‘More about psychological and social challenges now’: Author Bharti Kirchner on diaspora writing

Bharti Kirchner (formerly Bharati Nandi) was born in Kalimpong, northern West Bengal, and studied mathematics at Presidency College, Kolkata. She moved to the US for post-graduate studies and was among the first systems engineers of her generation. She first worked for a railroad company, and later with Bank of America and IBM. Her work took her everywhere, from San Francisco – where she met her husband, Tom – to Iran (from where she escaped just before the revolution of 1979), the Netherlands, France, and then back to the US.

Kirchner always had an interest in cooking, a combination of her Bengali heritage, stories heard in childhood, and her travels across varied lands. In 1990, she won the first of her many awards – The Campbell Soup Souped-up-Soup Recipe Contest – for a recipe she contributed and this led to her first books on cookery, The Healthy Cuisine of India: Recipes from the Bengal Region (1992). Since then books have followed with regularity, as have awards. For instance, in 2020, she received the SALA award for literary excellence and was awarded the Seattle Arts Commission Grant twice, in 1996 and 1998.

The Healthy Cuisine of India was followed a year later with Indian Inspired: A New Cuisine for the International Table. The Bold Vegetarian that came next is inventive and innovative; its mix of recipes and ingredients drawn from almost everywhere in the world.

The women protagonists in her novels, the first of which is Shiva Dancing, appeared in 1998, followed by Sharmila’s Book, and Darjeeling, are caught between the old and new; compelled to choose between conventions of the land they have left behind, and the modern ways of living in the West. As Kirchner said in an interview once, her novels “deal with identity, displacement, and collision of cultures; collision of old and the new.” The author sees these as “universal concerns” that transcend “identity issues.”

Pastries, her fourth novel, takes a different turn from her earlier fictional works. Set in Seattle and Japan of the late 1990s, the book is about a chef, a bakery, the city of Seattle, and how Sunya, the protagonist, recovers her skills and talents despite the trauma she experiences. In the early 2000s, Kircher reinvented herself yet again as a writer of noir, and since then, the books and stories have poured forth in a rush.

In Tulip Season, a domestic violence counsellor disappears, and it is left to Mitra Basu, her friend, who is a gardener and grower of exotic herbs, to retrace her steps in an effort to uncover the mystery. The story featuring Mitra appeared in a volume of Seattle Noir (Akashic Books) and was later picked as one of the best stories in the series. Maya Mallick, Bharti’s new detective star, appears in Season of Sacrifice, then Murder at Andaman, and most recently, Murder at Jaipur, which is Kirchner’s ninth novel. And of course Bharti isn’t done yet, nor should she ever be.

You sort of occupy a chronological writing space – if I may put it this way – between Santha Rama Rau and Jhumpa Lahiri. Do you see the stories by and about the diaspora change?
The Indian diaspora has changed dramatically over the past several decades, from its members being low-skilled job seekers to top-earning, high-tech, medical professionals, and scientists, not to forget those owning businesses. Currently, the economic power of Indians living in the US is considerable, as is their socioeconomic impact. Accordingly, the focus of immigrant novels has changed. These novels now concentrate less on survival issues and more on psychological and social challenges, like those faced by people everywhere.

Are these stories more important now than before?
Generally speaking, stories change lives; stories renew the world. Indian stories continue to be important. We offer complex characters with a wide set of experiences, just like those produced by other American authors but navigate a dual identity. These “new” Indians carry the history, culture, traditions, and experiences of India in their heads. (India is often a character in these books.) They adapt to their current environment while sharing their food, culture, ancient philosophies, and stories. This way, they connect better with their new environment.

Did you find a ready audience for your cookbooks, given that in the 1980s or so, there weren’t very many cookbooks featuring South Asian cuisine? I remember the Time-Life edition by Santha Rama Rau and Devika Teja.
Food is a way of discovering the world. Food is also close to the heart of many people. Readers hold on to their cookbooks. Yes, I did find an audience and I still do after so many years. Just the other day, someone mentioned using several recipes from one of my cookbooks and how much she still enjoyed preparing these dishes.

