Travelling In Travelling Out : A Book of Unexpected Journeys

We travel all the time from place to place thought to thought. There

are yet other journeys that we would like to make but are unable to

that exist powerfully in the mind day after day month after month.

Until Jehangir Bejan Tata died in San Francisco in 2013 he had been

making one such journey for the last sixty-odd years when he was back

in Shanghai admiring the clean art deco lines of a home he left in 1952

but which had never left his mind. Bir Bahadur Singh haunted by a

similar longing who left Pakistan during Partition could actually make

the journey back fifty-four years later to pick up the connections from

that long past time.

In Travelling In Travelling Out: A Book of Unexpected Journeys eminent

writer Namita Gokhale puts together an eclectic collection of twentyfive

stories that take the reader on a journey that is surprising moving

and sometimes mischievous. From Advaita Kala's piece on her reaction

to an intrusive security pat-down to finding one's identity as an

immigrant in Amsterdam in an essay by Ali Sethi there is a wide range

of experiences to choose from. With contributors like M.J. Akbar

Rahul Pandita Dayanita Singh Urvashi Butalia and others among the

guides the reader can expect an unusual journey one without the fear

moreover of getting lost.