Transplanted Man By Sanjay Nigam

Set almost entirely in a hospital, in the "Little India" of New York City, Sanjay Nigam's Transplanted Man reads like a really fun, desi version of ER or Grey's Anatomy. I went through two phases with this book. At first, I couldn't put it down. I loved it. I loved the characters, and I very much got inside their little lives with all the pleasure of a good masala movie. There's the dashing, brilliant doctor of the mostly Indian hospital--Sonny Seth--the silent angst type--my favorite kind of type. There are his patients--the sniveling husband who bit his wife's buttocks in a fit of passion, the scientist who is trying to isolate the protein that causes sleep deprivation. Sleep, in fact, has a mysterious and prominent presence in the book. Gwen--the British "Indiephile" who's a bibliophilic nymphomaniac. And then the eponymous Transplanted Man, an Indian Minister of Health whose body is a collage of transplanted organs and who enjoys waxing philosophy and sounding condescending. Sure the writing isn't spectacular, and sometimes awkward, but it's mostly good. Has promise. The story is a veritable feast of characters who pop in and out, feel vaguely familiar, and sometimes make you chuckle.

But eventually, I got less forgiving. The anguished "Who am I? What is the meaning of it all?" wails from Dr. Sonny Seth and a few others got annoying. Age-old questions about Indian identity and foreign-ness are raised, and left unanswered, unsatisfied. Random characters discuss their deepest thoughts aloud to each other for no reason. Wives who just can't seem to shut up and let their husbands follow their dreams in peace re-occur too many times for comfort. In fact, problematic representations of women throughout as nagging irritations on the path to one's freedom from the cumbersome banality of everyday life. There's a bit about dreams in the end of the book that struck a chord with me, but other than that the long overly-sentimental soliloquies on belonging and India and identities felt forced and over-reaching.

Years ago, I was listening to a book-reading/ interview with Sanjay Nigam on our local radio station in Iowa City. From what I remember, he was charming and self-assured and the Transplanted Man has been on my list since. Despite its short-comings, it was a good read. It left behind the warm feeling (if you ignore the second half) of a tight-knit Indian community somewhere in NYC, bustling along in a hospital somewhere getting well, and dreaming big-big dreams