I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and my family comes from Bangalore, India. I grew up at a time when no one in the U.S. knew anything about India, much less Bangalore! It was so hard to call India at that time-you had to go through an operator, and when you were connected, you'd hear echo after echo...who could've guessed that one day everyone would be calling Bangalore on a regular basis?

No one ever guessed where I hailed from-or, rather, following in the footsteps of Chris Columbus, albeit inversely, people often thought I was, to use the politically incorrect term, Indian. When I mentioned being Indian, I got a variety of responses, from "What tribe?" to "Oh, really, I'm a quarter Cherokee!". My favorite, though, was the following: "Really? I played bingo in a reservation in Oklahoma once!". I just smiled in response. What in the world do you say? It got tiring after a while, to constantly explain yourself. (Not to mention your name-I was called everything from Nathan to Nantucket, but the absolute worst was Norton!)

Nowadays, of course, everyone's familiar with India, primarily because of the food, call-centers, IT, the Simpsons, and, of course, Bollywood. Hmm. In some ways, I prefer the ignorance. You were never stereotyped, you know?

My dad is a research scientist, and my mom is a classical Indian dance teacher who runs Dances of India, the premiere Indian dance company in Missouri-we're celebrating our 30th anniversary this year! I've been dancing all my life. I grew up with dance music in the house-I used to do my homework while always hearing in the background the ragas (melodies) and talas (beats) so different from Western music.

Anyway, here is the rest of my life in nutshell: I graduated with a degree in French from Washington University in St. Louis. I studied a year in Paris, worked one year in Japan, and spent 3 years doing graduate work in international relations and business in England.

I really understood that I was a writer in England. People have been telling me for years that I should write, but I never took them seriously. However in England while doing a graduate degree in Finance at Webster University's London campus,I kept drifting towards the literature/philosophy section in the library. I discovered Herman Hesse's marvelous My Belief (now out-of-print) in the library as well as Rainer Maria Rilke and his magical poetry. But I completely realized I was a writer when I saw this quote by Carson McCullers (author of the magnificent The Heart is a Lonely Hunter) in her collection of thoughts, The Flowering Dream-Notes on Writing. "Writing is a wandering, dreaming occupation. The intellect is submerged beneath the unconscious-the thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination......what is more intimate than one's own imagination? The imagination combines memory with insight, combines reality with the dream."

The rest can be quickly summarized: I joined Borders, and plunged into writing, and to my surprise received extraordinary support from my coworkers. I'm no longer there, but have still kept writing.

I now am thoroughly experienced in dealing with the publishing world. And like I previously stated, while I do absolutely believe that doors close for a reason, I did express my frustration with the whole industry in one of my dystopian pieces called The Fool, from my collection of dystopian tales, The Day the Last Dreamer Died.