May 6, and I meet Uncle Salman, one of the most eloquent men in history

I was horrifically ill Monday morning. My oozing, swollen, reddened eyes were open all night, in constant search for Kleenex or toilet paper or even the Economist order form paper, so I could blow my nose and maybe breathe a little. The breathing thing never happened. And I continued to look like a monster.

Still, I was compelled to venture out in the city like a floating plague. One month ago, I bought tickets through the Asian American Writers Workshop for a reading and discussion with Salman Rushdie, and so I was obliged to depart from the comfort and darkness of my sweat-drenched down comforter.

The first hour was a reception, where folks tensely mingled with each other, feigning interest in the artistic endeavors of their fellow writers while actually anxiously anticipating the arrival of Sir Rushdie. My eagerness to see him (coupled with my allergy medication) induced hallucinations, and at one point I yelped to my plus one and pointed to an older, balding, brown-tinted man at the door. "That's him! That's him! Stay cool. We're in Tribeca."

My guest gazed in the direction I was pointing, and looked back at me blankly. "That's not him. In fact, not even close. Stay cool." 

I had been too preoccupied with my red wine order to realize when the guest of honor did finally walk in. When I noticed him, I actually looked back three times, to make sure it was Salman in the flesh. I expected from one of the greatest, most transformative and powerful men in the world an ebb of light, or constant stream of harp music, or even a bit of knowing swagger. Rather, with a sense of ease and humility, almost to comparable to an anonymous passerby on the street, Sir Rushdie was leaning, almost slouching, against the wall, obliging guests with photographs and pausing every few minutes to drink his whiskey.

After staring for several minutes, we decided to walk up to him. In true Indian fashion, several people cut ahead of us, as though there was an imminent shortage of Rushdie (but, really, there is), and we waited for significantly longer than anticipated. When he finally looked in my direction, I smiled, wrung my wrists in nervousness, and told him, "Sir, you must hear this from everyone, but it's really, truly an  honor to meet you. You're the reason I wanted to become a writer." And then I continued to tell him I had one of his books with me at work, and he chuckled and said, "You didn't bring it? I could have signed it?"

To one of the greatest communicators of all time, I responded: "No, sir. I screwed up."

He waved away my filter-less mouth, and then I asked if he would mind standing with us for a photograph. We positioned ourselves so that he was in the middle of the two of us, but he decided it would be better if I were in the middle. So, really, I obliged them with a picture.

You're welcome, Uncle Salman.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that other prolific writers were also present. (Apparently, this was prior knowledge, but I stopped reading after I read "Salman" and immediately purchased two tickets.) Readings by from Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Téa Obreh illuminated the love and respect for Sir Rushdie, who listened to the power of his own words as if for the first time. He was then called on stage to engage with Amitava Kumar, a journalist and professor at Vassar College. He spoke about his first encounter with Garcia Marquez, the influences on his writing, the literary theories in which he does not ground his work, which, he acknowledged, came only from his heart. He said that the way to write well, to "make a book," is to write about something in life you deeply love or hate--two emotions I've always considered to be eerily similar, exerting the same amount of passion and energy, both just as deleterious to your sanity and soul. 

Salman Rushdie, accepting his "bribe," as he cleverly noted his award

He then commented on the difficulty of writers from the Third World to shatter the expectations to only write of the third world. This dilemma of writers who are compelled to represent the developing block, even if they are, like Sir Rushdie, well educated, well bred, and not characteristic of the perception of the less industrialized nations, is the dilemma of all children of immigrants, who are only accepted as spectacles, only assimilated if they are exoticized. Our process of deracination goes deeper than migration to the U.S. (or the U.K., etc). It's an endless, exhausting, emotionally overwhelming process of having no home, and being expected to feel as though our home countries, our mythical pasts, our parents who speak another language, our grandparents who must boil water for us to be able to stomach it, that that is all home. 

I left the event with a heavy sadness, almost a nostalgia for a man I never really knew. He spoke not just from his heart, but from mine. I wanted to share my feelings, my sense of intimacy, but did not know how. 

We walked to Galli for stellar pasta and unparalleled "mozz chips", and then got drinks at the Antique Garage, a small drinks joint with live music and antique mirrors and frames adorning the walls, because I thought that my emptiness could have been hunger, or sobriety, or ennui. We spent the entire night in transit, as I was silent, dissatisfied, trying to find something to provide comfort to the unsettling sensation in my gut, the feeling of untold and lost stories.