Terrifying Tuesdays

Close to a year ago, on a Tuesday, on my way to work I experienced severe chest pains -- sternum compression, shortness of breath, waves of pain down my left shoulder, arm and then the back, followed by nausea. Instantly, I concluded that I was having a heart attack, so I gradually pulled over along a shoulder on Highway 101S and rolled the window for fresh air.

Still in pain I reached for my mobile, but my unsteady hand dropped it on the floor. Trying to fish it with my foot only slid it farther from reach, under the car seat. Any physical movement only exacerbated the pain.

Helplessly I sat there, hoping the terrible episode would pass quickly; regrets of life flashed before me; scowling victims of my wayward ways peered at me, waging fingers. Oh my God, I murmured, this is it: The fabled protracted seconds before the final moment, when the bright light blinds you, followed by the void of darkness that absorbs you.

Moments of agony finally subsided -- 10 minutes had seemed hours -- and I drove straight to Palo Alto Medical Emergency Clinic. The ER staff rushed me in, ran the usual tests for a suspected heart attack. At the end of the ordeal, the ER doctor said it was an anxiety attack; a panic attack spurred because of extreme emotional stress.

Yesterday, another Tuesday, on my way to work, I was hit by an oncoming, speeding SUV as I turned left into Stevenson Blvd, just a block from where I live in Fremont. My BMW took the brunt of the impact, and now appears not salvageable. Luckily, I walked away unscathed, except a minor left wrist burn from the dispensed airbag that grazed my hand. Had I been in another smaller, less sturdy vehicle, there is no telling what the impact might have done to me and the car.

Incidents that rattle your life humble you; they force ajar windows of reflection; and they render life in perspective: what matters, what's important, what to cherish.

Yesterday's Terrifying Tuesday's was a siren song as much as last year's. If anything both ought to sum up a lesson: heed to simple things in life, appreciate and embrace them, for they are precious; that you have them is extraordinary.

Feb 3, 2010

Reviews

Here are links to some reviews:

Inside Bay Area

Publication

Alas, the moment of accomplishment is realized, when an aspiring writer finishes his last word of a manuscript, and after feverish editing and rewrites of hastily completed draft, sends it off to publishers. It came for me a week ago after I finished my manuscript for Oyster Bay & Other Short Stories.

It is my first attempt at fiction -- and at best the product of an apprentice. I am learning the craft of composing pure, lucid, and vibrant prose from the masters. That flow and vibrancy and vividness and purity comes over time. One must be infinitely patient; one must let the voice guide you; and for me that voice came much later in life. Belatedly.

The paperback will be available for ordering in the next three or four months from some major retail online stores: Borders.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Amazon.com, and www.authorhouse.com.

It is now published and available at:

1. AuthorHouse (USA)
   
2. AuthorHouse (UK)
3. AuthorHouse Book Order Hotline: 1.888.280.7715
4. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/
5. Amazon - Canada
6. Amazon - UK
7. Amazon - USA
   

Chronicles from the Past: A cultural Record

Migratory people without a sense of history and a sense of citizenship live incomplete and, often, unfufilled lives. The world is full of them; many live in countries where they are minorities, sometimes living on the fringes of their newly adopted land, sometimes forced to and other times of their own will to falsely embrace an idea of separatness. Yet how they arrived in their newly adopted land, or what their forefathers endured and sacrified before them, is an area of void, clamoring for illumination. It is imperative that the descendants of these pioneers chronicle their trials and tribulations; it is their cultural record that should be preserved for posterity.

"Oyster Bay and Other Short Stories" is fictional collection of cultural narratives, a thin slice of history, of a close-knit community of Indians -- Asians -- in Tanzania.

As I state in the author's note in the book, the central theme of this anthology and the novella, Middlemen, explore the social and political ethos of an immigrant Asian community, descendants of Indian indentured workers, merchants and traders, in East Africa, particularly in Tanzania, during the late 1960’s and a good part of 1970’s – post independence era -- a period of a rapid social, political, and economic transformation within the country.

It was a time of immense confusion, especially for this closely knit and socially exclusive Asian community. From all this turmoil emerges a young detached narrator who chronicles his self discovery, coming of age, wading through sketchy history of his people, trying to make sense of tumultuous cultural and political befuddlement around him. With passage of time the narrator's voice matures: from a pubescent naive boy to an introspective young adult.