Bhattacharya - Good girls marry doctors: South Asian American Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion

Good Girls Marry Doctors

South Asian American Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion

Piyali Bhattacharya, Ed.

Copyright 2016 by Piyali Bhattacharya

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Aunt Lute Books

P.O. Box 410687

San Francisco, CA 94141

www.auntlute.com

Cover design: Amy Woloszyn, Amymade Graphic Design

Cover art: Shefali by Jade Pilgrom

Text design: Aunt Lute Books

Senior Editor: Joan Pinkvoss

Managing Editor: Shay Brawn

Production: Maya Sisneros, Taylor Hodges, Andrea Ikeda, Erin Peterson, Katie Seifert, and Kari Simonsen

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bhattacharya, Piyali, editor.

Title: Good girls marry doctors : South Asian American daughters on obedience and rebellion / edited by Piyali Bhattacharya.

Description: San Francisco, CA : Aunt Lute Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016021637 (print) | LCCN 2016028759 (ebook) | ISBN 9781879960923 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9781939904195 ()

Subjects: LCSH: South Asian American women--Conduct of life. | South Asian American women--Family relationships. | South Asian Americans--Social life and customs. | South Asian Americans--Social conditions. | Daughters--United States. | Children of immigrants--United States. | Families--United States.

Classification: LCC E184.S69 G66 2016 (print) | LCC E184.S69 (ebook) | DDC 305.48914/073--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021637

Print ISBN 978-1-879960-92-3

Ebook ISBN 978-1-939904-19-5

Printed in the U.S.A. on acid-free paper

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Acknowledgments

I must start by thanking all the women who have written for this anthology, and also all the women who were willing to write. My admiration and gratitude go to every woman who set fire to the fence around her heart and who invited us to peek at the beauty and the pain hiding behind the flames. Thank you for giving us the gift of your intimacy.

Thank you to all the women who told me that they needed a volume like this, that this was the book they wished theyd had. Toni Morrison said, If theres a book you want to read, but it hasnt been written yet, then you must write it. In many ways, this anthology has been that book for us, and without your courage and strength, it wouldnt have come to fruition.

In particular, I want to thank Josephine Tsui for being an early champion of the project, and a friend who worked tirelessly to see the Good Girls Marry Doctors dream realized. Thank you also to Tanwi Nandini Islam and to Nayomi Munaweera, without whom I would not have found a platform from which all these voices might be heard.

To the incredibly kind and fierce women who run Aunt Lute Books and to all the women warriors who stand with them: my thanks. Joan Pinkvoss and Shay Brawn, your support and encouragement have meant the world to all of us.

Thank you to the National Endowment for the Arts for their generous support of this project.

To the members of the South Asian Womens Creative Collective (SAWCC), the Asian American Writers Workshop (AAWW) and other organizations across the country that do this kind of work thank you for showing me how many of us are out there, and what we can do when we come together.

Im grateful to have had a very supportive faculty and cohort in the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison while I was completing this manuscript. Thank you for your ceaseless cheer, and also your patient reassurance.

To the faculty, deans, and staff at Bryn Mawr College, thank you for all the work you do to prove to young women that anything, anything is possible for them. To all my Bryn Mawr women, thank you for opening me, unfurling me. Thank you for all those conversations, which continue to determine the shape in which my brain winds itself around the world. Thank you for teaching me the art of friendship and also the art of bravery.

To so many friends who read early drafts and offered much-needed advice, thank you. You were my editors and professors before I had editors and professors. Special thanks to Hannah Wood and Laura Beth Davulis for their sharp editorial insights.

Chloe Krug Benjamin, my profound thanks for your endless writerly wisdom and affection. I look to you to help organize words on the page, and I look to you when words on the page are no longer enough.

Kartik Nair, you are the person who unlocks me when Ive lost the key to myself. Thank you.

Toorjo Ghose and Kasturi Sen, your genuine warmth and silly-butserious guidance can see me through anything. Thank you for all the mirth we find together.

To our uniquely lovely community in New Haven: Kasturi Gupta, Radhika Govindrajan, Jayadev Athreya, Sahana Ghosh, Martin Mattsson, Samar Al-Bulushi, and Rohit Naimpally thank you for your unwavering faith in me and in this project. Thank you for turning Orange Street into a home. R.G. and J.A., your love and laughter have brought so much cheer into my life. Thank you for dissolving any barriers left between the word friend and the word family.

To my dear family in Calcutta and Delhi Ranjan Mukherjee, Sonali Mukherjee, Mayuri Mukherjee, Manjari Mukherjee, Kaushalya Kaul, and Urvi Puri thank you for providing me with shelter, in more ways than one, and for cheering me on with overwhelming love.

Love and pronaams to my four grandparents, none of whom will ever hold this book in their hands, but all of whom I feel near me, even now. Heartfelt hugs to Nani (Primla Loomba), for turning into my Nani, too, and for loving me the way only Nanis can.

Deepest thanks and love to my parents-in-law, Drs. Ania Loomba and Suvir Kaul, for the inspiration you provide, for being the role models that you are. But most of all, for the tightness of your embrace, the safety of your protection, the bolstering strength of your love.

To Romi, my little brother who, unfathomably, is now called Dr. Romit Bhattacharya by other adults thank you for being my life-long counselor and partner-in-crime. I know why your patients feel at ease in your presence. Its the way in which you gently but firmly prove to the people in your life that you are the unshakable ground they stand on, you are the safety net against which they can bounce. There are siblings, and then there are siblings, and then theres you. Thank you.

To Ma, Mrs. Sumita Bhattacharya: What to say to ones mother, ones life-giver? What I want to say cannot be contained in this space, so I will say this: thank you for your intense encouragement, even in the moments when you and Babai werent sure what you were encouraging. Thank you for the potency of your faith in me, your faith in us. Thank you for teaching me that love multiplies the more it is given, and for demonstrating how to let love in, like warm rays of sunlight. Thank you for the gift of whimsy, and for filling our home with a magical kind of happiness and safety. Thank you for the enchantment of your strength. On the worst day of our lives, when I was crumpled, you told me: Today, Jhumpa. You must find the joy within you today, right now, this moment. You must not let it escape, you must not lose it. I have not forgotten. Thank you for always leading by example. Thank you for your shoulders, on which I balance.

To Babai, Dr. Shishir Bhattacharya: When I first wrote these acknowledgments, we lived in a very different world. One month after I sent the final manuscript of this book to the publisher, we discovered your cancer. Even then, I did not imagine that what I had written here about my grandparents, that they would never hold this book in their hands, would apply to my father, too.