What I'm Reading

Essays on India by *draws breath* Salman Rushdie, VS Naipaul, Anita Nair, Stephen Alter, Vikram Seth, Mark Tully, Namita Gokhale, Alan Ginsberg, RK Narayan, Anees Jung, Paul Theroux, Bruce Chatwin, Vivek Nambisan and MORE MORE MORE for the greedy reader, this book of essays is almost never ending. The late great poet Dom Moreas put it together and I suppose technically it IS a book of journeys but not many places you'd actually like to visit, being violent or struck by famine or dry. Instead it's a book about understanding India through its places, what struck me the most, perhaps because it's on my mind so much these days, is even in the 70s and 80s when most of these essays were written (the book was published in 2000) the politics of Hindutva and Hindu fascism were beginning to raise their ugly head. My only complaint is my usual complaint about not enough women but this volume has a higher than average SIX essays by women writers so that's something. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #121in2021 #thepenguinbookofindianjourneys #dommoreas