Don't Let Him Know (32 page)

The next day, when it was time to leave Carbondale, Amit was still stonily silent. June said little, hiding behind her sunglasses, sipping her coffee, unwilling to mediate between her husband and his mother. Neel sat on the back seat next to Romola chattering away as usual. Romola did have a slight hangover but did not want to mention that to anyone. She rolled down the window to feel the fresh air on her face, the night’s events now just part of some make-believe adventure.

She opened her handbag and rummaged for the little piece of paper with BLD’s email. She felt her bag of pills next to her pen and her reading glasses. But she could not find the paper. She closed her eyes and half-believed she was still in Wonderland, though she knew she had to but open them again, and all would change to dull reality. As the car pulled out of the motel’s parking lot, Romola, her eyes still shut, casually lifted her hand up to the open window, dropping the little blue pills one by one, leaving a trail for BLD, all the way across America.

Don’t let him know she liked them best

For this must ever be

A secret, kept from all the rest,

Between yourself and me.

–
Lewis Carroll,
Alice in Wonderland

Acknowledgements

A peculiar set of coincidences and strange encounters conspired to make this particular book happen.

This book would have remained in the recesses of my hard drive if Diya Kar Hazra at Bloomsbury had not called out of the blue. Diya called because the novelist Manil Suri told her he liked a short story of mine in the anthology
Out! Stories from the New Queer India
. That story snuck into the anthology because Minal Hajratwala, its editor, remembered it from our writing group in San Francisco. That writing group happened because Pueng Vongs bullied me into it. Pueng would not have been my friend and colleague had not the remarkable Sandy Close shared a glass of red wine with me at Pied Piper on Market Street in San Francisco and offered me a job at the Pacific News Service. I would not have made that crazy leap of faith from my software job to a news service if Gregory Roberts had not reassured me we wouldn’t end up homeless on the streets of San Francisco. This daisy chain could go on and on but suffice to say the fingerprints of all of them are all over this book and I am grateful for that.

A few of these stories appeared in early versions elsewhere. ‘Ring of Spices’ appeared in an early form in
Contours of my Heart
edited by Sunaina Maira and Rajini Srikanth. ‘White Christmas’ is inspired by ‘Black and Blue’ from the anthology
Men on Men 6
edited by David Bergman. ‘The Games Boys Play’ is a reincarnation of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ from
Story-wallah!
edited by Shyam Selvadurai. A version of ‘Great- Grandmother’s Mango Chutney’ won the Katha Prize for Indian American fiction in
India Currents
magazine. To all of those editors who saw something in those stories, my gratitude.

Minal, Pueng, Daisy Hernandez and Sunita Dhurandhur were part of the writing group that made me go back to these stories again and again. We didn’t have frisee salads with pomegranate seeds but it was the best group ever. My gratitude to Jennie Dorny who went out of her way to scrutinize the fine print of the contract, to Anna Ghosh, Nayan Shah and Lakshmi Chaudhry who gave me invaluable advice. To Alexandra Pringle and the entire Bloomsbury team who have shepherded this book into being. And to Bishan Samaddar who reassured me when I flailed, pushed me when I procrastinated, and gives me much more than he realizes. And finally, a Jesuit priest named Camille Bouché who taught me the only lesson I’ve ever had about writing: Write simply. Don’t show off. Big words are not necessarily the right words.

Many people, friends, relatives, acquaintances, have asked me over the years, ‘Are you going to write a book?’ And I’d always smile noncommittally. Now there’s no wriggling out. Whether or not it’s the one they hoped I would write, this is the book.

A Note on the Author

Sandip Roy is a senior editor for the popular news portal Firstpost.com and blogs for the
Huffington Post
and is an associate editor with New America Media. He has been a long-time commentator on National Public Radio’s
Morning Edition
, one of the most listened-to radio programmes in the US and has a weekly radio postcard on KALW 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has contributed to various an­­thologies including
New California Writing 2011
,
Story-wallah!
,
Contours of the Heart, Out! Stories from the New Queer India
,
Mobile Cultures
,
Because I Have a Voice: Queer Politics in India
and
The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics of Sexualities in Contemporary India
. He currently lives in Calcutta.

Copyright © 2015 by Sandip Roy

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. For information, write to Bloomsbury USA, 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018.

Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
Bloomsbury is a trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR

eISBN: 978-1-62040-899-5

 
First published in the United States in 2015
This electronic edition published in January 2015

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