Thank you for joining us on Jan 9th for the discussion on One Night at the Call Center. The novel had few admirers but offered a diversity of opinions and concepts. With Dr. Sagar Sethi musing about the moral decline of sexual mores of premarital India; with Dipika Jain (and I) bemoaning the lack of character development,  plot structure, and narrative style; with former NetIP President Amit Arya nostalgic about the changes taking place in India he had missed (and found in the novel) in the last decade; with Bethanie Johnson, although not an advocate the novel, finding the critical and instinctive personality of Vroom convincing; with Raj Desai opining about the moral decline in civilizations as they become wealthy and prosperous--we came back home wondering how a book club can make even a sub-standard novel exciting. There was a lot more--enough to exhaust and defeat any summary--about the discussion, but we appreciated and enjoyed the gracious presence of everyone, especially our first-timers Dolores, Bethanie and Sreedevi.

There is even more at stake at our next discussion, even more to inspire our understanding and ignite our imagination. Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel is recognized as a classic, not the least because he is the dashing face of Indian and international diplomacy. It is a retelling of the great Indian epic Mahabharata, and it is universally recognized for its ambition and achievement, it also catapulted his career into a major voice of Indian fiction in English in the late 1980s. A close friend of the Nehru-Gandhi family, he is better known today as the former Under-Secretary of UN and the current State Minister of External Affairs. His essays of Indian politics, culture and literature are widely read and universally acknowledged.

We believe that reading adds to the world's inventory of understanding, imagination and love. Thank you for your support and inspiration. We hope to see you on Feb 20th. Please don't hesitate if you have any questions or concerns.

PS: Our next 3 novels after this discussion will be by writers of Pakistani origin. The shortlist--which I will forward next week--will include writers like Nadeem Aslam, Daniyal Meenuddin, Ali Sethi, Kamila Shamsie, etc.