hay on Wye Book Festival (one of the highlights was watching a show at the circus run by my UK editor's stepdaughter).

The next stop was a Mathematics conference in Helsinki, Finland, to celebrate the 60th birthday of my friend and research collaborator Professor Juhani Pitkaranta. The Finns really know how to celebrate - the conference dinner was held at an amazing restaurant on the water, where we feasted on Arctic Char and watched the sunset (which occurred at around 10 p.m.).

The final stop of this 32 day trip was a few days in London to meet up with Pakistani and Indian writer friends.

In June, there was an event in New York at the Asian American Writers' Workshop, where I read with the talented new Sri Lankan author V.V. Ganeshananthan. Then came the week-long Aspen Literary Festival (see separate entry to be posted shortly).

In July, I intend to rest.

Since I've been at UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County) for so
many years, it was only fitting that I have the US release of The Age of
Shiva at the university. It was a wonderful event - a great audience that
(in addition to such luminaries as Senator Sarbanes) included several of
my former students. As usual, I barely got to try the food - the two
samosas (and one carrot stick) that I tried before my reading were very
good, but the desserts all vanished while I was signing books. By the time
I got home, I was starving, so I made myself a scrambled egg for dinner.
So much for the glamorous life of a writer.

But the event was thoroughly enjoyable, a real treat - and it gives me
great pleasure to share the filmed version.