{"id":10433,"date":"2014-11-17T11:11:19","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T05:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/?p=10433"},"modified":"2014-11-17T11:22:09","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T05:52:09","slug":"book-review-who-stole-my-india-amit-reddy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/book-review-who-stole-my-india-amit-reddy.html","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Who Stole My India by Amit Reddy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BookBook Title:\u00a0Who Stole My India
\nAuthor: Amit Reddy
\nPages: 453<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amit Reddy was probably born in the wrong place.\u00a0Even his mother thinks so when she says, ‘You should go away to America, You are nothing like Indian.’\u00a0As Reddy\u00a0finds it difficult to understand and live a life that his society and surroundings expect him to, and unable to\u00a0comprehend the diktat\u00a0of a Hindu Indian society,\u00a0he decides to fix the problem. The way he decides to do it is by travelling across the country to discover its soul, and perhaps discover his own soul that might\u00a0fit within an Indian context.<\/p>\n

As he puts it, “It\u2019s all so frightfully confusing, but I intend to rectify this\u00a0situation. The plan is ingenious, and quite simple. I\u2019m going to explore India like few people ever have, by taking an inordinately long journey around the country; 40,750 kilometers long, to be precise… If everything goes accordingly, by the end of this journey I hope to be the complete\u00a0Indian.”<\/p>\n

He begins from Hyderabad on Kaya–a much loved motorcycle that is usually addressed as an animate being–and rides into\u00a0nearly every Indian state.\u00a0The journey takes him through wilderness, rugged terrains, temple-towns, remote villages, mountainous landscapes, deserts and the sprawling cities. This book isn’t about those places though, but on people Reddy meets and the way of life in India as witnessed by him.<\/p>\n

Much to Reddy’s amusement, he doesn’t see the glorious India that he probably learns\u00a0about in textbooks and hears in patriotic-nationalistic discourses. He\u00a0ruminates mostly on all things that India shouldn’t have been, some of its forgettable practices from the past and flaws of the present.\u00a0Such as the subdued tribal population,\u00a0internal conflicts in the North-East, the lawlessness and still-practiced untouchability in Bihar, the unclean\u00a0Ganga in Varanasi, his difficulties with Indian Army when he tries to act privileged, on greedy touts at places of pilgrimage and repressive traditional systems–such as the sati system and suppression of homosexuality–that conflict with the modern outlook.<\/p>\n

Although less commonly encountered by him, there is some goodness that prevails in the India that Reddy is trying to discover. He finds people going out of their way to get his worn bike repaired, play gracious host without looking for any returns, or even rescue his life for negligible returns. In the middle of all this, to his surprise, he actually discovers that the government can actually work when he visit the hilly state of Sikkim.<\/p>\n

A considerable part of his journey, and hence a considerable part of the book, is also dedicated to his never-ending search of hash, an effort to procure, hoard it and hide it from the law-keepers.<\/p>\n

Unlike a regular travel book, ‘Who Stole My India’\u00a0talks more about his people-encounters than the places, their heritage and undiscovered uniqueness. This is almost like\u00a0Paul Theroux in his ‘The Great Railway Bazaar’–a genre of travel writing that has increasingly given way to intensive research and journeys of self-discovery in the recent years. While Reddy touches upon many undesirable social practices he hears about or encounters along they way, much of the related research appears shallow (perhaps owing to a large number\u00a0of topics he writes about),\u00a0perhaps merely a result of some internet searches.<\/p>\n

Although this journey too is about discovering his Indianness, more often than not, Reddy sees India through a mindset and prejudice he\u00a0may have\u00a0already had than explore its heart, feel its pulse and immerse in it. The writing style is witty, humorous and engaging, but occasionally becomes repetitive and monotonous. Yet, this is probably one one of the better travel writings to emerge from within India in recent days. I recommend reading the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book Title:\u00a0Who Stole My India Author: Amit Reddy Pages: 453 Amit Reddy was probably born in the wrong place.\u00a0Even his mother thinks so when she says, ‘You should go away to America, You are nothing like Indian.’\u00a0As Reddy\u00a0finds it difficult to understand and live a life that his society and surroundings expect him to, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[511],"class_list":["post-10433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-uncategorized","tag-book-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xrJt-2Ih","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10433"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10441,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10433\/revisions\/10441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}