Megha Majumdar: "A Guardian and a Thief" | Oprah's Book Club

BUY THE BOOK! https://amzn.to/4hbxXvX To find all of the Oprah’s Book Club selections and 30 of Oprah’s most memorable reads, visit: http://www.amazon.com/obc In this episode of Oprah’s Book Club: Presented by Starbucks, Oprah and Megha Majumdar discuss her magnificent new book, A Guardian and a Thief, a 2025 National Book Awards finalist and Oprah’s 119th Book Club selection. This exquisitely written novel packs an epic story into just 224 pages. From page one to the jaw-dropping conclusion, readers are immersed in a harrowing journey as two families, on a collision course in Kolkata, India, face the consequences and moral implications of their life-and-death choices. Megha’s evocative, beautifully crafted exploration of our changing world sparked a lively and thoughtful conversation among readers at a Starbucks coffeehouse in New York City. Starbucks' delectable drink pairing for this book is an Iced Banana Cream Protein Matcha. 00:00:00 - Welcome Megha Majumdar, author of “A Guardian and a Thief” 00:01:56 - Oprah describes “A Guardian and a Thief” 00:03:28 - Oprah’s daughter-girl Thando shares her take 00:05:15 - The plot 00:09:08 - Writing about famine 00:13:20 - A writer’s relationship to failing 00:16:20 - Each character sees America differently 00:22:30 - Is everyone both a guardian and a thief? 00:25:50 - How would you act under great pressure? 00:32:00 - What motivates us to do the right thing 00:39:30 - Confronting contradictions in her book 00:40:45 - Megha’s story of America 00:42:23 - Did Megha always know the ending? 00:47:28 - When writing became her career Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@Oprah?sub_confirmation=1 https://www.youtube.com/@Oprah?sub_confirmation=1%20 Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@oprah?lang=en Listen to the full podcast: Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381 #oprahsbookclub

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by HBO Max. For your awards consideration, HBO Max presents Rooster. Starring Steve Carell, this new comedy series focuses on the complicated relationship between a successful author and his daughter. Don't miss the series IGN called hilarious and brilliant. Rooster is streaming on HBO Max. Watch now.

• 0:24Oprah Winfrey?

  It's Mekha Majumdar.

• 0:28Oprah Winfrey?

  You were one of my best phone calls ever because forever you didn't believe me, right?

• 0:32Speaker 02

  I didn't.

• 0:32Oprah Winfrey?

  No.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  I thought it was somebody from the publisher who was pranking me.

• 0:39Oprah Winfrey?

  I could tell. And then you said something that was so moving to me. In the middle of the conversation, you just go, "What a wild thing to happen in a day."

• 0:48Speaker 02

  It was just an arrival from outside the context of my life.

• 0:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Hi there, everybody. I am so thrilled to be together with all of you, listeners, watchers, and readers here at a Starbucks Cafe in New York City. Thank you for Oprah's Book Club, presented by Starbucks. And as always, Starbucks pairs each one of my new book club selections with a special handcrafted drink. This month, it's an Iced Banana Cream Protein Matcha. It is new and it's delicious. Everybody says it is made with the Starbucks cold foam that you know and love, and now with a high protein boost. So Starbucks is the place to come together with good coffee, with good company, and a good book.

• 1:41Oprah Winfrey?

  And my new book club selection is A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar. Now, it is the 119th book club I've selected, and it's an ex- I'm telling you, this woman can write. It is, isn't it?

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, it is exquisitely written, and it packs an epic and very, very timely story in just 224 pages. Gail was very happy about that.

• 2:11Oprah Winfrey?

  It goes over 300 pages. Gail's like, "What? People have lives. What are you thinking?" So it's about two families on a collision course, both facing impossible odds to save themselves and find a new home. But that doesn't even begin to describe what happens when you open the first page. I was taken in at the very first page. And then on the last page? Yes. Huh. My jaw was on the floor. So we asked our audience of readers to give us a one-word book report. And some of you said the story was haunting. Some other people said gut-wrenching. I would agree with that. And unyielding. And I agree with all of those.

• 2:55Oprah Winfrey?

  And I wanted to ask Aline here in the audience, what did you think?

• 2:58Speaker 03

  I was, honest to goodness, shook, like to every fiber of my being.

• 3:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Shooketh.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  Yes, shooketh. Shooketh.

• 3:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 3:09Speaker 03

  I couldn't put the book down. I finished it late at night, and no one in my house was up. And I was, I felt it physically, the ending. Physically.

• 3:18Oprah Winfrey?

  I know. I know.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 3:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Aline, thank you. Christina, where are you?

• 3:23Speaker 04

  Over here.

• 3:24Oprah Winfrey?

  OK. And?

