Lunch with a Bigot is a collection of essays by journalist and Vassar professor Amitava Kumar (A Matter of Rats), written and published over more than a decade. The book is divided into four sections: reading, writing, places and people. In practice, these themes flow into each other and echo across the divisions. Kumar is an artful, frank and clean-cut writer, with a compassionate curious mind and a dry sense of humor. He includes his personal responses in his journalism and maintains his questioning skepticism even in his most emotional essays.
Kumar negotiates an expatriate's life between India and the U.S., between English and Hindi. In many of his essays, he explores what it means to be an Indian writer in the modern literary world: "All too often our writing is an act of translation on behalf of the West." Kumar reflects on fatherhood and its effects on his writing. He considers V.S. Naipaul, the Boston Marathon bombings, trains, Kashmir, literary festivals, his marriage to a Muslim and the death of his mother. He writes about the poet Aqeel Shatir and interviews author Arundhati Roy, both committed political activists. The title essay tells of his meeting with a right-wing Hindu activist who put Kumar on an Internet hit list, a member of "a fringe element that gives a dangerous edge to an increasingly powerful and mainstream ideology in the subcontinent." But Kumar also finds common ground. "What Mr. Barotia and I share in some deep way is the language of memory--that well from which we have drawn, like water, our collective stories." --Sara Catterall