Kavitha Kulkarni

The Brown Intrusion Kavitha Kulkarni

After years of terrible loneliness, I finally found the man of my dreams. He was white, divorced, and came with three kids in tow. Desperate to keep him, I took my migrant Indian parents on and fought for the chance to just meet him. They couldn't deny it - we really were in love. But I was so wrong about something - I thought my parents would be the major hurdle I would have to cross. In fact, it was the eldest of the three boys. Scarred by his family's break-up, he took on the role of the old-guard and made it unbearable for me to live with him. He was also a racist. It took me years to reconcile that I had left my home-town to care for him, and in doing so, sacrificed my identity. This memoir tracks the journey from love to hate to somewhere in the middle - where I finally learned that the nest cannot always be shared.