• 3:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, so for me, you painted such a vivid picture in the book. Like, I could literally see the characters. I really loved the interconnectedness between the stories. And the vivid imagery, for me, showed me the humanity really behind why people take such desperate measures. So I really felt a ton of compassion for every character in the book. Thank you so much for that.

• 3:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. And my daughter-girl, Tondo Deloma, is one of my, I call her daughter-girl because she graduated from my school in South Africa. And she reads every one of my book club picks. And I, Tondo and I read together many times. And I love hearing Tondo's takes. And I hear a lot of you will love hearing Tondo's takes. So Tondo called me, goes, "Mama!"

• 4:11Oprah Winfrey?

  We have to talk about this book. And I said, no, we don't. I will talk to you when we get to Starbucks. So what did you think, Tondo?

• 4:21Speaker 05

  No, the fact that you wanted us to wait until we got to Starbucks was tearing me to shreds. I couldn't. I tried everything to avoid my feelings. I went to the gym, I come back, I'm still thinking about the ending. I come back to the kitchen, I'm like, let me take a walk, let me walk it off. I go out again, go back for a walk, it's still on my mind. And so I called, I was like, no, we have to because when we get to the airport and it's all just come to

• 4:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Do not give away the ending.

• 4:52Speaker 05

  I won't give it away, but all I'm saying is, my hopes torn to shreds and pieces. I know what it feels like when you're about to leave for America. I was born in South Africa. I know the countdown to a month, three weeks to five days. You're five days away from the dream, the American dream, the big thing.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 05

  And then, I won't say nothing else.

• 5:17Oprah Winfrey?

  And then it happens.

• 5:18Speaker 05

  It happens.

• 5:19Oprah Winfrey?

  It happens.

• 5:19Speaker 05

  The time comes.

• 5:20Oprah Winfrey?

  The time comes.

• 5:21Speaker 05

  Oh, does it?

• 5:22Oprah Winfrey?

  All right, thank you, Ms. Tondo. We won't give away major plot points because I hope all the book lovers get a chance to read it. And I hope those of you who have read it will pass along the story to other people. And the story takes place in the near future, in the city of Kolkata, India. Is that how you pronounce it?

• 5:41Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 5:42Oprah Winfrey?

  And that area is enduring years of heat and flooding and famine. And so people are desperate. And there are two central characters that we'll be talking about today. Ma and Bumba. Ma, along with her two-year-old daughter, Michti, and her aging father, Dadoo, are just a few days away, as Tondo was saying, from their flight to come to America, where Ma's husband is waiting for them in Michigan. So we also meet a 20-year-old, as I said, named Bumba. He's from a small village outside the city and will do anything to find a safe home for his parents and little brother, Robbie. So, welcome to Starbucks, Megha.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Oprah.

• 6:26Oprah Winfrey?

  How did you come up with this story?

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Well, it started with the place. Kolkata is my hometown. I grew up there. I lived there until I was 19. And recently, we've started learning that Kolkata is going to be one of the cities in the world which is most profoundly affected by climate change. It has grown hotter. It is predicted to endure more storms. So I was reading about climate change in Kolkata and thinking about, well, what are hope and love going to look like in this time of crisis? What will we do when we understand how the ethical self we want to be, the moral self we want to be,

• 7:15Speaker 02

  clashes with who we are as mothers and parents and guardians and caregivers? And what will we do to confront that clash? And that's what took me into the story. And one very interesting thing I will say, which might resonate with all the parents in the room. I struggled with this story until I had my older son in 2021. And the story completely changed. It became so much more about the mother and the other guardian. And I started thinking about, what will the ferocity of this kind of love make you do?

• 7:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, I think that's a very interesting question. Did you all think about that while reading? What would you do? Because we all have what we think is our moral center. But if you were starving or your children were starving, what would you be willing to do to provide for your family? I think it's fascinating for our current times also that you chose to write a story about morals. And

• 8:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Y'all think that's funny, but okay. And how what is right and what is wrong can shift when you're just trying to keep your family alive. What intrigued you about that challenge?

• 8:41Speaker 02

  I am completely fascinated by the conflict between what is good for us and our loved ones, our family, and what is good for the collective, our neighbors, our society. And I think that the world that we live in, the systems and networks of power that we live in, force us to look at that gap. Because what is good for me is not necessarily good for my neighbor. How do we live when we understand that our love, our hope,

• 9:23Speaker 02

  can have a manifestation which is vicious and fierce for somebody else?

