Reading places, reading people

I recall the words of a former colleague who marvelled at books and their ability to transport us — he was then reading The Tale of Genji and thereby living the social intricacies of ancient Japan through a piece of fiction written in the 11th century. We were having lunch at a university campus in Singapore and he could not contain his excitement. “It’s so detailed!” I never found out if this Frenchman had actually ever been to Japan, but the fact did not really matter. 

The magic operates in our ability to imagine, even the places we don’t know. Through books, we can observe the unknown, the distant, the unreachable, and in that process we also make sense of our own selves.

In other ways, it is the juxtaposition between the imaginary and our own lived experiences that either reinforces a feeling about a known place, recaptures a faded memory, or reveals a truth that we were unaware of.

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In the autumn of 2024, I was searching for a contemporary novel, quite desperately. During a long period, I went through a succession of literary disappointments and turned to older books (mostly from the early to mid 20th century). Then after a few months, I made a random online search, typed “Indian novel”, and found the author and journalist Pankaj Mishra.

I have been reading -albeit slowly- his books ever since (fiction and non-fiction); beginning with his debut novel The Romantics (1999), an unassuming story that illuminates human emotions against a backdrop of travel reverie and interwoven social injustices induced by a globalized world and conservative values. The novel touches on a few of my favourite themes: the relation between East and West, the intricacies of ‘foreignness’, the inner life of individuals, the serenity of the natural world. Perhaps the most compelling reality that is evoked in this novel and other books written by Mishra, is the equal measure of beauty and ugliness that defines our era. As a place, India embodies the coexistence of extreme opposites and everything situated in between. 

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“(…) Small scattered details were meaningless in themselves. It was only when they were seen together that a coherent picture emerged.”

I recently finished Mishra’s first commissioned book Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, travels in small town India where he presents, in the way of a vast tapestry unrolled before us, the many worlds and truths that make this world and which we may not always comprehend. And we realize that meaning resides in just knowing that such dimensions exist through their contradictions, collisions and diversity. Butter Chicken in Ludhiana is a travel book unlike any other, peppered with humour and unexpected situations or characters. 

Written in 1995, the journey is infused with a genuine atmosphere of the pre-smartphone era and also unfolds during a critical juncture where a rising Indian middle class traced new possibilities ahead while still entangled with deep-rooted traditions. People, places, beauty, ugliness, kindness, cruelty, all is captured with openness and poetry while never failing to highlight the worrisome symptoms of growing intolerance and ignorance. Thirty years have passed, and this book, with a long vantage point, finds a new relevance.