yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Aimless in Banaras: Wanderings in India’s Holiest City Bishwanath Ghosh Tranquebar, 2019 ISBN 9789389152005 Thanks are due to the team at First Post . Couple of months ago, as I discussed Banaras with a friend, she referred to its famed Ganga Jamni tehzeeb . The violence and acrimony we come across today is not what the place stood for, she added. Hatred, I agreed with her, was not what the town represented. However, I argued that the town was also not only about love and harmony, and that people existed between the two extremes. This other side of the story, in sync with society’s shying away from difficult topics attitude, is seldom discussed. Hatred.   During school years, I used to accompany mumi to her parents’ place each summer. There, at the heart of the town, it seemed that all the reverence was reserved for the sounds emerging from the temple. The calls from masjid were frowned upon, and decidedly so. While the Pandit was suffixed with...

Jaipur Journals: A Love Letter to the Greatest Literary Show on Earth  Namita Gokhale Penguin Viking 2020 ISBN: 9780670093557 During the recent trip to Delhi as we walked in Connaught Place I told my friend of 2 instances that I had come across amidst its inviting environs. These included young people, dressed for the purpose, dancing to music, on an early morning. I stay in Delhi but am yet to come across such a happening Connaught Place she responded. Adding, I only see what I always see here. I then told her what I recalled William Darlymple (of The City of Djinns fame) say “ I now do not now notice aspects of Delhi like I used to ”. Manu Joseph too had mentioned, “ Only outsiders can notice certain aspects about a place ”. Both these lines I had come across about 4 years ago at Jaipur; the only time I attended the Jaipur Literature Festival or JLF. Besides getting to know of authors I was yet to read, to listen to those I was familiar with, being amids...