• 9:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Why did you want to write about the experience of famine and hunger? I think it's interesting. We hear all the time about countries where people are starving. We hear about what's happening in Gaza, what's happening in the Sudan, what's happening in places around the world. It's just a word, but you were able to bring famine and hunger alive for all of us.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  I started from the complete opposite place of thinking about how my family bonds with food. We love cooking, we love eating. And think about the emotional charge of having a meal with people you love. That connective tissue, it's so elemental.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  And when I was thinking about climate change, I thought about, well, what happens when in that kind of crisis, our familiar foods go away? What if you sit down to dinner and instead of the food that nourishes you, that you love, it's insect protein and algae? How is that going to change how you feel about that togetherness with the people that you treasure?

• 10:44Oprah Winfrey?

  And what it means to steal an orange from a child? Yes, yes. Here's how you describe how the media captures images of people who are enduring starvation. This is from page four. You say, "Those black and white newspaper photos in which people appeared as sunken eyes and twig-thin limbs facing a photographer who could do nothing for them. Their fullness, their love, their humor, their annoyance, their preference, paired by the lens to reveal what remained, which was hunger." We all know those photos. We've all seen those photos. But it's not often that we even think about

• 11:29Oprah Winfrey?

  what's behind that photo. What inspired you to write that?

• 11:36Speaker 02

  I think a lot about how one of the things that fiction can do is help us approach the truth of another person in their fullness, right?

• 11:52Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  So even when we see a photo of somebody who is flattened in a moment of crisis, who is reduced to their crisis, fiction can restore who they are. Fiction can give them back their jokes, their humor, their love, their irritations, the things that annoy them, everything that makes them who they are. I think that is a beautiful task that fiction can take on.

• 12:19Oprah Winfrey?

  And so how long have you been writing?

• 12:22Speaker 02

  I've been writing since I was a child, but I was writing seriously. I started writing seriously in college.

• 12:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes. And did you always know that this is what you were going to do? That you had a gift for language?

• 12:38Speaker 02

  No.

• 12:39Oprah Winfrey?

  When did you know? When did you know?

• 12:43Speaker 02

  I think I knew when... So, writing is not just about writing, right? It's about living in a mode of inquiry. It's about living with attention.

• 12:56Oprah Winfrey?

  I think that is just absolutely on cue, that it's about living with attention. Because what I notice is that writers pay attention to everything and you will find something maybe interesting one day and not use it in the story until five, 10 years later. Has that happened to you?

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Exactly, yes.

• 13:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Very much so. News stories that I read when I was in middle school, showed up in my first book, things that I notice when I'm out on a walk. You know, if you think about your own neighborhood, if you think about the doors and houses and people and gardens that you pass by and you think about, well, how would I put this in words? Where is the language for this? And the other thing that happens when you think of yourself as a writer is you understand that you have to be OK with failing. This was new to me, too. Because writing is so often about having a vision for the story that you want to tell and you sit down to write it

• 14:00Speaker 02

  and you understand that you can't do it. It's difficult. You fail a lot and sitting with yourself...

• 14:10Oprah Winfrey?

  You fail because what? They're not words?

• 14:12Speaker 02

  You fail because...

• 14:13Oprah Winfrey?

  You can't find the words?

• 14:14Speaker 02

  You can't find the right words.

• 14:16Oprah Winfrey?

  You can't find the right words.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  You can't find the words that are true. You start up here and you have to excavate the language until you get to the truest layer.

• 14:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, I love that. Ooh, girl! Snap, snap. We need to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

• 14:35Speaker 06

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• 15:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Welcome back to Oprah's Book Club, presented by Starbucks. I'm here with the very talented author of my September Book Club pick, A Guardian and a Thief. Okay, so here is a, here is a passage that I think is the truest language, as is every word in this book. You write on page 24, "In better years, in this kitchen, Ma had hummed as she cleaned chickens to roast, flesh like her flesh, washed potatoes, sprouting white eyeballs." It's the first time I thought of those little buds as little eyeballs. "White eyeballs and mushrooms with mud in their caps, measured and rinsed cups of rice,

• 15:49Oprah Winfrey?

  pouring the residue like an overcast sky in the bowl, down the drain, not minding if a few grains slipped into the sink." And I'm like, I have washed rice many times, and I never thought of the water that rinses off as an overcast sky. How do you come up with that?

• 16:16Speaker 02

  I think anybody can do it. You just, you just look. You just look with attention and you think, well, what am I really seeing here? And what are the connections that are forming for me in my mind? I love this because I feel like everybody here can be a fiction writer. If you're a reader, you can write. And if you, if you look and you allow yourself to stay in that moment, even though it feels like an ordinary or banal moment, if you allow yourself to look for what is extraordinary and beautiful and worthwhile in it, you can see it too.

• 16:53Oprah Winfrey?

  You can see it?

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:55Oprah Winfrey?

  So I think it's so interesting, the way everybody sees America. Ma sees America as this place of refuge and freedom. And you came here, as I understand it, when you were 19. And what did America hold for you?

