The Literary Mirror

Why give Bachchu Lal equal narrative weight to your own memories?

Because he was there for more of it than I was, frankly. I was a child half-asleep in the back seat. He was awake, driving, and paying attention to the actual adults in the actual conversation. My memories are impressions. His are closer to minutes of a meeting.

Did he read the manuscript before it was published?

Every chapter, as I finished it. He corrected me twice on dates and once on a story I'd been telling for years that turned out to be about a different, earlier trip entirely. That correction is in the book, by the way — I didn't quietly fix it and pretend I'd always known.

What do you hope readers take from the book beyond the family story?

That the people who make a household run are usually the ones least likely to get asked what they remember about it. I didn't think of Bachchu Lal as a historian until I started actually asking him things.