Butter Chicken in Ludhiana - Pankaj Mishra

 Written in 1995, on an offer by the publisher to the 25 year old writer to write about travels in small town India, Pankaj Mishra's book is considered one of the better travelogues as I remember. I do not have much expertise on the matter but its been years since Vinod gifted me this book and I tried reading it one and gave up because I had too many judgments and then finally, got done with it yesterday. It was quite nice reading and though I agree with Pankaj when he writes at the end that he feels embarrassed at his tone in the book, I also understand that for a 25 year old its quite an accomplishment to write this book.

He travels from Shimla, to Delhi, to Jaipur, Ajmer, Pushkar, Hapur, someplace in Punjab, Gujarat, Bangalore, Trivandrum, Kanyakumari, Kottayam (where he meets Mary Roy), Shimoga (where he delivers a lecture to a largely Kannada speaking audience), Calcutta, Varanasi, Jehanabad, Murshidabad and several such places. He travels in buses, trains, cars and the best parts of the book to me were the people he met - without doubt the medical representative he meets who reads eclectic stuff in Trivandrum being the best character. But then, all of them offer a window into India and its people, though sometimes they come across as one-dimensional caricatures. They are products of the system, and have their own dreams and ways to get by. Conversation about caste - his friend who studied in Allahabad University and was into Osho and literature  who went back to farming, the chap he meets whose grandfather killed 14 Harijans and was mentioned in the BBC which he wore as a badge, the number of people who had issues with Muslims and prejudices against them without really understanding what they were talking about, the travails of the foreign girls in Varanasi who were troubled by sex-starved locals (upkeepers of our culture), it flows nicely and gives a perspective of an India on the move.  

Quite a nice read. Now few would identify with the trains, the buses he wrote about and you realise that for a book that was written in 1995, it's almost like it was written in another era where we travelled by bullock carts. Thanks Vinod bhai!