I started going to the library when I was six, insisting on taking home books about little boys like Sambo who was chased by the tigers and fairy tale girls like Thumbelina who slept in an impossibly small walnut shell. I still remember going with my mother to the library and triumphantly bearing the books home, filled with delicious anticipation at the promise of a world of magic, about to unfold. To me, books were not just bound and printed papers that built an entire universe of characters the moment I started reading the first page.

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That is what it feels like, to go to India. A psychic friend once told me that fish always prefer to go back to the temperature of the water they were born in and that we humans tend to do the same, on a metaphysical level. Not sure how scientific that observation was, but I will admit that it takes just a day or two of being back in India before I settle down comfortably in an environment that could not be more different than the one I live in. Pleasantly tolerant of non-stop honking of cars and noisy traffic, breathing nonchalantly the fumes of pollution, looking at strangers in the eye for no reason at all and feeling unaccountably connected to them—my old habits come back to me so quickly. Jay walking? No problem.

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After years of reworking the manuscript of My Magical Palace and a shifting publish date, it was anti-climactic to finally reach the first critical publishing milestone—sending the final copy to the printer. Years seem like small leaps when looking back at endless writing, editing, re-writing, consulting, work shopping, book ending, plot redesigning, transition re-building … you get the picture.

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