Sheela Chari’s Karthik Delivers (2022) opens with a small group of friends eating ice cream at Carmine’s Ice Cream Parlor on Commonwealth Avenue in the Allston neighborhood, of Boston, Massachusetts.
There is Karthik Raghavan, the 14-year-old protagonist, hanging with his friend Binh Pham and Miles O’Grady. Karthik is attentive and bright but perhaps not worldly. His crush, Juhi Shah, comes in with her friends, including Jacob Donnell, who has long made a practice of harassing Karthik by joking about his name and putting him down. He is Karthik’s archnemesis. Karthik thinks of people in brief lists; for Jacob, it is ”(tall, Red Sox cap.)”
The moment in the ice cream shop is a short one because Karthik has to return back to his parents’ Indian grocery store in order to deliver more goods via bicycle. The shop’s clients are of mostly Indian descent, and the deliveries enable Karthik to catch a glimpse of their lives and interests.
One of his customers is a Boston University playwriting student, Shanthi Ananth. She has written a play about music composer and conductor, Leonard Bernstein. For her to graduate, she has to have her one-act play performed. She thinks Karthik looks like “Lenny,” and she asks if he might want to be in a play. Shanthi appreciates Karthik’s extraordinary memory, too: “Once she made me list all the different kinds of pickles we carry in the store (seventeen, if anyone wants to know).”
Those of East Indian descent in this small town do not hesitate to wrangle their children into various light (unpaid?) labor. There are heavy expectations of academic achievement in these families.
Karthik is in the 8th grade, and his sister Nitya is 17 and likely heading to college. He and his sister have a fierce case of sibling rivalry, and both are wittily sarcastic. When the family head out to watch Nitya dance at a Hindu temple, Karthik sneaks off with a romantic love interest. He thinks:
Without them (parents) nearby, no one will care if I’m not watching my sister stumble around onstage for god knows how long. Dance recitals have a way of making you reevaluate your life. And not in a good way.
Manjesh and Roopa are their parents, and the father is a programmer whose project ended at a company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and their mother was an aspiring doctor who married instead of pursuing her career goals. The family has landed in Allston because Manjesh’s brother (the children’s uncle) runs a business in town, and in difficult times, it is easier to live closer to family.
In this time period, there is a looming recession. Jobs are hard to come by. While the parents are trying to hide their hardships from the children, the children are attentive. This is an important summer for Karthik, who is exploring his interests, advancing his romantic life, making friends, and learning about the world. He is in a world of racial stereotypes, and he is learning how to negotiate around social hostilities. He is open to any number of possible selves for his future.
Just because there are other family members around does not mean that everyone gets along. There is sharp competition among the various characters. A new restaurant opens nearby. The House of Chaat is drawing away the business from the grocery store. Their advertisement directly appeals to people to pick up prepared and frozen food at the restaurant and to bypass the grocery. A flyer reads:
House of Chaat so very thrilled with your patronage! Now enjoy all-you-can-eat
special. Just $5.99. Can’t stop by? No problem! Buy our ready-to-cook items.
Fresh, delicious & ready in 5 minutes! House of Chaat means: No groceries to
buy. More time for you!
Karthik and Nitya’s parents may feel like they live in a somewhat stacked world. They try to steer their children towards higher education and away from potential distractions, even if their pressure is not well received. Both parents have lost opportunities and have regrets (and do some blame-shifting). The mundane daily life challenges of running a store keeping refrigerators running, paying bills—are disheartening. At one point, the mother says to Karthik: “You kids think you can do anything. You think the world is going to give you what you want.”
For all his youth, Karthik has a creative side. When he explores acting, he invests himself into the effort. He has engaging flights of fancy:
There’s also this thing about listening to music outside—like how gas expands to fill a container. Music expands, too, and when you’re outside, you are in that air, which surrounds you like a huge, musical bubble.
In Karthik Delivers, Sheela Chari captures the preciousness of time as youth approach their teen years and then adulthood. This is a moment when critical choices are made that may have long-term repercussions on people’s lifetimes. And yet, she also shows the precious opportunities for second chances in midlife. The world is a dynamic one.
This middle-school novel is an affirming and hopeful work. It evokes something of the East Indian experience in the U.S. with deftness and insight and good humor. There is an easy and organic diversity without trumpeting it. Racial issues are not avoided either. The novel is evocatively written, with a fine attention to detail.
In the Acknowledgments at the end of the book, Sheela Chari explains that she took 12 years to write Karthik Delivers. She is a faculty member at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Shalin Hai-Jew has worked in higher education for many years. She has edited dozens of nonfiction educational books and authored a dozen with a number of publishers.
