India, meet Priyanka; Priyanka, meet India!
Yes! That pretty much sums up the book for me! It’s like
seeing India in a light you haven’t seen before.
The only reason I actually decided to read this book was to
test waters. I wanted to see if I really found it interesting to read about history
and geography. For someone whose staple book diet consists of an overdose of
murder mystery, medical and legal thrillers, love stories, poetry, and
philosophy; and consciously steers clear of self-help non-fiction; this book
was clearly unchartered territory!
And I’m glad it didn’t disappoint! But if you’re looking for
a breezy, fun read, this is not the one you want.
This book is a well-researched account of history, from the
perspective of geography.
Divided into 8 sections which include genetics, an analysis
of the Harappan civilizations and RigVeda era, the emergence of the lion’s
importance, details of the merchants, stories of foreign travellers, Vasco Da
Gama’s travels and early mapping of India, period of India’s freedom struggle,
and India post-independence; this book throws up some interesting stories and
perspectives. It’s not like we haven’t read about all of these before, but at
least for me, I had never thought of it from a point of view of geography before.
As I read the book, almost all the names jumped at me owing
to the familiarity of having read them in History and Geography textbooks. But back
then, it was 2 marks, 4 points, end of story!
So this time it was actually nice to go back and read them strung
together in a manner so easy to understand.
And Kudos to the author’s thorough research; the book does
have so many details that you can’t really understand it completely without
having to re-read or go back to chapters you’ve not read too attentively. That’s
my only complaint. It made the experience a little text-bookish for me. But I
guess that’s the case with any kind of serious reading.
Without getting into details of the chapter, I thoroughly
enjoyed the chapter on genetics. It left me with a ‘we-are-all-so-connected-to-each-other-why-the-hell-do-we-fight’
sort of feeling.
It was also nice to have logical, factual answers to why
Mallus have relatives in the Gulf, why Parsis speak Gujarati, and others. I was
also quite intrigued by the fact that the flow of words between Tamil and
Sanskrit was two-way. I had always assumed that the common words were a result
of Sanskrit words being incorporated into Tamil. Interesting to note that even
Sanskrit, which is considered the mother of all Indian languages at least;
borrowed words from Sangham literature!
The writing style is very conversational and easy-to-read.
While the ideas, facts, and figures are quite complex, they never make the book
a drudge to read.
It's a huge plus that the author has visited quite a few of the places that he writes about. because, the juxtapositions of the place as it is today with how the author imagines it to have been in the times he writes about make for very pleasant reading.
I quote some examples here:
"As I stand on the edge of the Ghaggar river in Haryana, I imagine the Bharata tribesmen fording the river on their way to the great battle. As described in the Rig Veda, the warriors would have been dressed in white robes, each with his long hair tied in a knot on his head. There would have been horses neighing, bronze weapons shining in the sun and perhaps the rhythmic sound of sage Vashishtha's disciples chanting hymns to the gods. The Saraswati was a sizeable river then, not the stream I see before me. Perhaps there would have been rafts ferrying men and supplies across the river. As I stand watching the river, a few soldiers from the nearby army camp wade knee-deep through the Ghaggar. They are Sikh soldiers, their hair knotted on top of their heads.There are no Vedic chants, but there is the soft rhythm of a diesel water-pump running in a farm somewhere."
"Sitting in the toddy-shop, I watch modern ships ply in the harbour. i imagine myself as Hippalus, the ancient Greek mariner, enjoying his first drink after months at sea. Not far is 'Jew Town' where a tiny Jewish community lives clustered around a sixteenth-century synagogue."
These, and other similar ones, are the bits I loved!
All in all, Land of the Seven Rivers is a nice book, but not if you're reading just for fun.
While I will not say that the book has transformed my choices
or got me very enthused to go ahead and take on more reading of this kind, it
has definitely been a worthwhile read. So if you give it a try just for
the heck of it like I did, there is a good chance you won’t regret. And if the
subject really interests you, then you might regret not reading it!
0 comments:
Post a Comment