• 17:11Speaker 02

  I moved here at 19 to go to college. I received financial aid and I was very lucky. It was a gift from out of the blue. And it represented freedom to think for myself. The reason I started applying to schools in America from India was the schooling system that I was in felt very rigid to me. I was taught to learn with the aim of succeeding at exams. And I knew that that's not the mode in which I wanted to do college. And I wanted to come to this country to go to classes where I would be encouraged to form an opinion, to argue,

• 17:55Speaker 02

  to question what I read and to think for myself.

• 18:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow. And that obviously happened, sister. Okay, this audience has a lot of questions for you. Where's Rochika? Rochika, hi.

• 18:10Speaker 07

  Hi, question for Megas. Both my parents were actually born and raised in Kolkata as well. So it was really special to read the story and see it take place in that city. My dad came to the States to go to college as well. And my mom joined a few years later after they got married. For them, America was a land of opportunity, potential. What do you think America represented for Ma, Mishdi and Dadu?

• 18:37Speaker 02

  That's a great question. And I'm so happy that we are in the same room now.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  I think for the characters Ma, Mishdi and Dadu, America represented certainly a better future, a more secure future. But it had different textures. For Ma, who's the mother, and Dadu, who's the grandfather, the different texture was that for Ma, she was purely excited. She wanted that escape. She wanted that feeling of freedom and safety for her daughter.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  And she knew that she was escaping to a place that was far away from her hometown, which she loved and adored and would miss. But it was also a city where she had been harassed as a girl. And she knew what it was like to be in the streets of that city as a girl. So there were injuries that she could finally escape from. And for Dadoo, the elderly man, who always paid more attention to the street-side jokes and conversations and the poetry and the laughter of the city, he felt that he would be diminished. There would be a version of himself

• 20:00Speaker 02

  which he would leave behind in his hometown. It would not go along with him. So there was immigration. There's pride in it, but there's also a wound. There's also a wound which never heals and...

• 20:17Oprah Winfrey?

  The wound of having to leave your country that you love.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 20:21Oprah Winfrey?

  I remember when I called you and you were still so shocked, telling you that I was confused as to why Ma was lying to her husband, even though... Were you all confused too? Why was she lying even though they faced disaster after disaster? And so many obstacles. And you told me

• 20:46Speaker 02

  that... Okay, who here in this room currently lives far away from home, from where you grew up? Yes, okay. So I think that you will understand that feeling when you live far away from your parents, that when you speak to them on the phone, you have to protect them. You cannot let them worry about you. That is your gift of love to them. I am okay. Everything is okay. And I wanted to talk about that kind of loving lie through Ma and her relationship with her husband. He's so far away. He's in Michigan. She's in Kolkata.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  There is nothing he can do. But what she can do for him is she can protect him. You're not convinced?

• 21:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Not one bit. You know what I think? I think it must be a cultural thing. I think it must be a part of your culture that that's what you do is to protect your parents. Because my culture says, "Help."

• 22:00Oprah Winfrey?

  "Help me now. What can you do to get me out of this?" That's the culture I'm coming from.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 22:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Anybody else come from that culture? But I hear what you're saying. But I don't get it. I mean, even at the end, which I'm not gonna... Even the end, the last time she had an opportunity, she didn't. And is she trying to protect him then? Or is she gonna wait till she gets home to tell him? What?

• 22:33Oprah Winfrey?

  I mean, was she still trying to protect him? Or is... I thought, well, is she still trying to protect him? Or is she just now so accustomed to not telling him the truth that...

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Right. She is too deep in the story that she has fabricated, that things are OK. And in that moment, which I won't give away, she decides that she has to continue doing that for him. That is the form in which she gives him love from so far away.

• 23:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 23:06Oprah Winfrey?

  I think you did such a masterful job, really, of allowing us to see the characters as both guardians and thieves. I saw both of them as guardian and thieves. Did you all too? At first, I thought there was gonna be a guardian, and then there's a thief. And then I thought, both are guardians in their own way, and both are thieves. Is this how you see human nature? Because at first, I wanted Boomba. I was like, sick of him.

• 23:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Very sick of Boomba. And then, I think, over time, we changed, right, Tonda?

• 23:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was so sick of him. Oh, my gosh, I was sick of him. Then I was like, oh, wait. He's just a little boy. He's a guardian. He's looking out for these people.

• 23:51Oprah Winfrey?

  He's a guardian too. And so you did this on purpose, obviously.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Yes, that's such a beautiful question and a beautiful reading. Yes, I was interested in how there are no villains and there are no saints. You know? Within each of us, there is the impulse to protect and love. And there is that capacity to harm others if we need to for the people that we love, I think. That's one of the questions that I started out with is, would I do this? Would you do this? You know, where would your, where would the borders of your moral self be? And what would you do if you felt like

• 24:37Speaker 02

  your love was pushing you up against those borders?

