 "I was the worst thing a girl could
be in Kerala: thin, black and clever" |
Aerobics instructors are not supposed to run amok over 340 pages. And
believe that Danes are going to read about pickle factories, Finns about south Indian
communism, Greeks about life in a town that half the world can't pronounce and the other
half can't find on a globe. And expect to sell seven lakh copies (and counting) when
there's less sex than Shobha De has in a paragraph. And win the Booker Prize when she has
the temerity to sit in the loo when it's being announced. And truly imagine that John
Updike, who she read growing up, would now in turn drool all over the New Yorker about her
dizzying ride through the English language. And dream she was going to earn so much money
that forget vegetable shopping, she could buy her own damn market.We hear Salman Rushdie
doesn't much care for this aerobics instructor. So, who's surprised? |
