Stumbled upon a most curious challenge the other day. A challenge that involves an activity I count as one of my Three Great Passions, reading. For the past many years now, I have been increasingly leaning towards English writing from South Asia, with an unabashed preference for both established and emerging Indian writers.
For a reviewer of books, leisure reading takes a huge beating, as by implication and force of habit, I just can’t seem to stop myself from judging. It is primarily to overcome this annoying practice that I accepted the challenge. And, to an extent, in the hope that my crowded bedside table will begin to breathe again. Which should be easy enough, for I have my bar perched at the highest level, the South Asian Guru, at ten books or more.
Since the beginning of the year I have read books by two Indian authors, Dear Agony Aunt by Aradhika Sharma and Anuja Chauhan’s Battle of Bittora. I am presently reading India: A Traveller’s Literary Companion edited by Chandrahas Choudhury. This will be followed by Lessons in Forgetting by Anita Nair. Other than these certainties, here is a projected (expected to change as soon as I post, so no gospel, this) reading list:
- Empires Of The Indus by Alice Albinia
- The Difficulty of Being Good by Gurcharan Das
- Way To Go by Upamanyu Chatterjee
- Stranger To History by Aatish Taseer
- The Emissary by Anirudha Bahal
- Jawahar Lal Nehru: Civilizing a Savage World by Nayantara Sahgal
So who’s to stop you…? Get, Set, Go.
Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu, travel enthusiast and the author of Adrift: A junket junkie in Europe is the youngest of four siblings born into an aristocratic family of Punjab. Dogged in her resistance to conform, and with parental pressure easing sufficiently over the years, she had plenty of freedom of choice. And she chose travel.
She was born in Shimla, and spent her formative years at their home, Windsor Terrace, in Kasumpti while schooling at Convent of Jesus & Mary, Chelsea. The irrepressible wanderlust in her found her changing vocations midstream and she joined Singapore International Airlines to give wing to her passion. She has travelled extensively in Asia, North America, Australia, Europe, South Africa and SE Asia; simultaneously exploring the charms within India.
When she is not travelling, she is writing about it. Over the past decade or so, she has created an impressive writing repertoire for herself: as a columnist with Hindustan Times, as a book reviewer for The Tribune and as a contributor to travel magazines in India and overseas. Her work-in-progress, the documenting of colonial heritage along the Old Hindustan-Tibet Road, is an outcome of her long-standing romance with the Himalayas.
