When Sheena Iyengar went to Spain, people sometimes came up and asked her for a lottery ticket. “Because that is what blind people do in Spain,” she explains. “They sell lottery tickets. And when I was in Japan, random people would come up to me and take my hands and start putting them on their backs or on their necks because they expect blind people to perform magical massages.”

These people would have been stunned to learn that though Iyengar is blind, she is a noted researcher, a professor at Columbia and the author of a critically acclaimed book ‘The Art of Choosing’, in which she dissects and analyzes choice – the ability one has to take on destiny – or even competing brands of cola.

In life, how much can you choose and how much is pre-destined? Can you fight circumstances or is your role pre-ordained?And if you have the power of choice, how do you choose wisely?

A gossamer web of stories ensnares the reader in ‘One Amazing Thing,’ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s new novel, taking you into distant lands, hidden places in the heart and into the hidden strengths people have.

Nine very different people drawn by chance or luck or destiny into the same spot just as disaster strikes. They are all gathered for obtaining visas to India in the basement of the Indian consulate in an unnamed American city when a powerful earthquake strikes. ALSO LISTEN TO A LIVE INTERVIEW WITH CHITRA DIVAKARUNI

How many Indias are there?

As many as the eyes that perceive it.

Each visitor sees a different India, bringing in their own experiences to the encounter. British photographer Clive Limpkin has a lively new book ‘India Exposed: the Sub-Continent A-Z’ which shows the results of his brush with India. His camera, however, returns time and again to what really moves him: the human connection. As he writes: “When friends ask for one good reason to visit, I offer them a billion – it’s the people.”

When the writer Gita Mehta was growing up in Orissa, a small ancient image of Ganesha was unearthed in a mound of dirt as the foundations of their family home were being laid. “I’ve always kept the Ganesha which came out of my parents’ home,” confided Mehta when I interviewed her once in New York. “That is the one image that goes with me wherever I go. He came out of the Indian soil so to me he’s like an umbilical cord that connects me to India. So it doesn’t matter where I live – he is my India.”

Yes, all the high drama, the tall tales of tall cities like Bombay and New York started on a narrow balcony on a narrow street in Bada Bazaar in an old and densely packed part of Calcutta.

In recent days Dr. Abraham Verghese has been boarding jets at breakneck speed, shuttling between countless cities and towns in North America, not for medical conferences or research but for that quintessential ritual of an author’s life – the book tour…

She has put into words what millions of immigrants would find hard to articulate, especially the dilemmas faced by women who move from the confines and traditions of home into the brave new universe outside.

Listening to my old tape, I found there were intriguing glimpses of what moves both mother and daughter and the perspectives on the world they share, the values that help them create these very real, very imaginary worlds.

‘Midnight’s Children’ freed other young emerging Indian writers to be bold and unleash the Story Waters and be accepted on their own terms by the west.

With deft, intricate brush-strokes Jhumpa Lahiri creates characters that are so real you could swear you recognize them, you know them, or at least people like them.