Q&A with Namrata Patel

 

Photo credit: Leila Bailey-Stewart Photography

 

 

Namrata Patel is the author of the new novel Your Next Life Is Now. Her other books include The Curious Secrets of Yesterday. She lives in Boston. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Your Next Life Is Now, and how did you create your characters Nikki and Tara?

 

A: Honestly, getting older. Like many women, as I age, I am more reflective. I think about my past in the context of the present.

 

Life as an Indian American was exponentially different 30 years ago when there was little to no representation or model. Back then, most of us referred to ourselves as East-West mix, basically Indian in our home and American outside of it.

 

We were raised by parents who were focused on survival. There was a scarcity mindset for most of us, so we sought security and the way we internalized it was to embrace the ideologies and culture that we learned from our parents.

 

When it came to education, we invented the stereotype of doctors, pharmacists, and IT professionals. Achievement and earning potential was our safety.

 

There was also a component of guilt. We saw our parents struggle and sacrifice. To honor that and them, we chose their path more often than our own. 

This was particularly felt by women who were trained to be dutiful wives just like our mothers and grandmothers. Alongside that, we were also pushed to become highly educated. This created cognitive dissonance for many women. Do we do as it was expected, marry the suitable boy? Or do we forge our path and choose career and romance? 

 

Of course, there was a blurring of these opposing paths, but for this novel I wanted to explore the choices Indian American women can make now vs. three decades ago and the rapid acceleration of assimilation into Western culture that give these women choice in different ways. 

 

Tara, at almost 60, chose an arranged marriage because of family and cultural expectations. Her married life felt too restrictive, and she encouraged her daughter Nikki to choose independence. When Nikki gets engaged, it catapults both women into the unknown. 

It’s a dual POV examination of intergenerational tensions that show how each woman navigates their understanding of one another. 

 

Q: How would you describe their relationship?

 

A: Complicated. These two are mother-daughter who have never understood each other. Moreover, they do not communicate well.

 

In Western culture we take the ability to “have a conversation” as required. There are many readers who put down a book because “this could have all been resolved if the characters just talked to one another.”

 

True, but also, for immersive storytelling, I try to show that these characters are a byproduct of their lived experiences. And because of that, it makes having a simple conversation about wants, desires, or even feelings, hard.

 

Then there is a cultural component. In Indian culture, which is as strong even among those that live dual-identity lives, our values are derived by our actions and accomplishments, not our feelings. We are not taught to understand our internal lives. That is changing as the younger generations push back against this way of being. 

 

In this novel, Tara has spent most of Nikki’s life trying to live through her daughter, which put pressure on Nikki to appease her mother. They have never spent time together as women or adults until now.

 

It’s an uneasy relationship laced with fear of disappointment from Nikki and coldness from Tara. Their goals are different and the story is about what one learns from the other and how that will shape their life going forward. 

 

Q: This is a road trip novel—do you have any other favorite road trip novels?

 

A: It’s interesting. Road trip novels were huge about a decade ago. I think with the pandemic, there was a lull. What I love about these types of stories is how being in close proximity can help us discover a side of one another that is often not possible when you’re in the same place. The constantly changing setting almost demands new and different conversations. 

 

I read a lot of travel writing and travel memoirs that allow me to live vicariously, but in fiction, a few stand out. The Other Side of Disappearing by Kate Clayborn, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balil Kaur Jaswal, and The Wangs vs. The World by Jade Chang come to mind. 

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: I always like for readers to see themselves in the book, relate to the tensions and actions the characters make, and leave the story with a nugget or two that makes them wonder. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Currently, I’m working on my fifth novel. It’s about a woman who questions her sanity when she starts having memories that belong to a friend who recently died. 

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m excited for readers to check out Your Next Life is Now.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Namrata Patel.