Celebrities on their way through a country are routinely asked what they think of it. But rarely does one get a response like that from award-winning writer Xu Xi (picture below by Aranya Sen). Waiting her turn at the seminar organised by the American Literature Study Circle at the USIS on Thursday, she was exasperated by the endless honks of passing traffic. But, she said, it helped her understand the spiritual side of India, ?the tradition of meditation?, the need to shut oneself off. It also told her ?about the fluidity of time?.

It is like this only in Indonesia where everything happens, but at its own pace, she said. Shuttled from Delhi to Calcutta, participating in the Katha Story Festival and giving lectures at various universities, Xu Xi also found ?the use of English quite surprising?. Not only were some of the students and professors using words with ?the skill of poets?, but even a hotel attendant said a particular problem would soon be ?rectified?!

With six books of fiction to her name like The Unwalled City and The Daughters of Hui, Sussi Komala (her name after naturalising in the US) has an obsession with words and their different usage.

Cross-cultural experiences interest her. The Sino-American relationship and the ongoing cultural shift in Hong Kong appear in many of her works. So do women?s issues, the position of women in the time of globalisation, racial injustice, poverty and war.

English was as foreign a language to this Hong Kong-born writer as Cantonese, ?because my parents spoke Javanese?, but Xu Xi had been writing in English from childhood. Her address at the Calcutta seminar to mark the birth anniversary of Martin Luther King was in itself a creative exercise. King for her became a portal to her personal experiences as part of the minority in America. She talked of her life in the ?safe world of academia, as a privileged foreign student of literature?, which didn?t prepare her to face the racial isolation outside.

Married to a white jazz musician she was still a ?pretend white? and just two per cent of the total census. But with time she became aware of her role as part of the minority (?only the minority can observe from a distance and comment?). She realised that ?you as an individual contribute to the diversity? which should be recognised ?as a value?.

All Xu Xi?s books were published in Hong Kong, but lately a lot of American characters are appearing beside her Hong Kong Chinese protagonists.

Living in the rural part of New York, Sussi Komala is ?more comfortable?. Perhaps she has, like the title of her soon to be published book, formed the ?Habit of a Foreign Sky?.