Sari of the Gods

Chandra brings a light touch and an empathetic grasp of immigrants' dilemmas to these compelling tales of Indian-Americans and Indians. The 19 stories are divided into three sections. ""Here"" deals mostly with new or recent arrivals from India. These include a starry-eyed young discount-store cashier in Kansas dreaming of big bucks, a mentally disturbed homesick man who stabs a life-size female doll with scissors and a guilt-ridden housewife in New York who dreams of being immolated on a funeral pyre after her white dinner guests spill brandy on her beloved wedding sari. In ""Dot Busters,"" the first section's best story, an Indian-American couple are assaulted by a gang of white racist thugs; the husband later dies and the widow copes with single motherhood and has a lesbian affair. The old-fashioned stories of the middle section, ""There,"" set in agrarian southern India during the 1950s and '60s, turn a droll eye on swamis, yogis, local politicians and petty officials, all of whom take advantage of ordinary people's fatalism and ignorance. ""Neither Here Nor There,"" the final section, features delicious, razor-sharp stories set in the present about Indian-Americans who go back to India but discover they can't readily adjust to its backwardness and xenophobia. Chandra, a 1993 Pulitzer nominee for poetry (Family of Mirrors), brings a searchingly candid, nimble realism to these acute stories about Indians looking to understand what it means to be home. (Apr.)