by Pia Padukone
Of course, the moment they stepped into the bar together and drank the gimlets that would render them both giddy and helpless, he knew that there was nothing about this woman that was like his mother, because he would never know. So he released it from his mind into the air, just like the chemicals that had consumed his family, letting the idea catch in the wind and disappear forever.
As he descends the steps after locking the door, he looks at her face the whole way down, partly because he needs to focus on her right now, partly because he knows the number of steps—nine. He feels buoyant, weightless as he hails a taxi on the corner and they slide in together, ready to emerge to their lives on the other side of the river from Brooklyn. As soon as the meter clicks on, Gita falls asleep on his shoulder, overcome by the morning’s emotions. He lets her body collapse against his, the weight of her head bobbing as the cab traverses cobblestones. For the first time in his life, he doesn’t want to take his eyes off her. He doesn’t want to lose sight of what’s important.
Just as the cab enters the tunnel that will rejoin them to their lives, she stretches and pokes his ribs.
“Sorry,” she says. “How long was I out?”
“About five minutes,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. You can sleep.”
“No, that was perfect. I guess I was overwhelmed.”
“Understandably.”
“Thank you for that. You have no idea what this morning meant to me.”
“Don’t thank me, Geets. It was long overdue. And I’m working on it, every day. You have to believe that,” he tells her.
“And I do. For the first time I do. And I’m here, I’m always here. I’m going to help you. Don’t forget about me.”
“I’m not. I haven’t. I won’t.”
As the yellow lights of the tunnel tick past them, Gita sits up.
“Hey, look. It’s coming, Karom. Get set. Wish!”
Karom and Gita close their eyes and hold their hands and their breath as they pass the tiles that demarcate the difference between Brooklyn and New York.
“That was a good one, I could feel it,” Gita says, gripping his hand tightly, so hard the bones in it ache.
“I hope so. I need it.”
She leans back into him. “What time is it?”
He glances at the clock on the dashboard. “Twelve-fifty.”
She leans over and moves a piece of hair out of his eyes. In the shadows, he watches himself in her eyes, her gaze as soft as her touch. Her skin smells unwashed but not unpleasant, tangy and yeasty, like Gita always smells. Karom can just see the glow of morning at the curve of the tunnel ahead. It is his exodus, welcoming him home. As she kisses him gently, her mouth tastes sweet, as though she has just eaten grapes. She looks at him tenderly, holding his face between her palms before she leans forward and whispers softly in his ear: “Together, we learn.”
* * * * *
Acknowledgments
First and foremost: thank you to the readers. Writers would be inconsequential without you.
I wouldn’t be here today without the support of Leonore Waldrip and the entire MIRA team, or the keen eye of Susan Swinwood. Just when I thought my book couldn’t possibly get any better, the inimitable Erika Imranyi entered the scene, editing this novel into a leaner story fit for publication. I am grateful for your tenacity and the lesson in humility.
The tireless Priya Doraswamy redefined the role of agent in my eyes. You showed me the possibilities and continue to lead me to them.
Much like a human, a book needs to be nurtured and coaxed along. Countless friends and family supported me along the way. My early readers Maya Frank-Levine and Shomit Mitter believed in the story and gifted me with invaluable insight to push it to its true potential.
Borrowing the words of E. B. White: it is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Kamala Nair is both. Thank you for reading and challenging, engaging and sharing, laughing and crying alongside me on this journey. Your support means the world to me.
One of my most effusive cheerleaders: my prolific brother, Neil, whose encouragement and commitment to read and respond to anything and everything never flagged even from the other side of the world.
Salman Rushdie wrote that your parents allow you to become the person and the writer that you have it in you to be. There are no words that can convey my gratitude to my parents, Maitreya and Nina Padukone, for all they have done to support me in immeasurable ways. A reverberating shout-out to my mother, who painstakingly pored over each and every draft, questioning motives and brainstorming solutions. I think this book became as much a part of you as it was of me.
My loving Rohit, who helped train my eye on the prize by sating my stomach and feeding my soul. You don’t put up with my idiosyncrasies; you embrace them, always reminding me to place writing ahead of everything else. You are my strength.
Where Earth
Meets Water
Pia Padukone
Reader’s Guide
Questions for Discussion
Karom struggles with the idea of his invincibility throughout the book. How does he ultimately overcome this struggle? How does reading Kamini’s book help him?
Do you believe that Karom is truly invincible or do you think it’s just coincidence that he escaped these disasters? Discuss your thoughts about fate.
What do you think motivated Lloyd’s decisions to abandon his wedding and cut off ties to Karom? Do you agree with them? Why or why not?
How does ritual play a role in the book? How do each of the characters utilize rituals?
Discuss the role that Karom’s watch plays in the way he lives his life. Does it help him or hurt him? What are some of the talismans or lucky charms that help you?
How does Gita become Karom’s strength? What does she do for him? What are the sacrifices she makes in order to help him?
Karom’s adoptive parents gave him a unique name—after a carom board—which means “to ricochet.” Discuss how the meaning of his name shapes his life and journey.
A Conversation with Pia Padukone
What inspired the ideas for the story and characters in Where Earth Meets Water?
I originally wrote the first section of Where Earth Meets Water as a short story. But I felt there was more to the characters that I wanted to explore, so I kept writing to see where the story took me. I believe that every story has autobiographical influences, and Where Earth Meets Water is no exception. The book was inspired by my own realization of how marginally I have escaped tragedy. The last day of my summer job in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center was just three days before 9/11. I stood on the beach overlooking the Bay of Bengal while the 2004 tsunami crashed into the shoreline a few hundred miles south. I walked past the finish line to meet my husband, who completed the 2013 Boston Marathon an hour and a half before—and a few feet away from where—the bombs exploded. These events forced me to recognize how accidental, how coincidental life can be. The characters were ones I discovered through the first short story I wrote, and the more I wrote, the better I got to know them.
