Border Less
PRAISE FOR
BORDER LESS
“Illuminating debut . . . The range of perspectives harnessed announces Poddar as an exciting new voice in immigrant fiction.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Story that is made whole through its fragmentation. A thoughtful exploration of what it means to belong.”
—Wendy J. Fox, BuzzFeed News
“Questions mainstream modes of storytelling. Her style, which seems to draw on oral traditions, emphasizes repetition, rhythm and reinvention.”
—Khabar
“This is an immigrant story and the reader, no matter their heritage, will recognize similarities in family stories.”
—Joan Curbow, Booklist
“Border Less is a novel that invites the reader into the twists, turns, and corkscrews of immigrant life. From call centers in India to affluent eateries in Orange County, CA, these characters are irreverent, sometimes raunchy, anxiety-ridden, but most of all, explorative. Poddar has a sensitive touch to moving between time, space, and generations to present a continuous portrait of adventures and hardships in a racialized, Brown body.”
—Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing
“Namrata Poddar is a fierce storyteller, and Border Less has a lively, singular cast of characters that burn in the memory.”
—Angie Cruz, author of Dominicana, and Editor-in-chief of Aster(ix)
“Border Less challenges the traditional form and aesthetic of the western novel with a narrative of interconnected stories as layered as the human experience itself. Each of the novel’s carefully drawn chapters explores questions of belonging and identity, complicated by geographic, racial, gender and class distinctions, to name a few. Poddar is an ambitious and important new voice in the tapestry of global literature.”
—Aline Ohanesian, author of Orhan’s Inheritance, Finalist for The Dayton Literary Peace Prize
“Border Less is a serious transnational, feminist and a postcolonial novel. It is a deeply moving narrative of a migrant’s journey from Mumbai to Southern California and her displacements over multiple spaces and her moments of self-discovery. This is a novel that finally gives voice to the complexity of being brown and a woman juggling the intersections of class, race, gender, nationality and place.”
—Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, Professor of English at Linfield University, and author of The Postcolonial Citizen
“Border Less is an intricate, dazzling tapestry that pulls threads from past and present—from Mumbai to California—crossing and blending stories and lives. Dia Mittal forges her way, inspired by and respectful of the generational dances, while also discovering her own path as she seeks that ‘ethereal family reunion.’ In this novel, Namrata Poddar keeps her eye on the individual heart while painting the most expansive orbit; she is a masterful writer, bringing time and place to life with vivid story and color and memorable wisdom.”
— Jill McCorkle, New York Times bestselling author of Hieroglyphics
“Namrata Poddar's Border Less is a dazzling debut! The promise of each character, who appears through vignettes, is to take you through a Mumbai you only thought you knew. Poddar's characters emerge from crevices in the city and they cross borders of class and convention, driven by ambition, imagination, and necessity. With the ladies' special train commuter, you wonder, ‘Who plays the central character and who becomes the footnotes in that fragmented city with a hollow center?’ But the existential question that is cleverly posed becomes: do you have to see your blood spring from your body and taste it to look beyond the aggrieved resignation in the endless crowds of which you are a part? Pieces of the novel's puzzle gradually come together in the plot, which stretches from India through Mauritius to California. Characters are thrown up in a narrative that mirrors their intractability or tedium: a Nepali maid cooped up in a glass kitchen with the hopes of paying for her father's surgery; Dia who wants to be more Indian in her heart than in her habits; cousins whose separate lives across continents allow no reconciliation except in the rhythm of a childhood dance unforgotten by their bodies; immigrant parents and their American children negotiating family, home, love, and that elusive Dream. With a light hand but profound insight, sympathy, and humor, Poddar explores the new versions of gender and hierarchies that play out for different generations and different versions of ‘Indians’ in the US. With this auspicious inception, she experiments with hybrid literary genealogies, giving us a novel of poetic form and sensibility.”
—Anjali Prabhu, Professor and Director of Comparative Literary Studies, Wellesley College, and author of Hybridity: Limits, Transformations, Prospects
“Namrata Poddar delves with heartbreaking delicacy and precision into the solitary struggles of her characters, whether in the teeming, sweat-drenched Mumbai metropolis or on sunny Californian shores: through the tiny, yet deep epiphanies that close each chapter of their lives, she shows us how every woman is borderless, with minds reaching out well beyond their shores and bodies enclosed within rigid confines. We are all migrants as soon as we are born, reflects one of her characters. But women are even more so as they try to hold on to their center, to their core, while being pulled in different directions by the dictates of family, society, lovers, husbands, children. Until one day—one hopes—the ferociously unique kundalini awakens and takes her due. ”
—Ananda Devi, author of Eve Out of Her Ruins, Winner of the Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie
“Pitch perfect and beautifully written, this debut novel of dislocation, belonging and return captures with acuity and a light touch our shared transnational present and complex human ties.”
