BOOK REVIEW
India: A Journey
India: Beyond the Taj and the Raj published by UPL is an account of author Raana Haider's travel across India during a period spanning more than fifty years.
India: Beyond the Taj and the RajRaana Haider
The University Press Limited
BDT 1590.00
pp- 472 A blend of travelogue, history and reportage, India: Beyond the Taj and the Raj by Raana Haider is an attempt to discover India in her rich history and spirituality. A work of such magnitude is bound to be brief about some things, but Haider manages to accommodate important chapters of modern India's history in it. That may be just the flaw the book may have, though—a little too heavy on historical anecdotes and light on what she actually saw and experienced. She explores 28 cities and sites – from Kolkata to Udaypur— Delhi to Goa including Aligarh, Kasauli, Mamallapuram and Somnathpur—the less travelled corners of India. While the colonial legacies of bungalows, clubs, hotels, libraries, mansions, palaces are prominent in her writing, she dips into India's diverse culinary heritage and meets with literary masters Ruskin Bond, William Dalrymple and Khushwant Singh. She lived for many years in India—first in the mid 1950s while her father, a Pakistani diplomat was posted in New Delhi and then, some 50 years later with her husband, a Bangladeshi diplomat. Her book is a volume of mixed quality in many ways. She often distances herself by depending on historic writings by past writers and historians. By doing so, she becomes a mere chronicler of what others did and said about the places she visits. For example, in the chapter on Aligarh she gives four and a half pages of history lesson on the Grand Trunk Road on which she travels before she can start talking about Aligarh. This may be highly educational for history buffs but a reader looking to read a travel account as claimed in the flap of the cover may easily get bored. Whenever she does interject her own experiences and feelings into her writing, it is a welcoming breeze. For a writer with such a deep understanding of the complex tapestry that is India, Raana Haider really comes into her own in chapters on Chandigarh, Mussoorie, Meghalaya, Kasauli and Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Here she engages less in reporting on history and more in travel writing, and her talent shines powerfully. These essays alone are worth reading the book which also contains facts like Kolkata is one of the few cities in the world that has a street named after a book (Bishwakosh Lane). The beautiful poems or quotes from generations of poets and writers on India in the beginning set the tone of each chapter. For example, the chapter on Goa starts with this quote by English novelist JB Priestley: A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours. Some of her decisions while writing the book may, however, baffle the reader. Describing the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, she writes, “…This landmark building made global headlines in 2008 as the fire engulfed hotel made 'Breaking News' on television.” The 'fire' she is referring to was one of the 12 coordinated shooing and bombing attacks across Mumbai in one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in history. Such a 'mistake' is jarring and inexcusable in a book as serious as this. Also, the author's decision to ignore Indian Christianity, except briefly discussed in the chapter on Goa in the form of mentioning a couple of historical churches, is strange, especially in light of the number of pages she devotes to narrate the other traditions of India—the glorious past of the Mughals and Princes. Christians form the country's third largest religious group, the religion having taken root in the subcontinent before reaching some parts of Europe. This failure to discuss Christianity in modern India evokes a world partitioned into seemingly two separate compartments – a Judeo-Christian world that is solely western, and an India that is a colourful, eastern repository of spiritualism, wisdom and suffering. Perhaps the true spirit of her book is condensed in the concluding paragraph of the last chapter about Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual community established at Pondicherry in 1926 by Sri Aurobindo, Indian nationalist, freedom fighter and philosopher: “Here on the Coromandel coastline of eastern India, facing the Bay of Bengal lies a unique spiritual sanctuary set amidst a Tamil population that was founded by a Bengali man and furthered by a French woman and draws devotees from within India and afar.” Here she finds some solace and silence we all are looking for. All said, the period and places she covers in her book belongs to every South Asian. When she talks about the Taj, she talks about the legacy of the Mughal era. When she talks about the British legacy in India, she is creating and bringing to life a heritage which all South Asians can identify with. The book will, no doubt, encourage people from Bangladesh and other countries to travel across India. A world traveller, Raana Haider has worked as consultant and academic in London, Cairo, Tehran and Dhaka. Her publications include Gender and Development, China: Contrasting Contours and Fragrance of the Past: A Middle Eastern Itinerary.
Photo Courtesy: National Geographic
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