I Am Aware Of Myself As A

I Had A 2-week Courtship With A Fellow Student In The Fiction Workshop In Iowa And A 5-minute Wedding In A Lawyer's Office Above The Coffee Shop Where We'd Been Having Lunch That Day. And So I Sent A Cable To My Father Saying, 'by The Time You Get This, Daddy, I'll Already Be Mrs. Blaise!'

Growing Up In An Old-fashioned Bengali Hindu Family And Going To A Convent School Run By Stern Irish Nuns, I Was Brought Up To Revere Rules. Without Rules, There Was Only Anarchy.

In Hindu Societies, Especially Overprotected Patriarchal Families Like Mine, Daughters Are Not At All Desirable. They Are Trouble. And A Mother Who, As Mine Did, Has Three Daughters, No Sons, Is Supposed To Go And Hang Herself, Kill Herself, Because It Is Such An Unlucky Kind Of Motherhood To Have.

I Have To Put Down Roots Where I Decide To Stay. It Wasn't Enough For Me To Be An Expatriate Indian In Canada. If I Can't Feel That I Can Make Social, Political And Emotional Commitments To A Place, I Have To Find Another Place.

The Picture Of Mother Teresa That I Remember From My Childhood Is Of A Short, Sari-wearing Woman Scurrying Down A Red Gravel Path Between Manicured Lawns. She Would Have In Tow One Or Two Slower-footed, Sari-clad Young Indian Nuns. We Thought Her A Freak. Probably Wed Picked Up On Unvoiced Opinions Of Our Loreto Nuns.