—Françoise Lionnet, Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, and author of Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity
BORDER LESS
_
by
Namrata Poddar
7.13 Books
Brooklyn
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously.
Earlier versions of chapters in this book have appeared in the following publications: “Help Me Help You” in The Kenyon Review; “Silk Stole” in Jaggery; “Ladies Special” in Lowestoft Chronicle; “Tradeoff” in The Bangalore Review; “9/12” in Literary Orphans; “Anchor” in The Missing Slate; “Chutney” in The Best Asian Short Stories 2019 (Kitaab, Singapore); “Excursion” in Necessary Fiction; “Nature, Nurture” in The Feminist Wire; “Blue and Brown” in The Aerogram; and “Victorious” in New Asian Writing.
Selections of up to one page may be reproduced without permission. To reproduce more than one page of any one portion of this book, write to 7.13 Books at leland@713books.com.
Cover art by Harshad Marathe
Edited by Leland Cheuk
Copyright ©2022 by Namrata Poddar
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-7361767-8-8
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-7361767-9-5
Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN): 2021949025
For Ananya and Shome
Everywhere that the obligation to get around the rule of silence existed a literature was created that has no “natural” continuity, if one may put it that way, but, rather, bursts forth in snatches and fragments.
“Being is relation”: but Relation is safe from the idea of Being.
—Poetics of Relation, Édouard Glissant
translated by Betsy Wing
ROOTS
Help Me Help You | 1
Silk Stole | 17
/> Ladies Special | 26
Tradeoff | 32
9/12 | 38
Anchor | 42
Chutney | 47
Excursion | 55
So Long, Cousin | 62
ROUTES
One | 77
Brothers at Happy Hour | 80
Nature, Nurture | 86
Firang | 91
Ordinary Love | 102
Blue and Brown | 113
Shakti at Brunch | 117
Victorious | 125
Homecoming | 141
Kundalini | 153
ROOTS
HELP ME HELP YOU
Dia covered her mouth so the American wouldn’t hear her yawn. Last hour of answering calls before hitting home, switching shifts with Ma to take care of Papa, prepping for college finals, and returning to work the following night. She’d multitasked before, she’d done nightshifts for five years now, she could totally do this last hour, she told herself while parroting their airline’s policy. “Yes Sir, you may carry two pieces of luggage for free, each weighing fifty pounds or under.”
“Are you from Bangalore?” he asked. One of those drunk customers again, smitten with exotic women. And Chaya, her supervisor at Voizone call center, was keeping a strict watch on her performance. One week left in May and Dia had already exhausted her monthly limit of fatal errors over calls. With a toddler and an infant at home, Chaya could relate to her sleep deprivation. That wouldn’t stop her from barging into Dia’s phone conversations anytime.
“From Mumbai, Sir.” Dia kept her answers short and rotated her shoulders, hard as stone from the absence of dance workouts she usually did before reporting to work. She looked at the clock on the computer screen ahead.
“Your voice is so sweet.”
“Thank you, Sir. Have I answered all your travel questions?” It had been thirteen minutes with the drunkard, three minutes past the ideal query resolution time. If the screen timer reached fifteen minutes, she’d get another fatal error on her monthly performance and would have to say goodbye to the promotion offer in Manila, her game plan out of Mumbai’s survival rut and into the American dream with Aziz.
She stretched an arm sideward, rotated her wrist, and curled her middle finger into a Kathak mudra while others pointed to Aziz, sitting in the cubicle across from her. The hand gestures from her training in dance worked as a code between them when they answered calls. Between their chairs, steel grey carpeting divided rows of grey cubicles on each side of the room, reminders of American professionalism and productivity. Above them, a freshly painted ceiling as if its golden yellow could infuse life into the drone of buzzing telephones, the sea of hunched backs, and the second-by-second monitored performance of a Third World sucking up to the First.
Aziz swiveled his chair toward Dia and lip-synched. Everything okay?
“Are you wearing a sari?” the customer asked.
“No, Sir.” Dia jutted her tongue out and raised a thumb toward her mouth.
Aziz peeked through Chaya’s door, close to his side of the room. He’d figured how to tell if Chaya was in. Between the door and the wall, there was a crack through which he could spot the metal knob when the door was locked.
“What are you wearing then?”
Aziz nodded toward their office’s back exit. Chaya was out for a Shanti break, snacking on marijuana cookies sold illegally at the panwallah’s stall across from their office building, Voizone’s open secret to surviving the nightshifts, the sleep deprivation, the social isolation, the cameras, the clocks, the Americans.
Dia rotated her other palm and brought her index finger to lightly touch her thumb. Aziz winked at her and returned to his call.
“Sir, I’ve resolved your query and am not allowed to answer personal questions. Do not hesitate to call us again should you have an airline-related query. Thank you and have a great day.” She hung up and looked at the computer. Fourteen minutes, thirty-five seconds, read the large clock on the screen below a map of the United States along with several smaller clocks with three highlighted in red—New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, homes to business schools topping her wishlist, Stern, Kellogg, Anderson. Array, if you get into any of these, you’re set for life, she’d heard from senior colleagues.
