Fiction debut depicts Desis in med school

In A Pre-Med(itated) Murder, Neena Sundar is a third-year medical student and an India-born American who was told at birth that she was destined to become a doctor. As she enters a surgical rotation, however, she discovers that there’s a lot more going on at the hospital than meets the eye. 

Neena’s story, in large part, is the story of the book’s author, Niru Mohandas (except for the murder mystery, of course). Mohandas, a pediatrician with a successful practice in Plainsboro and a lifelong fan of cozy mysteries, simply challenged herself to write a story one day and kept going until she was done. 

Her book is more than a page-turning mystery with enough passion, flirtation, and who-done-it suspense to keep you hooked: It’s also an honest depiction of what it was like for Desis to enter the medical field in the United States, often as the only or one of a few South Asians in the room. They were hazed, abused, challenged, and forced to demonstrate their grit to persevere. 

With a light touch, Mohandas captures the lived experience of many early immigrants to New Jersey, back before our community was so large and med schools filled up with our rank.

In an interview with Central Desi, Mohandas shares how she went from doctor to fiction writer. Her responses have been edited and condensed.

How did you start writing fiction?

Niru: I've been reading cozy mysteries since I was about 12 — voraciously. I was a total bookworm. About 14 years ago, I was reading this series, and I read the third book in this series, and it was really bad. I was like kicking myself, like, “Why did you read this?” It was so bad. And this idea of a good story, starting with the opening, came, and I just dashed off a chapter. I had never written anything before. I showed it to my husband, who said, “This is funny. This is cute. You should keep going.”

Then life kind of got in the way. The next 10 years, I had a busy practice and had two young kids. Only about two years ago, I went part time, and I found it again when I was on vacation. I started writing, and it was just so much fun. It made me laugh. I was cracking up writing silly things, and then it just became kind of a challenge: Can I finish this story?

You just wrote it? You didn't take writing workshops or study fiction? I guess you had been studying fiction in a way.

Niru: My whole life. I realized a few years ago that it made my chores become so much easier if I was listening to something fun. So, I started listening to audio books, and I just started analyzing my favorite cozy mysteries, you know, what's going on in them? How do different characters relate to others? How there's more than one theme running through the story. And then I just started kind of imitating what I like. 

How did you end up getting it published? 

Niru: One of my childhood friends is a teacher who had published a bunch of children's novels. I called her, and then she introduced me to the CEO of Mascot Books, who happens to be an Indian guy, Naren Aryal. He answered an email on a Saturday or Sunday and said, send me the first three chapters.

Are you writing another one?

Niru: I’m 50% done with book number two. So the first one is July, one month of surgical rotation in a fancy private hospital, which is exactly what I did 30 years ago. And my second month was at the VA, which was a totally different vibe, right? Government, low budget, low everything. So the second book is an infectious disease mystery about that.

I wonder if we can talk about your personal trajectory as a doctor. What's your story in terms of going to medical school? Did you have any ambitions of wanting to be a writer? Were you forced to go to med school?

Niru: A lot of this book is autobiographical. Neena’s birth story is my story. There was a man named Mr. Das who made a prediction that I would become a doctor. I was always told that, so I always wanted to be a doctor. I loved kids and always wanted to be a pediatrician. Everything is right there in the story. I was definitely not forced, not that I got any pushback from my South Asian parents. They did whatever they could to make that happen. 

Now that you are writing, how does that make you reflect on the career that you chose?

Niru: I think 30 years ago, if I said I wanted to be a writer, my parents would have been flipping out. Or, they would have just tried to marry me to a doctor. (Laughs)

There was always that option.

Niru: There was always that option. But they were thrilled that I was bright enough and ambitious enough. My dad always called me the ideal immigrant child who took the opportunities given. I have never written fiction. The last time was probably eighth grade.

So was it hard?

Niru: It was so much fun. I'm a very slow writer, and to write one page takes me two to three hours. One of my friends from college went on to be an English major. I connected with her on Facebook, and I told her about the story. She said, “You should send it to me.” I was really reluctant. I hadn't shown it to anyone but my husband. So I did send it to my friend, and it was an important lesson, because when she edited it, she redlined every single line. It came back with a million different edits. 

At first I was appalled, and I said, “Okay, she knows more than I do. Let me take it seriously.” I spent days, hours, going page by page through the document. I was so discouraged, and I didn't write for months. I was like, “If she thinks it's this bad, what's the point?”

I stopped for months, and then I started to feel kind of angry. I was having so much fun, and she ruined it for me. This is not about me trying to be some famous author. I was just having fun. So I chose to ignore her. And then I just went for it. I said, “Just have fun and just do it.”

Let’s talk about the story. You said it draws on your own experiences as a medical student. I guess I never considered how the interpersonal drama would shape that experience. 

Niru: I was one of the youngest in my medical school class. I had just turned 21, and the average age was about 28. We had people who had been engineers, pharmacists, nurses — people who were married and had kids. I had friends who were from all different socioeconomic backgrounds. I had met this woman who grew up in New Jersey, went to Rutgers, and I was the first Indian person she ever met. People's experiences were very different.

I really appreciated the variety of Desi characters you wrote, and that you made a Desi man the love interest. That feels groundbreaking. When you were writing, did you think about how you were depicting the Desi characters?

Niru: With Neena, I just told that first-generation story. You’re kind of awkward, trying to fit in. The thing with the powdered donuts, [when Neena is asked] did you kiss a white boy, that happened to me. You couldn’t pay me to be 12 again. I put that in on purpose, to show how difficult it was to be a brown person in, you know, a world where there weren't that many. I went to South Brunswick High School, and there were maybe 12 to 15 South Asian kids there. 

I am mostly in touch with a lot of them still, and a lot of them were still local, and I was taking care of their children, which was so much fun for me

It was interesting to me how Neena is being hazed, like when she’s forced to hold a leg during a surgery when it was unnecessary. But she just rolls it off.

Niru: I’m a suck-it-up kind of person. Just keep going until I can't do it anymore. Probably there was no way I was gonna let some jerk, you know, tell me I couldn't do something, or that I wasn't going to do my best.

Ambreen Ali is a longtime journalist and the founding editor of Central Desi.

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