• 24:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, because that moment in the book where we get to understand why the thief does what he does. Yes. Here's what you say about Boomba on page 87. "But pity was not a relationship. It was the rejection of a relationship." "Boomba vowed he would not make a living through pity, like his mother. Planting saplings until a million were in the soil, he would find freedom in his work." What does Boomba represent to you?

• 25:07Speaker 02

  I wanted to explore the reality of two kinds of guardians. One who has resources, is pretty assured of safety to come, and one who is really struggling. So Boomba is a villager. He's a young man. He is struggling to find a foothold in the city. And he wants to protect his younger brother. He adores this little kid.

• 25:35Oprah Winfrey?

  Which makes him a guardian.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. And he will do anything for this little kid.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  And he wants to come to this city and-

• 25:46Oprah Winfrey?

  But he also wants to impress his parents, too. He also wants to be the man and wants to be able to say, which I think is also cultural, very cultural.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, he has made a mistake, which I will not get into, but he feels that being in the city alone is his chance to address that mistake, to fix what he did.

• 26:06Oprah Winfrey?

  A big thank you for joining Oprah's Book Club, presented by Starbucks. Our conversation continues when we come back.

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• 26:43Oprah Winfrey?

  We're back in New York City at a cozy Starbucks cafe with Mekah Majumdar and a live audience of readers. Her new book, A Guardian and a Thief, sparks such a thoughtful conversation. Where's Floren? You're Floren. Okay. Hi.

• 27:00Speaker 04

  I have to tell you that the passage on page 147 really, really connected with me, where you say, "No, Boomba was no monster. All Boomba was was a man whose moral compass went in toward north of his own family." Wasn't that the most ordinary thing in the world? And so I guess my question to you is, you know, what did you hope that this story would reveal about human nature under pressure?

• 27:28Speaker 02

  I love that question. Thank you. I think that the project of all fiction is to reveal something about human nature under pressure.

• 27:40Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  And in this book, I wanted to focus on a moment at the edge where something is about to change. You don't quite know in what direction that change will occur. And that moment of enormous pressure on these characters is going to show us, I think, how we will operate when we are in situations of crisis, when we are in unstable times and unstable situations. Who will we become? Are we our truest selves now in this moment of peace and comfort and abundance? Or is there a truer self hiding within us,

• 28:25Speaker 02

  which will be revealed in a moment of scarcity and crisis?

• 28:31Oprah Winfrey?

  That's a good thought. Will you be able to hold on to the center of what you call your moral compass or your values and your standards in the time of great crisis or famine or disaster or, you know?

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 28:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Will you be challenged? Yeah.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Where's Shannon? Shannon, where are you? Yeah.

• 28:52Speaker 04

  Hi. So Miga, I smiled every time Dadoo showed up on my page. He really resonated with me in the sense that he seemed to expect the best of his neighbors in the community. And it really, really resonated with me because it reminded me of my own mother. My mom grew up not in Kolkata, but in Georgiana, Alabama, in the 50s. And she talks a lot about how community was everything and how society was ordered in institutions of community, churches and unions and the family. And nowadays, you know, we think about the self and the individual. We take selfies. And I was curious from you, you know, with the generational shift between Ma and Dadoo, did you mean to have a commentary about modern society

• 29:35Speaker 04

  and the way we think about ourself and the collective, as you beautifully put it?

• 29:40Speaker 02

  That's a beautiful question. Yes, you know, I wanted the reader to be invited into the city and to see how it is not only a place of problems, but through the secondary characters, there's a barber on the street, there's a rickshaw driver, there's a person playing the flute, there's a painter. Through all of these secondary characters, I wanted to show how vibrant this community is. This is a place of real networks and connections where people rely on each other, make claims on each other, depend on each other. And at the same time,

• 30:23Speaker 02

  in modern society, we also live under systems which do not serve us. So if you think about the characters, how they go somewhere for help initially, and they find that they are on their own.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  I wanted to think about both sides of that, the love and the moments in which you realize, oh, this system is not made for me.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  It's such a huge theme, and it's a backdrop of the whole book, the wealth and benevolence in that dinner without setting or giving away too much, with such a moment of wild contrast and the choices. So what were you getting at? Your intentions throughout the book were so clear.

• 31:12Oprah Winfrey?

  The benevolent billionaire lady.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  That's a great question.

• 31:16Oprah Winfrey?

  That is a great question.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  I think a lot about class. I grew up in Kolkata, which is very stratified. I went to school, and from the school bus, I would see little kids who were not going to school. They were by the roadside washing dishes or sleeping at a bus stop. And I was aware of class very early. So in this book, I really wanted to think about, well, in climate crisis, how are the different classes going to respond to this? What are we going to do with different

• 32:00Speaker 02

  levels of resources? What is generosity going to look like? What is gratitude going to look like when people have an opportunity to seize more?

