Opening three chapters of novel in progress, SANGAM For Indian American DJ Amar, music is his gateway to two things: girls and social cache. In college, he bands with Iranian Americans Erfan and Dalia to create a new sound of the brown millennial diaspora. While Erfan’s success grows and Dalia abates his affections, he’s stuck gigging across small-time clubs and weddings. As his obsession grows, he turns to his grandfather’s record of an old Sufi ghazal -- the backstory of which crosses both 13th century and post-Partition India, revealing to us the missing streams of a cultural and personal history of the subcontinent that have met at the confluence of his life.

Currently shopping novel to agents.

Genres/Keywords: Bildungsroman, historical, triptych, music

Comp titles: 99 Nights in Logar (Jamil Jan Kochai), Compass (Mathias Enard), Londonstani (Gautam Malkani)

 Excerpt published in B O D Y Magazine.

Terminus follows two characters: Ashok, an Indian immigrant grieving from the loss of his son, and Abdi, an African-American trying to reintegrate to society after release from prison for a wrongful conviction. Their lives are intertwined by the construction of a new metro line in Baltimore – for Ashok and his wife, this is a new lease on their snatched American dream; for Abdi, a growing sense of local activism to protect his community. The novel crosses the suburbs and inner-city neighborhoods, highlighting fractures of race, gentrification and daily human struggle.

A version of this was published in Taco Bell Quarterly, April 2022
https://tacobellquarterly.org/monkey-brains/

Critical essay reviewing the Netflix series Never Have I Ever as a basis for considering questions of media representation, nostalgia, craft's impact on content, and what it means to "be seen." Published Tropics of Meta May 2020.
https://tropicsofmeta.com/2020/05/27/the-quixotic-search-for-south-asian...

Short story solicited for Barrelhouse Magazine's Desi Special Issue, June 2019
https://www.barrelhousemag.com/onlinelit/aditya-desai-raid-on-madras
See also conversation with Feroz Rather: https://www.barrelhousemag.com/onlinelit/feroz-and-aditya

A creative essay written in response to the February 2017 shootings in Olathe, KS where a white xenophobe targeted two Indian men he believed to be Iranians, killing one. Published originally in The Rumpus, September 2017:

http://therumpus.net/2017/09/the-cost-of-doing-business/

Told in the second-person POV, a man reflects on his unfinished backyard pool at a time when he is becoming increasingly disconnected from his family.

Forthcoming in District Lit, 2017.

This excerpt from my novel-in-progress follows an Indian-American man still grieving the loss of his son, as a new work promotion puts new lease on his hope for the American Dream.

Published in The New Engagement, January 2017 Issue.
http://thenewengagement.com/literature/a-bend-in-the-track

This excerpt from my novel-in-progress follows a young African-American man attempting to re-enter society after being released from prison.

Published in the Asian American Writers Workshop's The Margins, featured Fiction Friday Author, 2/5/2016.
http://aaww.org/foraging/

Set in the Indian-American enclave of Edison, NJ, this story profiles a family caught in a moment of fracture. This was my first story published.

Published in The Kartika Review, Summer Issue 13, 2012.
https://issuu.com/kartikareview/docs/kartika_issue13