Sitting in the Jardín before the Parroquia, a young Indian woman Bonita is visiting Mexico to learn Spanish when she is interrupted by a woman. The stranger Victoria claims to have known Bonita’s mother Rosarita, whose resemblance she sees in Bonita’s face. Bonita laughs it off, explaining that her mother’s name was Sarita, and she couldn’t have visited Mexico as a young artist. She couldn’t paint. However, curiosity about her mother’s early life leads her to follow Victoria.

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Immigrant, Montana 
by Amitava Kumar

Kailash, AK, or Kailashnikov (as he’s called by an Irish friend), has left his village in Bihar to study in Columbia University, where he comes to take stock of what it means to live in a new country and among an unfamiliar community of people. One finds moments of his experiences within the academia, where he’s often found name-dropping in order to fulfil his desire to belong, as he wrestles with his impostor syndrome within the American campus. The novel also explores AK’s new experiences of desire, written boldly by Kumar, as he searches for love.

The Namesake 
by Jhumpa Lahiri

US-based Lahiri’s classic begins with a young Bengali couple, Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli, settling in America, as Ashoke gets enrolled in MIT. Meanwhile, Ashima undergoes her own challenges trying to make sense of the linguistic and cultural differences.

A moment from the film adaptation. Pic Courtesy/YouTube

This includes the instance of giving birth to her son Gogol alone, without the presence and support of her family members. The book focuses on Gogol’s perpetual struggle with his identity, and his relationship with his parents as a result of it.

Ants Among Elephants 
by Sujatha Gidla

Unlike the other books that are inspired by real-life experiences of travel but are turned into works of fiction, this one is a memoir. Gidla, was in search of freedom from the oppression of the caste system and other strictures of family and gender in India, when she travelled to the US. She works as a conductor on the New York City Subway, and is the first Indian woman to do so. 

Her book bears a deeply personal account about her family’s history and the struggles of Dalits in India. She was drawn to America because of Bob Dylan’s music and the culture of dissent and protest against segregation. Gidla often compares the segregation faced by the African-Americans in the US with that of the Dalits in India, while acknowledging the differences too. Although she couldn’t completely escape racism and casteism in the US either, she found her moments of liberation there.

Starter-Pack for new college goers

>> Deep Work by Cal Newport
>> Poke the Box by Seth Godin
>> Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez
>> The Five-Second Rule by Mel Robbins