• 32:13Speaker 02

  How will they take that moment?

• 32:17Speaker 02

  I don't know that I have the answers, but you brought up the question, and that's the question I had as well.

• 32:23Oprah Winfrey?

  And so this woman, who's very wealthy, her way of doing it is to bring all the children and to feed the children. When Booba goes, this is a question I had. When Booba goes.

• 32:35Speaker 05

  Why did he drag poor Misty along with him?

• 32:37Oprah Winfrey?

  Why did he drag Misty? Did he know he had to have Misty?

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Or he couldn't get in?

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Yes, he needed to have a child to get in. The feast was for children with their guardians. So he needed a child to gain access. Initially, he thinks that he's going to kind of scoop her portion into a container for him for later. But he goes there and he sees her hunger. He sees that she needs help with cutting up pieces or peeling something and portioning something. And he doesn't have the heart to take the food away from her. He helps her eat. And I wanted that to be a moment of such great contradiction, too. Here's this person who is capable of doing

• 33:29Speaker 02

  really harmful things, but in the face of a child who is hungry and needs help with her food, he is unable to do anything but help.

• 33:37Oprah Winfrey?

  So the wealthy woman who does this, is she really using her money to the greatest advantage? Or is she doing this out of her own, to make her own self look good?

• 33:51Speaker 02

  That's a great question.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  That's a great question.

• 33:57Oprah Winfrey?

  That I'm supposed to answer and not you?

• 34:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  It's probably a little bit of both. It's probably a person who does want to help, has the resources to help, and is very aware of how it looks and how it makes her look and how it sets her up to benefit in the future to show loyalty to this city.

• 34:23Oprah Winfrey?

  Got it. Understood. Yeah. It's both.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:27Oprah Winfrey?

  It's both. You write on page 128 about hope. You say, "Hope for the future was no shy bloom." I just love that, "No shy bloom." Where'd you come up with that? Anyway, "Hope for the Future" was no shy bloom, but a blood-maddened creature, fanged and toothed, with its own knowledge of history's hostilities and the cages of the present. Hope wasn't soft or tender. It was mean, it snarled, it fought, it deceived. On this day, hope lived in the delivery of gold to a man who might be a scammer. And perhaps, hope lived also in opening the doors to a thief. I just, I don't know how you came up

• 35:10Oprah Winfrey?

  to see hope in this way. Almost, that's the opposite of how we normally view hope, is not gnarled, gnarled and fanged. What was going on that day?

• 35:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Make up?

• 35:27Speaker 02

  When I was reading about climate change, I encountered a lot of declarations of hope. We must be hopeful. And the supposition was always that hope is pure and noble and unassailable. And I started thinking about, well, what happens if the manifestation of hope is vicious and is harmful? Think of these characters who are parents and guardians, who are trying to protect their kids. And everything they do comes from a place of hope. But it is not a place of collective hope. It's a place of individual hope.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  Is that still a hope that we can be proud of? Is that still a hope that we will worship? I don't know, but the book for me...

• 36:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, that's so goo-- you're so smart.

• 36:24Oprah Winfrey?

  That, that just gave me little tingles on my arm. That's really, that's right. Your individual hope doesn't mean it's hopeful for everyone else.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:33Oprah Winfrey?

  And, and, and did you all find this to be true? That you're thinking about what you would do in this, in a similar circumstance? And I think no matter what you think you would do in the actual moment, you, you don't know until the actual moment comes. Because we all think that we will be able to hold on to our moral center.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 36:53Oprah Winfrey?

  I think I wouldn't find a reason to be a thief, but... Who knows? Who knows? That's what you're posing in this in this beautiful, beautifully-written novel. So I think the circumstances are so dire that some of the characters, as we know, resort to cruelty, like when Dadoo steals the orange from a little boy. I don't know if that's cruel as much as it's just like so sad and pathetic. And something we all, as I was saying, we imagine you would never, ever do that. What was it like for you to lead these characters down the path that they chose? Or you chose for them?

• 37:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Dadoo was surprised at himself at taking that orange.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  Yes, that moment, Dadoo, the grandfather, stole an orange from another child for his own grandchild. And but there was something in him which saw his own grandchild in that stranger's child, too. He felt moved when the child pleaded with him, "I was responsible for that orange. I put it down for one minute. Please give it back to me." So he hasn't completely lost who he is. This is not coming from a place of being cold-hearted. But coming back to your question of leading the characters here,

• 38:26Speaker 02

  I love thinking of fiction as a way to ask questions. And I want to ask questions with as much vigor and intricacy and complexity as possible. So in order to ask that question of how will we live with ourselves when our love comes up against our moral selves? To ask that question, I had to push these characters into frightening, alarming situations where they helped me think through that question and they helped me stay with it.