Her phone rang again. “Dia here for Hansa Airlines. How may I help you?”
With college finals, May was usually a tough month at work for Dia, but she’d managed to make it so far. This, though, was her last year at college so the pressure to do well in exams was higher; the scores would be crucial for getting into an MBA program. She and Aziz had planned this for months. Both came from lower middle-class backgrounds, both knew life in survival mode—a staple for many Mumbaikers including their Voizone colleagues. They had a good ability in switching accents, reason they’d had more success with Voizone clients than other agents with thicker accents, especially those from rural India. Aziz had even bagged April’s Agent of the Month award, a way for him to vouch for Dia’s promotion to Chaya. If they persisted for a few more months at work, they were most likely to get nominated as supervisors for Voizone’s branch in Manila, a position with double the salary, daytime hours, and a regular social life. Three years in Manila and bingo—enough savings to start an MBA program in the U.S. and a better life abroad. By the time Dia entered her fifth year at Voizone, the stars had seemed aligned in the couple’s favor until two months back when her father had a relapse of throat cancer, forcing him to take a break from his job and leaving Dia as the sole provider for their family. His recovery from chemo was taking longer than expected and college finals were here. To cope, Dia cut back on dance workouts, her zen place as she often called it, so she could win time for exam prep at home and give Ma a breather from taking care of Papa.
Upon returning from work to their one-bedroom flat, Dia insisted that Ma sleep in the living room where Dia usually slept. Being well-rested was the best way she could help both Papa and Dia that time of the year. In the kitchen, she opened a foldable recliner and decided to take a nap too before more studying. Five more days of finals and she would check a Bachelor of Commerce off her list, that useless, non-negotiable degree to qualify for most jobs she knew, from a peon’s post in Mumbai to a call center gig in Manila or grad school in the U.S.
The sound of someone walking from the toilet toward the bedroom jolted her awake. “Papa, wait!” She rushed to her father, ghostly in a white kurta pajama too big for his reedlike body. She wrapped an arm around his waist and slipped her shoulder below his. “Didn’t I tell you to wake me up whenever you’ve got to go?” She controlled the irritation in her voice. Two weeks before, he’d lost balance and slipped in the shower, spraining his ankle. The third round of chemo had drained him. They couldn’t afford another fall.
“I’m doing better now.” His hand trembled on her shoulder.
“Of course, you are. Few more days of precaution though, please?”
“Want you to get some sleep.” He steadied himself on the bed’s mattress. “Your finals—”
“Five more days. Then I can sleep as much as I want.” She supported his back as he lay down. “If I’d slept through the morning, I would’ve screwed up anyway. Need to be done with Econ notes today.” She covered him with a blanket, fighting the urge to tell him she had a Muslim boyfriend. She could so use Aziz’s help at home.
“You’re my Durga, you know?” her father said. And she wondered what had taken root in his shaky voice—resignation toward cancer or guilt at not playing the provider. If the news weren’t flooded with ISIS threats to the U.S. or Indo-Pak tension in Kashmir, she would’ve confessed about Aziz right then.
“Me clearly no Sita,” she said, switching off the light in the bedroom. In the kitchen, she pulled out a can of Titana she’d hidden in the recliner’s side pocket. It was an American energy drink that Aziz had introduced to her when she was first adapting to night shifts at Voizone. One can equaled nearly five
cups of coffee but didn’t give her the stomach ulcers like over-consumption of caffeine did. Her parents knew Titana to be one of those tasteless foreign sodas that youngsters loved; she never told them otherwise. She opened her Economics textbook and took a big sip from her can. In ten minutes, she would crack these demand-supply fuckers, she told herself while staring into a pair of sleep-inducing graphs.
Two days left for the month of May and a last exam to go. Dia had managed to stay functional at work. She helped care for Papa at home who was getting better by the day and fared reasonably well in her college finals too. Twenty more hours of answering calls at Voizone to cover her monthly quota, although something in her body told her she’d need to do more that evening to stay alert. On her way to work, she stopped by Groove dance studio.
Dhoom machalayyy, Sunidhi Chauhan crooned from the main hall’s massive stereo system at Groove. Dia undulated her torso, dropped, and raised her shoulders in a semicircular motion to the beat. To the chorus, she rotated her belly clockwise and counterclockwise, then repeated the same with her chest, hips and hands. Sweat trickled down her torso, wetting her hip scarf studded with fake gold coins. As she jumped high, then squatted on her feet, and jumped high again with her troupe, she felt the lightness release the tension in her upper body. Her eyes felt so fresh with the rush of oxygen, she could totally manage four hours of sleep a night for two more days and get to the month of June. Dhoom machalay dhoom machalay dhoom. She kneeled and touched her palms to the floor in a closing pose, watching her chest rise and fall in jerky exhales.