A ROOM IN BOMBAY

A family’s unshakable ties.

An award-winning novelist, mathematician, and Guggenheim Fellow, Suri grew up in Bombay, where he and his parents shared a single room, 400 square feet that they sublet in a ramshackle apartment. At age 20, he went to the U.S. for graduate work, got a teaching job, and eventually a green card and citizenship, faithfully writing to his parents several times a week. Drawing on the 2,711 letters that his mother cherished, Suri has created a probing memoir about his family, especially the deep bond between him and his mother; his homosexuality; and the uncanny hold the apartment exerted on them all. His mother, Prem, the daughter of a well-to-do doctor, had lived in a mansion before Partition caused her family to flee to reduced circumstances in Delhi. She had a master’s degree in social work and had worked as a secretary to aspiring politician Indira Gandhi. Marrying Ram, a man from a lower social class, dismayed her family. For 11 years, they lived apart, she remaining in Delhi pursuing another degree, this time in psychology, he working in Bombay. When she finally joined him, she realized how little they had in common. Suri, their only child, became their only source of joy; they hovered over him, sacrificed to send him to a fine private school, and pampered him. A dutiful and loving son, he knew he was the balm for their angst. Besides their incompatibility, his parents faced other challenges: animosity from the Muslim flat owners because they were Hindu; his father’s alcoholism; and an insidious atmosphere of gossip, superstition, and poverty. Suri creates an empathetic portrait of his parents’ entrapment, and a candid account of his struggle to be responsible to them, and to himself.

A sensitive family history.