Once Upon a Timezone

More about the book

In the heart of middle-class India, Neelesh Pandey, just out of college, dreams day and night of his first love America and also of an escape from his fathers grandiose desire to land an upper-caste daughter-in-law. Unable to go to the United States, he takes the second best a job at a call centre where he assumes an American identity. Meanwhile, in faraway New York, Angela Cruz has escaped her racist father and life in Jackson, Mississippi, and is a journalist chasing her big story of a school band of immigrant kids in a New York suburb who have been selected to perform at a musical extravaganza but dont have the money to fly there. Angela buys a computer, it malfunctions, and she calls the call centre to scream at them. She runs into Neel, and, many many conversations later, they tumble into a faraway romance. Once upon a Timezone is a funny, light-hearted look at two people, in two different continents who are both trying to escape similar worlds of prejudice, and who realize somewhere along the way that mix-ups and cover-ups, nationalities and distances, notwithstanding, they are deeply in love.