A bridge over two very different parts of the world, migrants bridge a huge distance and gaps in cultures, languages, diaspora. Writing about their own kind comes easy in one way, and difficult in every other - does one write for those one left home, those one is living now with, attempt to make it universal and that how, precisely? For any artist, any writer tells one of thoughts and emotions and visions relating to world and universe as seem from one's own stand, one's own viewpoint, and universality is rare, although dominant cultures demand and define universality as something of the dominant cultures' point of view.
This author does a good job on the whole but in this one flounders a bit relating to Indian point of view on one hand and a satisfactory solution to the final dilemma faced by the protagonist towards the end on the other. A bias towards one race or culture is seen as preferential on a basis different from what it actually is - a vestige of colonial rule, rather than a preference for a particular race. It would be racism if it were a preference for a particular race or colour irrespective of any other factor, and such is hardly the case for majority of India. Colonial domination on the other hand explains much of various prejudices and that the real preference when it comes to family and relatives is after all for one's own is but natural. It would be racism if one preferred a race irrespective of all other factors and were to have negative firm opinions to all others, which is not true of India.
The protagonist, a young girl brought up very protected by her old grandparents in India, newly in love with someone of a more modern social set and about to be engaged, begins to discover that what she was given to understand about her parents is slightly untrue, and it makes a vast difference. She sets out on a journey to search for a father she knows almost nothing about, except his first name and of course the name of her long dead mother, literally across the world to another country, encountering untold dangers from strangers of another culture and from her own. Her future uncertain, especially if she finds her father, she is nevertheless determined to search to the limit of her capacity - limited severely by her small finance.
The dilemma at the end is therefore all the more climactic, when her fiance and his mother accuse her - and quite understandably so - of deception re her discoveries about her father towards the end of her journey. At this point her father has asked her to return to US and assured her of help and all the support she might need while there is another man who is in love with her and has helped her to look for her father in a very active way; will she return, retrace the route her mother went forth on before returning to her parents for a visit?
It is not clear if the glib easy solution opted for by the author is for a need to please a readership in India or if she simply was too tired to work more on this story, but something a bit less simple would have been more in line with the story until then. For instance her return to her father's country and a new university life unlike what she has experienced in the cocoon of her hometown, and possibly her distanced fiance coming over to US to woo her while taking charge of his family business end in Manhattan, would have been slightly less simplistic.
But perhaps it is the story that looms larger in the shadows that precludes this - the story of the silent and deadly discrimination against migrants from India post collapse of twin towers, based more on ignorance and resulting prejudice against all humanity of sepia tones (rather than the so called "white", which really is a colour no human skin has after all), and expressed in general hostility with negative effects in business as much as in sporadic violence, is the major theme in the background of the story of the girl who goes looking for her father.
This story is silent in the western press and usually dismissed as something of a fear very understandable under the circumstance, but in reality it is as much racism as it gets. For example US residents and citizens of Japanese roots suffered majorly during the WWII, but Germans did not, and nazi sympathisers had a field day (perhaps still do) with hostile acts against Jewish citizens of US, including severe violence. On the other hand the "nonwhite" world does not go berserk with violence against all whites on basis of a suspicion of nazi or kkk or even general racist and colonial culture of the "white"s, past or present, and any Asian or African confusing a Brit or Russian with a nazi would be seen as ignorant. That confusing all Asians with talibans or other jihadis is just as stupid, racist and ignorant is not yet understood much less admitted by the so called "white"s is yet another instance of the stupidity, ignorance and racism.