• 39:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Are you pushing them? Or are they guiding you? I've heard authors say both. So are you pushing them? Or are they guiding you? And do the characters come and sort of live in the space with you for a while?

• 39:18Speaker 02

  That's a beautiful question.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  For the first, I wrote this book over six years. I would say for the first half of those six years, it was the consciousness of the book leading me. It was the characters telling me what is truthful and what needs to happen. And that was a time of me narrating the book to myself. And when I knew what the story would be, then it changed. And it became, for me, more about inviting the reader in. How can I bring another person into this world? How can I encourage them to feel what I feel? And then I feel like I was leading the characters a little bit more.

• 40:06Oprah Winfrey?

  You were leading the characters?

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:09Oprah Winfrey?

  Good job. Good job. Where's Dimpna? Dimpna?

• 40:13Speaker 04

  Here. Hi. To me, the story really spoke to the ideas of fierce love and unrelenting hope. And so, Mika, I wonder,

• 40:28Speaker 04

  you know, your writing is just so beautiful and lyrical, but yet you left a lot of things kind of not neatly tied up. And so, I felt like I had to sit in this discomfort while I was contemplating, you know, these unexpected things that occur in life in all of its complexities. How does that come to you as you sit to write?

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Fiction helps me think about those contradictions and that space of unease and discomfort, where you understand that there are so many contradictions in our lives, you know? There is the ferocity of love, and there is our ethical obligations and our kind of moral sense of who we are. And fiction becomes then a space to sit with those contradictions, to understand that the truth is not in this answer or that answer, but in that space where nothing can be resolved. And you live with that crowd of unresolved questions,

• 41:39Speaker 02

  but you but you live with them while acknowledging them. And that acknowledgement, that space of being truthful, that they exist, these are contradictions. This is how I live. That space feels very fruitful for fiction.

• 41:58Oprah Winfrey?

  You know, my heart dropped after this line when Ma was dialing. She says, Ma dialed again and again while America slipped through her fingers. You all remember that? Can you talk about this idea of longing for something so desperately and coming so close? And the idea of you might lose it?

• 42:23Speaker 02

  The emotions that I was drawing on actually came, I don't think I've ever really talked about this, but I got into Harvard from India. And I was so excited, over the moon. I went to the consulate for my visa interview. And the consular officer said, you are not eligible for a visa because you're getting so much financial aid. And I had that moment of America slipping through my fingers. I thought, I worked so hard. I got into this dream school. And now I'm not going to be able to go because I'm not going to get a visa.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  And I stood there before her completely powerless. There was nothing I could do. It was her decision to grant me the visa or not. And I stood there before her. And she did something else with the paperwork. She looked at it again. And somehow she changed her mind. And she decided to grant me the visa so I could come here and study. But that moment of you work so hard for something and somebody else's decision, something else which is a factor completely outside your control can't take it away from you. I think it shows. Up in our lives in many different ways.

• 43:43Oprah Winfrey?

  And you then use that moment in this story that is fiction. So Ma and Boomba's lives are forever intertwined. The decisions that they make change the course of the other's life. And I'm not going to spoil it for you, but oh my gosh, is this book worth reading for just that ending? Heart-stopping ending. Did you know the ending from the start? Or did the ending reveal itself to you as you wrote it?

• 44:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Look at Tondo sitting up. Let's see what that is.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  I want to know what was going on.

• 44:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Did you know the ending from the start? Did you know how this was going to end?

• 44:25Speaker 02

  For a while, I was working with a completely different plot. So for a while, no, I thought the end would be very different. The characters were very different. But when I became a mom and then became more interested in Ma and I found the true shape of this book, then yes, I did find this ending. And I feel that some writers kind of work their way through a book and they get to the ending when the ending presents itself. But I need to know what that final emotional note is going to be because it helps me orient the whole book toward that moment.

• 45:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Weren't you shocked?

• 45:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Weren't you shocked at your own thoughts?

• 45:16Oprah Winfrey?

  About this? I mean, weren't you shocked?

• 45:21Speaker 02

  I was sad.

• 45:23Oprah Winfrey?

  I was sad too. I could start crying right now. I could start crying right now.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  I was sad.

• 45:30Oprah Winfrey?

  But weren't you shocked? Did you say, whoa, let me sit down for a moment?

• 45:36Speaker 02

  It felt inevitable to me.

• 45:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  I felt that it had to happen this way. That was the most truthful place for the story to go.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  And once something about the story reveals itself as inevitable and truthful to you, you kind of feel like you have to obey it.

• 46:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Did y'all think that was the most truthful place to go? Really?

• 46:07Oprah Winfrey?

