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On ‘Writing the Book You Can’t Not Write’

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Between the Lines: Subramanian on ‘Writing the Book You Can’t Not Write’

For the latest installment of SEJournal’s author Q & A, “Between the Lines,” Meera Subramanian talks to book editor Tom Henry about the research and writing process behind her debut, “A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis,” a 2016 Orion Book Award finalist that travels from the barren cliffs of Rajasthan to the farmlands of Karnataka.

SEJournal: What inspired you to write “A River Runs Again?”

Meera Subramanian: I have visited India all my life to see my father’s family and couldn’t help but observe how things were done there compared to my home in the United States. I’d be older with each trip, viewing with a new perspective, but India was changing, too, and when the country opened up its economy in the 1990s, that change ramped up to a frantic pace.

But who was getting left behind as the IT boom swept South Asia? Where was this country that is now poised to become the most populous nation on Earth heading in terms of development? What were they doing right and what were they doing wrong in a place where a growing population was colliding with limited natural resources, where everyone wants to satisfy their basic needs — and then some?

But this wasn’t just describing India; it was the state of the entire world. I decided to start with India, a place I could view with the fresh eyes of an outsider but also with a touch of insider knowledge.

Read the entire interview here.

India Book Launch: New Delhi!

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ElementalIndiaLaunchINVITE

Join me, Delhiites! I’ve landed in India for the release of Elemental India: The Natural World in a Time of Crisis and Opportunity, and hope you’ll join me at one of the upcoming events. This is the official book launch, Tuesday, January 19th (tomorrow!) at The American Center at 6:00 pm. I’ll be in conversation with the wonderful Aseem Shrivastava, co-author of Churning the Earth.We’ll be touching upon faith in a seed, vanishing vultures, rivers reborn, choking air, population pressures, and the eternal question of hope. And there’ll be refreshments. Co-hosted by The American Center, HarperCollins India, USIEF (Fulbright) and Caravan magazine. Do come! Details here.

Update: Here’s a podcast of our conversation:

More events in the works for Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai over the next month. Find all details for confirmed events here.

parting notes

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Five months of a Fulbright-Nehru fellowship is coming to a close. Given that the fellowship involves both the US  and Indian governments, there was just a wee bit of paperwork. At. Every. Step. [Has anyone else ever known where I’ve slept each and every night?] As it all wraps up, there was a final report. Actually, two. A couple questions seemed worth sharing. [Read more…]

india agitating

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Photo via http://blogs.wsj.com/five-things/2013/12/15/5-things-that-have-changed-since-dec-16/?mod=e2tw

It’s the one year anniversary of the brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in New Delhi. The date also marks the night — The Times of India reminds us this morning — when a nine-year-old boy named Raju was assaulted and sodomized in the city, and Razia left her toilet-free home for relief and was attacked. It’s not just the young modern educated girls out carousing with their boyfriends (How dare she. A movie? Out at 9:00 pm?) who are at risk. It’s not just girls. The protests that erupted were in the name of Nirbhaya, the student, but they were also for these two, and for all those whose skins and boundaries have been unwillingly transgressed at the hands of another. [Read more…]

into the clouds

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IntoThe Clouds

This is how my friend described Mussoorie, a hill town in the foothills of the Himalayas, in the state of Uttarakhand: “It’s as though someone has been up all night, scrubbing the sky!” Normally, that is what’s to be expected. Radiant blue skies of autumn. But the monsoon came early, and with a vengeance, causing flooding that wiped out villages in July. And it’s staying late. The scrubbers still scrubbing, nothing to see from down here on the ground but mist and clouds. Normal, these days, is no longer normal. [Read more…]

Dilli, for a start

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I arrived to Delhi to begin five months of research and reporting on Elemental India, with the support of USIEF’s Fulbright–Nehru fellowship. They set me up at the lovely Vandana B&B in Safdarjung Enclave, where I sit on a balcony as the sun goes down, the sky clearing after a day sprinkled with rains that brought the temp down. The birds are raucous, parrots having a cocktail party overhead and the kites catching the last of the day’s thermals. Crows find their stations on bare branches in the tree among a park’s trees across the street, plucking and grooming and stretching into the sunset. A chipmunk war breaks out in the treetops. Delhi is lush from a long summer and heavy monsoon rains. It is a jungle with a dead river flowing through it, inhabited by 22 million people. [Read more…]

fulbright-nehru research fellowship

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J. William Fulbright was an American senator from the south who fought McCarthyism and the Vietnam War, and in the time in between, set up the Fulbright program in hopes of infusing “a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs.” Jawaharlal Nehru was India’s first prime minister, a man who — in the words of scholar Ananya Vajpeyi — “is himself caught up in the subtle alchemy that transforms him into the leader of all Indians and all Indians into the People of India.”

Their legacies live on in both their countries, and I’m elated to announce I’ll be tapping into that heritage as a Fulbright-Nehru Research Scholar in 2013-14. The funding will allow me to spend five months in India, reporting, researching and writing my first book, Elemental India. To say I’m not quite sure how I would have done it without this support is no small understatement. On behalf of struggling journalists everywhere, I bellow, “Thank you!”