But, Christ, There's A Difference Between Exotic

[on Her Writing Agenda:] Make The Familiar Exotic; The Exotic Familiar.

Bengalis Love To Celebrate Their Language, Their Culture, Their Politics, Their Fierce Attachment To A City That Has Been Famously Dying For More Than A Century. They Resent With Equal Ferocity The Reflex Stereotyping That Labels Any Civic Dysfunction Anywhere In The World 'another Calcutta.'

I Have To Put Down Roots Where I Decide To Stay. It Wasn't Enough For Me To Be An Expatriate Indian In Canada. If I Can't Feel That I Can Make Social, Political And Emotional Commitments To A Place, I Have To Find Another Place.

I Had A 2-week Courtship With A Fellow Student In The Fiction Workshop In Iowa And A 5-minute Wedding In A Lawyer's Office Above The Coffee Shop Where We'd Been Having Lunch That Day. And So I Sent A Cable To My Father Saying, 'by The Time You Get This, Daddy, I'll Already Be Mrs. Blaise!'

Growing Up In An Old-fashioned Bengali Hindu Family And Going To A Convent School Run By Stern Irish Nuns, I Was Brought Up To Revere Rules. Without Rules, There Was Only Anarchy.