Nigam, Sanjay 1959–

(Sanjay Kumar Nigam)

PERSONAL: Born 1959, in India. Ethnicity: "Asian Indian."

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, HarperCollins Publishers, 10 E. 53rd St., 7th Fl., New York, NY 10022.

CAREER: Writer, novelist, short-story writer, physician, educator, and medical researcher. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, associate professor of medicine. Writer-in-residence at Yaddo, McDowell, and other writers' colonies.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

The Non-Resident Indian and Other Stories, Penguin (New Delhi, India), 1996.

The Snake Charmer (novel), Morrow (New York, NY), 1998.

Transplanted Man (novel), Morrow (New York, NY), 2002.

Writer of academic works and contributor of short stories to periodicals, including Kenyon Review, Story, Natural History, and Grand Street.

SIDELIGHTS: Sanjay Nigam is a medical doctor, teacher, and author. In his first book, The Non-Resident Indian and Other Stories, Nigam tells the tale of Trishanku, a mortal who desires immortality. "Trishanku pays for his brief stay with the gods by spending eternity 'stuck' between heaven and earth watching souls transmigrate from one life to the next," wrote Robbi Clipper Sethi in an online review for IndiaStar. "Trishanku is Nigam's metaphor for the non-resident Indian, 'stuck' in a variety of North American locales." The non-resident Indians are found across the United States in Nigam's stories, inhabiting such locations as New York, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Texas. Two of his characters are influenced by the work of Henry David Thoreau. "When Nigam's narration settles into the consciousness of his strongest characters, the stories develop beautifully," wrote Sethi. "In 'The Window,' a chemist's dissatisfaction with his well-paying career in the pharmaceutical industry is believably and touchingly represented."

One of the stories in The Non-Resident Indian and Other Stories evolved into Nigam's first novel. The original story, titled "Charming," was the only story of the collection set entirely in India. In an online interview on the WordsWorth Books Web site, Nigam said the short story expanded into The Snake Charmer over a period of ten years, during most of which he was writing it "in my head." Arthur J. Pais, writing in India Today, called the novel "a luminous fable about ego, vanity, and attempts at redemption." A Publishers Weekly reviewer called it a tale "about the fleeting nature of fame and fortune and about a life 'ruined by a single moment of stupidity.'"

Nigam's main character, Sonalal, is a New Delhi snake charmer, "unsentimentally portrayed in his never-ending quest to fulfill his sexual, financial, and artistic needs," wrote Frank Caso in Booklist. "His trouble, already suggested by his wife's acerbic wit and the distance of his two sons, escalates when he hits a false note," wrote Sethi in a review for IndiaStar. "Raju, his cobra of fifteen years, old and tired from nine hours of one of the best days in Sonalal's career, bites the hand that feeds him." Furious, Sonalal commits an act that will haunt him, biting his snake in half, then weeping with "guilt for having murdered one he loved more than his own sons," according to Shobori Ganguli in a review for Pioneer. A group of foreign journalists witnesses the killing, giving Sonalal instant fame. The money he receives from the reporters and tour guides enables him to live in a style far more luxurious than Sonalal could have ever hoped.

Despite his newfound fame and fortune, Sonalal becomes impotent in his despair at the loss of his snake and turns to magicians, doctors, and sex therapists for redemption. Eventually, his temporary fortune dwindles and he returns to his native village to catch and train a new snake. "Nigam's best writing is in dialogues … where the characters reveal themselves and their situations convincingly and dramatically," wrote Sethi, adding that "the novel weakens some when summary becomes necessary to show the passage of time before Sonalal captures a new cobra and takes up his art again. The novel's suspense, however, never flags." Sethi found Nigam to be a "unique new voice in Indian-American fiction." New York Times reviewer Richard Bernstein called The Snake Charmer "an engaging, light-as-a-feather tale of a comically stubborn struggle." "An exceptional novel," commented Guy Amirthanayagam in Washington Post Book World. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called The Snake Charmer "a small gem of a story that entertains, moves and, naturally, charms."

Transplanted Man revolves around the health professionals, staff, and eccentric patients at a hospital in New York that serves a large portion of the city's Indian population. The novel's protagonist is Indian-born American doctor Sonny Seth, a gifted healer and physician completing his residency serving oddball patients from New York's Little India. Sonali, for example, is an Indian woman suffering from an embarrassing injury suffered when her husband, Nishad, became so enamored of her buttocks that he could not resist the urge to take a bite of them. The Comatose Patient is a man who feigns unconsciousness to avoid dealing with the stresses of life, including a wife and mistress. The title character is a high-level Indian civil servant and politician who has endured transplants of almost every major organ in his body. The Transplanted Man courts the possibility of becoming India's next prime minister, but determined political foes and a history of financial scandals may scuttle his chances. Sonny grows closer to The Transplated Man as he treats the unusual politician, and the two come to realize a connection that neither suspected. As the doctors dispense healing and the patients amble in for treatments, all of the novel's characters grapple with their own sense of being "transplanted" from their homeland, from their secure lives, from their previous stable emotional states—from somewhere other than they are now, and to which most would like to return. The novel is "funny but not unintelligent, mocking but not mean-spirited," observed Faye A. Chadwell in the Library Journal. A Kirkus Reviews critic called Transplanted Man "a good read, with interesting and credible characters working their way through the chaos of modern hospital life."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 1998, Frank Caso, review of The Snake Charmer, p. 1429.

India Today, July 27, 1998, Arthur J. Pais, review of The Snake Charmer.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 1998, review of The Snake Charmer, p. 519; August 1, 2002, review of Transplanted Man, p. 1067.

Library Journal, April 15, 1998, review of The Snake Charmer, p. 114; September 1, 2002, Faye A. Chadwell, review of Transplanted Man, p. 215.

New York Times, July 6, 1998, Richard Bernstein, review of The Snake Charmer, p. E6.

Pioneer, November 28, 1998, Shobori Ganguli, review of The Snake Charmer.

Publishers Weekly, April 6, 1998, review of The Snake Charmer, p. 56; July 8, 2002, review of Transplanted Man, p. 29.

Washington Post Book World, May 31, 1998, Guy Amirthanayagam, review of The Snake Charmer, p. 5.

ONLINE

IndiaStar, http://www.indiastar.com/ (September 10, 1998), Robbi Clipper Sethi, review of The Non-Resident Indian and Other Stories; (March 19, 2006), Robbi Clipper Sethi, review of The Snake Charmer.

Literate World, http://www.literateworld.com/ (March 4, 2006), Amit Kukmar, "The Subtle and Bizarre," interview with Sanjay Nigam.

Little India Web site, http://www.littleindia.com/ (March 4, 2006), Robbie Clipper Sethi, "One-and-a-Half Generation Immigrant," interview with Sanjay Nigam.

Words Worth Books, http://www.wordsworth.com/ (September 10, 1998), interview with Sanjay Nigam.