  I, yeah, well, I admire your courage in ending it that way. I do, I do, I do. Thank you for being a part of Oprah's Book Club, presented by Starbucks. We'll be back in a moment with more of my conversation with Megha Majumdar.

• 46:21Speaker 07

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• 46:51Oprah Winfrey?

  Welcome back, fellow book club lovers. If you're enjoying our conversation, I hope you'll share this episode with somebody who loves to read as much as we do. Anybody else have any questions before we go? Yes, yes.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  The reason I wanted to ask this is because my favorite passage, I feel that you touched on when you said about fiction being exploring human nature under intense pressure. You said, in the scene where Mars staring at the wall, I won't say what had just happened, but she said, she described the pencil line on a wall as being a fissure between continental plates. And I thought that was like the perfect metaphor for the whole book because it sort of spoke to the fragility of life, love, our planet, but also the friction between truth and deception, love and loss, and the belief in the reality of climate change or not. And earlier in the book, you'd written, "Lies were the lifeblood of the world."

• 47:49Speaker 02

  So I kind of was intrigued to your thoughts about the ways in which love and lies can be both protective and destructive for the characters in the book.

• 47:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Good question, sir.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  That's a great question. I think a lot about how, I think we were all taught as kids, be honest, tell the truth. This is what will get you far. This is what is rewarded. And then we grow up and we see that the people in power do not live that way at all. The people who triumph in our society, the ones who consolidate power.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  Are not the people who are telling the truth and serving others. And I think a lot about how do we live with that contradiction? What does it mean then to be an honest person? What do you gain from being honest? Or is it completely the wrong way to think about gain in relation to honesty? Does it give you something greater and more truthful to yourself? So I don't know that I have found any answers, but these are the questions that intrigue me.

• 49:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Were you this way in the fifth grade?

• 49:08Oprah Winfrey?

  You know, because I think we all just become more of ourselves. I mean, so I was Miss Talky Talk in the in the fifth grade. People would say, oh, here comes that talking girl, that preaching girl. So were you this way? Were you this thoughtful? Were you this like?

• 49:21Speaker 02

  I was a quiet kid who loved to read. I loved reading Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys and Sherlock Holmes. I read a lot of mysteries. So I was this quiet kid who studied hard and read a lot of books.

• 49:41Oprah Winfrey?

  And wanted to be a writer or not?

• 49:43Speaker 02

  I loved writing. I would always get sent as a representative of the school to essay competitions and creative writing competitions. But I don't think I knew that you could write full time and that could be the way for you to live your life. I don't think I really knew that. But writing, you know, it was a way for me to play at first and it stayed a way for me to play for a long time until I realized, well, writing is a way for me to access something bigger than my own life.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  You know, it is so easy, especially now with with two kids, to have a life where my brain is completely consumed by the logistics of my life. You know, preschool and meals and what do we need to buy?

• 50:38Oprah Winfrey?

  That's why when I called you, it was so out of the context of your life.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 50:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Didn't believe it was true. And you said, what a wild thing to happen in a day.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. What a wild.

• 50:53Oprah Winfrey?

  In the day.

• 50:56Oprah Winfrey?

  I guess that was a wild thing that happened in a day.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  Exactly, Oprah. It was a Saturday. And I think, you know, I was trying to make sure my son doesn't watch more than one hour of cartoons or something like that. And here was this phone call. It was completely wild. But yeah, your brain can get so consumed by our immediate concerns and that becomes life. And once you think about, well, that's not all there is to my life. I want to think about bigger questions. I want to think about beauty and joy and morals. What is the right way to live? I want to think about all of these questions, which are not pressing in my everyday.

• 51:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  But at the end of my life, when I look back on my life, I want to know that I sat with these questions. I asked these questions. And writing is a way to ask those questions.

• 51:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, a way to ask them and for you to beautifully answer them, as you've done in A Guardian and a Thief. Thank you, Mika.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Oprah. This is a dream. Thank you all so much.

• 52:03Oprah Winfrey?

  This is an extraordinary story, you all, I'm telling you. It stayed with me and I know readers are going to be thinking, and what will you be thinking about it? For a long time, it lives with you. Thank you, audience, for all of your thoughtful questions and for joining me in our happy place here, where I get to do one of those things I love the most, that is read fantastic books like yours and then talk with people who also are my people, who love to read as much as I do. And I just wanted you all to know, A Guardian and a Thief is available now wherever you buy your books, wherever books are sold. And we want to thank our phenomenal partners here at Starbucks for supporting the podcast and bringing our community of book lovers together. You can get your copy of A Guardian and a Thief, grab a friend, head to your neighborhood

• 52:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Starbucks cafe and have that banana cream matcha. It's going to turn your day into something, something that's really wild.

• 52:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Go well, everybody.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Oprah.