{"id":4563,"date":"2024-01-30T08:57:09","date_gmt":"2024-01-30T13:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.alumni.ncsu.edu\/?p=4563"},"modified":"2024-02-14T08:40:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T13:40:33","slug":"writing-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/2024\/writing-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n

When Jai Chakrabarti \u201901 published his first novel in 2021, he dedicated it to \u201canyone who\u2019s crossed a border in search of home.\u201d Chakrabarti knows the feeling. When he was growing up, his family split their time between their native India and a series of small towns in North Carolina. He also saw it in the harrowing experiences of his wife\u2019s family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was thinking of my own grandparents, who fled what is now Bangladesh for India,\u201d says Chakrabarti. \u201cThey were fleeing religious persecution. I was also thinking of my wife\u2019s grandmother, who has now since passed away, but she was a survivor of Auschwitz and was able to . . . finally settle into Los Angeles and make a beautiful family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was also thinking, more broadly, of the thousands and millions of refugees we have who are struggling to find a home because of various political conflicts around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chakrabarti explored that universal search for home\u2009\u2014\u2009as well as heightened sensibilities about identity\u2009\u2014\u2009as he wrote A Play for the End of the World<\/em>, and a more recent collection of short stories, A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness<\/em>, both of which received critical acclaim. The novel was a recipient of a National Jewish Book Award, and The New York Times<\/em> described the collection of stories as \u201cexquisite\u201d and \u201cimpeccable.\u201d The stories explore attempts to build relationships and families across different countries, cultures and religions, while the novel is a work of historical fiction about a survivor of Poland\u2019s Warsaw Ghetto during World War II and his quest to find home in such disparate locations as New York City and a small village in India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cover<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Chakrabarti, 44, lives with his wife and eight-year-old son in New York\u2019s Hudson Valley. In addition to his writing, Chakrabarti has a full-time job as a senior director of engineering at Spotify, the popular streaming music and podcast service. His two roles are reflected in his education\u2009\u2014\u2009he earned a degree in computer science at NC State before going on to earn a master\u2019s degree in creative writing at Brooklyn College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The constant juggling is second nature to Chakrabarti, who grew up in Kolkata (the former Calcutta) and learned to read and write in Bengali before learning English. Chakrabarti was comfortable with computers at an early age, designing his first video game when he was 10 or 11 years old. He was also drawn to Charles Dickens and Rabindranath Tagore, an acclaimed Bengali author, poet and playwright, and would write and illustrate his own stories. He found inspiration in a great uncle who loved to tell stories. \u201cA lot of my appreciation of storytelling comes from him,\u201d he says, \u201cjust hearing how he constructed a story and how he welcomed everyone in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chakrabarti was nine years old when his family\u2009\u2014\u2009his parents are university professors, as is his older sister\u2009\u2014\u2009moved to the United States. It was the first time he wrestled with his own notion of home. The family would spend the school year in America before returning to India each summer, a ritual that Chakrabarti continued through his years at NC State. \u201cMy sense is that most immigrants probably feel torn between two cultures and two countries,\u201d he says. \u201cI know I did. I didn\u2019t feel completely at home in America and I didn\u2019t feel completely at home in India either.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy sense is that most immigrants probably feel torn between two cultures and two countries.
I know I did. I didn\u2019t feel completely at home in America, and I didn\u2019t feel completely at home in India either.\u201d
\u2014Jai Chakrabarti \u201901<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"Jai<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While in America, other kids poked fun at his differences, calling him \u201cchocolate bar\u201d rather than Chakrabarti. He remembers going into a convenience store as a teenager, only to have the owner follow him around as he walked down the aisles. While he was a top student in his American schools, he was behind (particularly in math) when he attended summer school in India. \u201cThere was an awareness,\u201d he says, \u201cthat, okay, I\u2019m someone different from most of the other people that I was around.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter where he was\u2009\u2014\u2009or what challenges he was encountering\u2009\u2014\u2009Chakrabarti always knew where he could find refuge. \u201cI had stories,\u201d he says. \u201cI had books, and I had the ability to write. Those were really, really essential tools for me. I don\u2019t think I could have survived without it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Jill
Jai Chakrabarti \u201901 was joined by author Jill McCorkle, a member of the faculty in NC State’s creative writing graduate program, during a reading last summer at So & So Books in downtown Raleigh.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Jill<\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

Despite that draw toward storytelling, Chakrabarti acquiesced to his parents\u2019 desire for him to get a practical degree that would help him get a job. But even as he found technology jobs that he enjoyed, Chakrabarti never stopped writing. When he moved to New York City, he was active in groups that discussed poetry and writing, and it was there that he met his wife, a poet named Elana Bell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI see him first and foremost as an artist,\u201d says Bell. \u201cThat\u2019s how we connected and the way we bonded and fell in love. At the same time, he\u2019s always had a job in tech. I\u2019ve been impressed by his ability to hold both of those identities. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s easy, but he does it well and fluidly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But forming his own family was not without its challenges. Chakrabarti and Bell, who is Jewish, come from cultures where there is often skepticism, at best, of marrying an \u201coutsider.\u201d \u201cBoth of us come from close-knit families,\u201d Bell says. \u201cWe both carry a lot from our families, in terms of closeness and spending time together and in terms of drawing on the different aspects of our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing on each other\u2019s culture led directly to Chakrabarti\u2019s novel. During an extended visit to Jerusalem, Chakrabarti and Bell went to Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. One exhibit, about art in the ghettos where Jewish residents were forced to live, told the story of a Polish educator and author named Janusz Korczak and his decision to stage a performance of a Bengali play in an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto. Chakrabarti had read the play, which was written by Tagore, one of his favorite authors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Jai
Chakrabarti enjoys lunch at his parents\u2019 house in Elon, N.C., with (left to right) his wife, Elana Bell; mother, Chandana Chakrabarti; father, Kisor Chakrabarti; and son, Surya Elijah Bell-Chakrabarti.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Jai<\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can count that day as one of the transformative days of my life,\u201d he says. \u201cHere I was, in Jerusalem, at a Holocaust museum, learning how a Bengali play had been performed in the Warsaw Ghetto. That kind of was what set off the research for the novel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The novel follows the main character, Jaryk, from his childhood in Poland and the atrocities of the Holocaust to his life in New York City, his friendship with someone he knew in Poland, his relationship with a woman from Mebane, N.C., and ultimately, his decision to stage the play in a rural village in India. It is a meshing of place, culture and conflict, with characters trying to find somewhere to call home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n