I Don't Know Why, But

It's Easy To Set A Story Anywhere If You Get A Good Guidebook And Get Some Basic Street Names, And Some Descriptions, But, For Me, Yes, I Am Indebted To My Travels To India For Several Of The Stories.

In Fiction, Plenty Do The Job Of Conveying Information, Rousing Suspense, Painting Characters, Enabling Them To Speak. But Only Certain Sentences Breathe And Shift About, Like Live Matter In Soil.

Each Day She Removes A Small Portion Of The Unwanted Things In People's Lives, Though All Of It, She Thinks, Was Previously Wanted, Once Useful. She Feels The Sun Scorching The Back Of Her Neck. The Heat Is At Its Worst Now, The Rains Still A Few Months Away. The Task Satisfies Her. It Passes The Time.

Gogol Remembers Having To Do The Same Thing When He Was Younger, When His Grandparents Died...he Remembers, Back Then, Being Bored By It, Annoyed At Having To Observe A Ritual No One Else He Knew Followed, In Honor Of People He Had Seen Only A Few Times In His Life...now, Sitting Together At The Kitchen Table At Six-thirty Every Evening, His Father's Chair Empty, This Meatless Meal Is The Only Thing That Seems To Make Sense.

On A Sticky August Evening Two Weeks Before Her Due Date, Ashima Ganguli Stands In The Kitchen Of A Central Square Apartment, Combining Rice Krispies And Planters Peanuts And Chopped Red Onion In Bowl.