Invited to SMU by the Wee Kim Wee Centre to speak about the many cultures she crosses in her writing, internationally acclaimed writer and until recently Writer-in-Residence and Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Anita Desai captivated an audience of more than 200 on 26 August 2008 with a personal insight into her writing career.

Anita Desai grew up in Delhi, India, with the influence of her parent’s two distinct cultures, German and Bengali. It was a quiet and isolated childhood that was brought to life by access to an extraordinary library. In an attempt to bring shape to the chaos of her life she sought balance through writing. Asked many years later by an editor in New York what it was like to be a writer in India, she said, “It was like being in a deep dark

cave, without an echo”. A lonely struggle throughout the 1960s and 1970s was dramatically changed in 1980 following a promotional tour to India of Salman Rushdie’s award winning novel Midnight’s Children. Following this time, however, her “cave” became a bazaar.

Speaking about her experience of teaching creative writing to engineers at MIT, Ms Desai explained that the course was to give the scientists an opportunity to express themselves, to allow them to go inside themselves and discover who they are. The author was pleased to learn through the question and answer session that followed her talk and reading that SMU students too engage in compulsory creative courses that broaden their educational experience.