The Elephant in the Subcontinent

That's the tentative title I'm thinking of for the new book that Fawad, photographer Peter Sabo, and I are hoping will result from the six-week trip that starts tomorrow. The subtitle would be "Conversations in India and Pakistan," and the idea is to ask difficult, trenchant questions - both contemporary and historical - on both sides of the border between the two "frenemy" countries.

The danger in the title, of course, is that it might be misunderstood to be a book about elephants. (If so, we'll be in good company. An American publisher turned down Animal Farm because, as they explained to Orwell, they weren't interested in stories about animals.)

I'm writing this at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday in Seattle. 25 hours from now Pete and I get on a plane to Atlanta en route to Mumbai. I'll be blogging on this site at least once a week during the trip.

That's all for now, I guess. Next time you hear from me, I'll be in Mumbai.