Brick Lane in New York

We reached the huge bookstore half an hour early and rode up the long escalators to the third floor. There were quite a few empty seats and I sat right up on the second row so as to get a good look at the writer. The old American lady beside me was flipping through a book of dazzling photos of Bollywood heroines Madhuri in Devdas, Rekha, and Madhu Bala in their sparkling costumes. I looked over at the copy of Brick Lane on her lap and the two women on the cover wearing red and orange kameezs looked more like Bollywood actresses than Nazneen or Hasina--the two principal characters in the book. I had an exact picture of Nazneen in my head : a distant cousin of my dad's who I saw only a few times when we visited our village home. What picture did this lady have, I wondered, of Nazneen and her mother, of saris and dal?

By the time it was seven, the room was filled with people, desis and Americans, in almost equal numbers. A Barnes and Noble personnel came up on stage to introduce the writer. She talked about the book being Monica Ali's first, and kept pronouncing the name as Moniker Ali. Keeping up with the casual spirit of New York, the writer was dressed in a pleated denim skirt and white t-shirt with a denim jacket. She wore transparent plastic sandals and strode up to the stage in long easy steps. Her hair was dyed a lighter brown than the dark color that appears in the photo on the back of the book, and she was slim and tall.

She started the evening describing how being a mother played an important part in the writing of her novel. One has to have restrictions in life in order to write, and for her taking care of her two young children took up a lot of time so that she could only write late at night when her children were asleep. Many journalists have asked her before who the character Nazneen is based on, and Ali said she had thought of her British mother's journey to Dhaka after her marriage to her Bengali father, and reversed it to imagine how it would be for a woman to come from Bangladesh to England. Much of the information about Bangladeshi village life that she describes in her book is from her father's stories, but she also interviewed many Bengali people living in the East End of London to form the picture of Bangladesh.

Monica Ali first read an excerpt from the beginning part of the book where Nazneen ventures out alone by herself in Brick Lane and gets lost. She read about the film posters on the way, and the steel and glass buildings, the men in dark suits, and the busy people on the streets who seemed to be on "private, urgent mission." I remembered my first time in Times Square, and that was exactly how intimidating and new Manhattan felt to me.

The next excerpt was the village scene where a fakir comes to rid Nazneen's mother of a jinn. It's one of my favorite parts of the book because of the humorous descriptions and I found myself laughing as she read flawlessly in her British accent, changing her tone to fit the somber booming voice of the fakir, or the thin, nosy voice of the jinn. I could totally relate to her description of our gram-bangla's gatherings and people's "scratching of noses and backsides" as they watched the fakir with attention. She pronounced the Bengali words with a British twang, and in spite of myself, I felt a bit disappointed.

When I went to hear Salman Rushdie speak in Sweet Briar College last year, he had pointed out that it's very strange people come from distant places to hear writers speak, and there is no reason why writers should be able to speak well in public.

Yet, with all the readings and discussions successful writers attend, they become well rehearsed. Monica Ali spoke confidently on stage and it seemed to me that she had chosen her excerpts carefully to match the setting - a description that could be of any busy metropolitan city like London or New York, and a look at exorcism, which is a present in all cultures, but the process was unique to Bangladesh. The audience was able to relate to both the excerpts.

After the reading, during the question-answer session, one member of the audience (obviously not of Bangladeshi origin) asked who the "Sylhetis" were and why Chanu was prejudiced against them. As Monica Ali explained that majority of the Bangladeshis in England were from Sylhet, and Chanu was talking about the stereotypical characteristics of the Sylhetis, I smiled and nodded my head knowingly. For once, I understood the reference and somebody else was left out! Another member of the audience asked the writer how she felt about the character Chanu because although he is quite an annoying character, he is never shown in a bad light. Monica Ali said that Chanu is definitely not a bad person, and she cared about all her characters, which is why she was able to write about them.

When I was reading Brick Lane the inclusion of the parts in Bangla language reminded me that the story was about ordinary people, and the familiarity created a sense of connection to the characters. Considering that Nazneen's thoughts and conversations would be in Bangla in reality, I asked the writer how she decided when to put in Bangla and when to go on with English. She said it depended on the situation, like it was used to show intimacy between Karim and Nazneen when she asked him why he liked her.

When Monica Ali was signing my copy of the book, she asked me if I was Bangladeshi. I told her that I had grown up in Dhaka and was studying communication and creative writing in college. She looked at my name and said "My father's best friend in Dhaka.

..his wife's name is Monju. Good luck with your writing. Hope to see you published soon." I hope so too, I thought. During the evening Monica Ali said when she started with the novel and was doing research for it, she absolutely felt she had to write about Brick Lane and the lives of these characters. I went away from the bookstore with the comforting feeling that one day I would also find a situation that I would be compelled to write about.

Munjulika Rahman studies at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, United States.