April 6, 2026 IMMIGRATION SONG

 

Back in the day, my grandmother went to the beauty parlor every Friday to have her hair "set".  This ritual  involved a professional shampoo, rollers, pins, a magical "hooded dryer" to "bake the set" and copious amounts of HEAVY DUTY HAIRSPRAY. Yup--that's all it took to have perfect hair for an entire week. And if it rained?? My grandmother must have had the market on plastic rain bonnets. One would magically appear on her head if there was even the threat of rain.  My other grandmother also had a very serious hairdo--the bee hive. It literally stood up on her head almost a foot. I bet that needed some serious hairspray. She wrapped the hive in at least a roll of toilet paper every night to keep that baby in place. I got to thinking about this last weekend while at the hairdresser. I'd had my hair washed, colored and blown out. It look great.  Just wished it would last as long as the "set" did back in the day. Fond memories. Ma, the main character in Megha Majumdar's new book A Guardian and a Thief is not so fortunate.  Set in Kolkata, India, Ma, her father, Babu, and her two year old daughter, Misthi, have one week until they immigrate to the United States to join her husband in Michigan. Ma is the manager of a homeless shelter in the city--a city facing climate change and severe famine. People are desperate to feed their families and many face choices between life and death. Boomba is a twenty year old homeless man who came to Kolkata to save his own family. Instead, he is penniless and staying at the shelter. One day he follows Ma home from the shelter and later breaks into her house looking for food and inadvertently steals their passports. Don't want to say much more about the plot other than that I never would have guessed where it was going. This is a novel about morality, desperation and the choices we make for family. Pretty sure it was a finalist for The National Book Award in 2025. Enjoy.