What I offer is home cooking, which tends to be simple, delicious, and nutritious. The core of my first cookbook was Bengali cooking, which was not widely known in the West at the time or even now. Partly, that has to do with the fact that most restaurant cooking in the US is adapted to Punjabi or South Indian style fare. Lamentably, it leaves out or lightly touches much of the Indian regional offering.

My cookbooks caught on for another reason: the essays I provided in each chapter. For example, in Teatime, I talked about how important the 4 pm tea hour was in India, how you halted what you were doing and got together with family and friends over fragrant chai, samosa, and sweets. A reviewer, in fact, saw the potential in me as a novelist. That did come true in several years.

You are quite a pioneer in some ways. A systems engineer, a writer of cookbooks, and more. How has the trajectory of your writing life been? Was it isolated?
My writing life has been rich and full. That said, I’d agree that it can be isolating. There is isolation in all creative endeavours, be it writing, painting, or building a chair. However, once I get started, I lose myself in the process and barely notice that time is passing by or that I am alone. In fact, there is a feeling of exhilaration that follows any creative process, or so I trust.

You came to noir a bit late. I read your story in Seattle Noir and that made me reach for more of your work in this vein. Tell us what made you want to write noir.
Quite unexpectedly, I got a call from an editor of Akashic Books (a New York publishing house of repute). The editor asked me if I’d contribute a noir short story to an upcoming collection, part of a series they were offering. Noir is a genre of crime writing, characterised by gritty urban settings and a pessimistic outlook, and I wasn’t writing noir at the time. Far from it.

The editor also explained that each short story would be set in a particular neighbourhood of a city, in my case, Seattle, where I lived at the time. I answered in the negative, adding that I didn’t write that many short stories and I had never tried my hand at writing noir. But the editor kept encouraging me to attempt one. I finally agreed and submitted a short story to Akashic.

Little did I know that my noir piece would be billed as one of the two best stories in Seattle Noir by none other than Publishers’ Weekly. And that the story would be selected later to be included in USA Noir, which consisted of the best of all noir collections, such as Boston Noir, Portland Noir, Seattle Noir, and many others.

This experience eventually led me to write full-fledged mystery novels, examples being Season of Sacrifice and Murder at Jaipur.

Tell us about your newest creation, Maya Mallick. I feel envious that you are able to straddle genres so easily. There was Mitra Basu first, and now Maya.
It’s not easy to straddle genres. You must understand the conventions of that genre and meet the reader’s expectations. It did, indeed, take quite a bit of effort.

Sharmila’s Book appears full of tropes but on reading it, one encounters suspense and some unease. Why and when did you decide to write this book?
I started writing Sharmila’s Book, my second novel after I’d sent my first, Shiva Dancing, to the publisher and had time on hand. I was aware of the “second book syndrome,” the fear that this second book might not be as well received as my first had been. As a matter of fact, when it was first released, Sharmila’s Book didn’t reach the notoriety of Shiva. Although it eventually did find an audience.

Your novel, Darjeeling, has such an evocative setting. You spent some of your early life in Kalimpong, right? How do memory and the remembered past work in this novel, and in your work?
My family left Kalimpong when I was very young. As you know, memories fade and a place can change over time. To write the novel Darjeeling, I travelled to Darjeeling many years later and explored all the places that I refer to in the book: the mountains, the tea gardens, the workers and their dwellings, the tea shop. To many of my readers, this is their favourite book. One reader told me that not only was the story of the family compelling, but the setting descriptions were so vivid, she felt she was there.

Most writers of the diaspora straddle the different literary worlds – India and the US. And you’ve been content with engaging with the literary world here. Did you have the urge to visit India to talk about your books?
My publisher, Penguin, did make my first two novels, Shiva Dancing and Sharmila’s Book, available in India. They were hardcover and very expensive in Indian currency at that time. Still, Shiva Dancing was on the best-seller list in a South Indian newspaper at one point. These were the late 1990s and early 2000s, and there weren’t that many bookstore readings in India. Because of that, even though I visited India periodically, I didn’t try to promote my books.

What do you feel about the “model minority” tag? Have writers from the diaspora engaged with this aspect enough?
The model minority designation has been called a myth. In my humble opinion, such a topic can perhaps be better dissected in a nonfiction treatise.