Many of the characters in Where Earth Meets Water are Indian, and much of the novel is set in India, yet the novel is really a universal story about fate, love and our inherent desire to understand the meaning of life. In what ways did you intend for culture to inform your novel, and what was your broader intention for writing?
I appreciate that observation because that’s exactly what I set out to do. When you first start writing, you write what you know. As you get more comfortable, you begin to stretch the limits of what is possible, exploring unknown territory. Could it have been any other country or culture? Possibly. But there is no denying that I am an American writer of Indian origin—born and brought up in America—who inherently understands and appr
eciates both her cultures. India is incredibly versatile: Gita’s grandmother’s Konkani family has a completely different culture than that of Bhopal, with different customs, food and even language. But simultaneously, Indians have so much shared heritage, as the country has undergone so much historical, political and even industrial upheaval. It was important to me that Karom seek a partner with whom he could share some of that inherent understanding. Ultimately I wanted to write a book that embraced a few ideas: (1) that you’ll never know the source from which you might derive solace; (2) the world is a powerful, overwhelming place; (3) when you love someone, you have to believe in them no matter what.
Our connection to our familial roots is a powerful theme in the novel. Have culture and family been important forces in your own life? If so, how?
My brother and I were raised with a strong connection to culture and I have always been very close to my family, both my nuclear one in New York City, where I grew up and continue to live, and my extended family in India. So I do owe my family deep gratitude for guiding my formative years and molding me into the writer that I am today, influencing and inspiring me in ways I may not even be aware of. Whenever I visit India, the outpouring of love from family and even family friends always overwhelms me. It’s in many ways how I learned that love comes in many forms. It’s how I realized that Karom didn’t necessarily need his own personal family in order to heal.
You’ve created such a rich cast of characters in the novel, especially Kamini, a passionate and wise sage who is larger-than-life. When you started the book, did you have the characters’ journeys and personalities already in mind? How did they surprise you along the way?
While we’re probably not supposed to play favorites, Kamini holds a special place in my heart. She is very much the marriage of both my grandmothers: the independent but fiercely loving characteristics of my mother’s mother and the gentle, supportive spirit of my father’s. I didn’t know where I wanted her to go, but I did know that she would struggle constantly, and that she would only feel peace at a late stage in her life. I let Karom, Gita and Lloyd write their own destinies and was sometimes truly surprised at what those were. I was pleased but also saddened that Lloyd ultimately acknowledged that there was a force larger than him and that the only thing he could do to fight it was to abandon it altogether. It sometimes frustrated me that Gita staunchly never gave up on Karom, and I sought solace in the fact that Karom allowed the country that haunted him to be the place that ultimately healed him.
Do you read other fiction while you’re writing, or do you find it distracting? What do you enjoy reading most?
I am a voracious fiction reader and am rarely without a novel nearby. I find reading while I am writing incredibly helpful to the process. It helps me realize other avenues that I hadn’t explored with the characters I am working with. Like the characters in the book I’m reading, could mine also go on a journey? Could they also have an unrequited love? Could they also lose a loved one? Maybe, maybe not, but novels are a gold mine for ideas. Beautiful writing is always inspiring. When I read a great book, I get excited about the prospect of writing one.
I am guilty of reading mostly fiction but I love narrative nonfiction, as well. I love the writing of Jennifer Egan, whose novel A Visit from the Goon Squad inspired me to write Where Earth Meets Water in the format of intertwining lives, stories, letters and inset short stories. Some of my other favorite authors include F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida, Dinaw Mengestu, Gary Shteyngart, Lionel Shriver, Curtis Sittenfeld, Louise Erdrich… The list goes on.
Can you describe your writing process? Do you outline first or dive right in? Do you write scenes consecutively or jump around? Do you have a schedule or a routine? A lucky charm?
I wrote Where Earth Meets Water in the mornings before I left for my job as a copywriter at an advertising agency. Perhaps it was knowing that I had only a few precious hours before the distractions of the day would take me away from Karom’s world that forced me to home in on the story and write furiously. I dove in without an outline, without even knowing the beginning, middle or end. All I knew was that there was a story there, and I would fall out of bed bleary-eyed and sometimes still middream but almost immediately fall under the spell of my story. It was a really exciting time in my life, because I was taking myself on an unknown adventure. Once I was deep in the throes of the book, the story would start to overtake my mind: I would find myself scrabbling for a piece of paper to write down an idea for Gita while I was jammed between bodies on the subway. For the most part, I wrote scenes consecutively, but since the novel relies on so much flashback and memory, I did move scenes around after I’d finished the majority of the writing to decipher the holes and identify which parts of the story needed some bolstering.
I am still very much a morning writer. I thrive in the serene early hours before the rest of the world wakes up when it’s just my laptop, a cup of coffee and me. Once my brain turns on for the rest of the day, it gets more difficult to focus.
At my writing desk, I have a collection of things that keep me motivated: a photo of Nora Ephron, who was so passionate about the written word that she continued working throughout the pain of cancer; an autograph from Christopher Reeve, a man of tremendous strength both on and off camera; a painting of Kali, the Hindu goddess of female empowerment, as well as one of Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of the volcanoes, who also harnessed creative power and passion. I have a framed quote by Henry James about the persistence of being an artist. A family friend gave me a dandelion encased in glass that helps me remember to always keep dreaming.
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ISBN-13: 9781460330050
WHERE EARTH MEETS WATER
Copyright © 2014 by Pia Padukone
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