The Mango Season - By Amulya Malladi Page 0,90

her relationship with Nick? Does it also apply to any other relationships in the book?

“I had to start living my own life on my own terms,” Priya says (p. 142). Is this goal easier to accomplish when Priya is in the United States? Why? Does being in India stifle her sense of self?

How does the theme of sacrifice thread throughout the book? What sacrifices is Priya prepared to make for love? How does her mother hold up her sacrifices to Priya, to force her daughter to accede to her wishes? Ultimately, is this an effective technique?

How does racism, both against Indians and within the Indian culture itself, influence the perceptions that the Indian characters in the novel have of Americans? What else informs their perception of blacks, whites, and “foreigners”? What slights do you think Indians have felt based on the color of their skin?

Malladi deliberately leaves the ending of the novel ambiguous. Why? What do you envision occurring once Priya’s family receives the photograph of Nick?

Read on for a taste of Amulya Malladi’s new novel

Serving Crazy with Curry

available now as a Ballantine Reader’s Circle selection

from Ballantine Books.

The Beginning or The End

The DOW was down almost 600 points the week Devi decided to commit suicide. The NASDAQ also crashed as two big tech companies warned Wall Street of their dismal next quarter estimates. But the only reason Devi was half-heartedly listening to some perky CNN Sunday news anchor prattle on about the lousy week on the stock exchange was habit. A long time ago she’d kept track, listened eagerly, checked the stock of her company online on Yahoo!, but that was when she had stock options that could have been worth something. The last two start ups she hooked up with hadn’t even made it as far as the IPO.

After Devi was laid off (yet again) a week ago, it started to dawn on her that she was not going to be able to change her life. Everything she ever wanted had become elusive and the decision to end her life, she realized, was not only a good decision, but her only option.

As a good tactician, her mind laid down two categories on a spreadsheet: the reasons to die and the reasons not to die. After filling the columns she very practically went through all the reasons, struck out those that didn’t make sense, kept those that did.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter what the entries on the spreadsheet of her unbalanced mind were, because the decision was already made. She already knew that the losses she incurred had eaten away everything joyous within her. In the past six months she went from being just slightly depressed to so sad and fragile that the passing of every day seemed like a wasted opportunity; an opportunity to not live through the day.

Devi’s fingers moved over the remote control of the television and flipped through images, faces and vacuum cleaners.

Wanting to delay her impending decision of death, she picked up the telephone and sat down on her sand-colored sofa (the one she couldn’t afford), her white silk robe tightly secured at her waist. She’d been tightening her robe ever since she put it on at seven that morning, hoping it would settle her down, secure her mind and the uneasiness roiling inside her stomach. All night she had tossed and turned, going over the decision one way and then another. When finally sleep claimed her it was five in the morning and then sleep abandoned her again after just two hours.

Suicide was stressful business.

First, there was the question of how, which she’d pretty much decided on, but there were lingering doubts. Second, there was the question of when. Last night she thought she’d do it at night, in the quiet, but doubts kept her awake, alive. Now it was morning and even though there had been several such mornings in the past months that followed empty, contemplative nights, this morning was different. This morning nothing had changed with the break of dawn as it usually did. This morning her heart was as heavy as it was last night when she started to think seriously, once again, about death. And that’s why she could feel that this was the day it would happen, the day she would make it happen.

Devi stared at the telephone and her fingers automatically tapped the numbers that would conjure up someone on the other end of the line at her parents’ home.

She turned the television off as soon as she