Meera Krishnamurthy, author of Balancing Act (March 8-21)

Please welcome Meera Krishnamurthy, author of Balancing Act. Meera will be chatting on LibraryThing until March 21st.

Thank you, Sonya. Delighted to be here.

Your novel looks very interesting but is not registered on amazon.co.uk, and is unavailable on amazon.com. Are there plans for it to be more easily available in these countries?

Thanks, TePuruBeach.
It sold out on Amazon.com and more copies have been sent, so it will be available again by the end of this week. As of now, it is only available on amazon.com, which then can send it to the UK or elsewhere. I hope you are able to get a copy!
If the book finds a US publisher, of course, the availability issue would be easily sorted out.

In Stock on amazon.com now

Alas, postage is just too ruinous from the US to Europe. Unless it appears on amazon.co.uk, I'll have to wait until I am in the US in August. Novels that deal with art or visual culture issues are of interest to me, so I very much look forward to reading it. Good luck with getting it out in the US.

Hi, Meera. I'm really enjoying your novel, and finding so much of it familiar from my own life. Everything you write about parenthood rings so true. I find the architectural metaphor (although it's more than just a metaphor) fascinating as a way of exploring the balance between work and motherhood. But I'm wondering if your training as an architect also helped you technically as a writer: for example, in the construction of a narrative that stands up and holds together. I always find plot and structure the hardest part of writing, which is probably why I write essays and poems instead of novels!

Hi rbhardy3rd, Thanks for writing in and I'm delighted that you're enjoying the novel. It's always gratifying to hear that it feels familiar. I think we all see the world through the filter of our training (and experiences). Louis Kahn once said, "How accidental are our existences and how influenced by circumstance." Architecture as a metaphor for motherhood is unusual, I know, but it works so closely as a metaphor - or analogy - for writing. Both are, ultimately, massive acts of imagination. And through the built form (architecture) or words (novels) we try to find a way to share that vision with the world. The life and words of Louis Kahn were the scaffolding for the story, in some ways, the Salk Institute was the site, if you will, and Tara's life is the built form that ties it all together. There's no denying that the key is finding a structure that will support the larger idea and perhaps one could say that is chapters and plot/narrative. But I would think poems are much harder to compose because you don't even have the comfort of falling back on a structured narrative!

Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Meera. I do have another question, which is based entirely upon my ignorance. Your novel is set in San Diego, and is full of references to American culture like Legoland, Desperate Housewives and Barney the purple dinosaur. But the novel is published, and most readily available, in India. How do the American setting and the American cultural references come across in India?

That's a really good question, Rob. It got me thinking about how or why Shakespeare, for example, is appreciated all over the world even though there is such a cultural disconnect in place, time, even language. If you don't accept the cultural domination theory alone, then you'd have to say that there are certain themes which are universal in their reach and the cultural content can be transcended.
When I sent the manuscript out to publishers in India, I was concerned that since the novel is set in and was written entirely in the US, it may not have any connect with readers in India, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was never a barrier. Ironically, the book has found Indian publishers but we're still looking to sell US rights!
The world has changed a lot since we were in college in the 80s, in the sense that the media has created a global "country" where there is a lot of cross-cultural referencing. (Of course, one is still more likely to have US references in Indian writing than the other way around.) Satellite TV makes CNN and Desperate Housewives and many, many American shows available in India, for example. PBS may not make it but within the context of the story, the idea still transfers. And Louis Kahn designed the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Ahmedabad and lived and worked here so he was and still is, a significant part of the architectural consciousness and discourse in India.
So the simple answer is that the dilemma of reconciling motherhood and career is "of our time" and crosses geographic, cultural, boundaries. While the details may differ, in spirit the stories are the same. I've found that young mothers as well as grandmothers in the US and India feel like they know this story first hand, whether or not they've been to Legoland. (as do stay-home fathers in the mid-west too, obviously!)

hi how r u?

Thanks for participating in the Author Chat, Meera. I hope the book promotion continues to go well, and that you get some time to write your second novel!