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Dear reader,

It has been an unsparing summer in India and many of you may have gone on vacation to cooler places to pull on those long-forgotten sweaters, breathe in crisp, mountain air, and walk down mist-covered hills. That is one reason we all travel: to escape from everyday drudgery.

But that’s not all travel is. For me, it is to experience completely different cultures, explore different cuisines, and marvel at the sheer beauty of this world. When I travel, I am often wonderstruck at how fascinating different norms and ways of living can be, at how what was once alien can quickly become familiar, and at how exchanging snippets of our lives with others can expand our minds and make us more curious, fuller beings.   

In Why We Travel, Pico Iyer says it best: “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again — to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.”

Yet, the transformative power of travel should not be taken for granted. In her book, Travels in The Other Place (Tranquebar), Pallavi Aiyar challenges the popular belief that travel automatically broadens horizons. As Sukhada Tatke notes in her review, Aiyar argues that travel becomes meaningful only when accompanied by reflection. Having lived across Asia and Europe for decades as a foreign correspondent, Aiyar writes from experience when she points out that travel is shaped by privilege — by passports, class, caste, opportunity, and luck. Not everyone has equal access to the world.

And simply crossing borders does not mean we personally grow. I have seen many Indians go abroad only to search for the best naan and sabzi, break into garba in front of unsuspecting audiences, and return with a sense that “we” are truly the best. As Tatke writes, Aiyar “illustrates how engaging with another culture requires both a desire and humility.”

Travel, then, is no magical cure for close-mindedness. As Tatke writes, “Travel is not romantic; it has its limits. It can illuminate but not replace introspection. At its best, travel offers us the opportunity to challenge what we think we know best. In a world beset by intolerance and prejudice, where mobility and hardened borders co-exist, that seemingly modest claim is much needed.” Read her review here.

Books of the week

In non fiction, we have Vasudevan Mukunth’s review of A Touch of Genius (Aleph Book Company). This book brings together, for the first time, the work of all Indian winners of the Nobel Prize. But Mukunth questions the very premise of this collection. He writes that many of them lived and worked abroad and their works were not all about Indian problems or concerns either. He also cautions against conflating Nobel recognition with broader intellectual authority, noting that a Nobel Prize acknowledges achievement in a specific field at a particular moment and does not say anything about a laureate’s wider wisdom. Read his review here.

Sweet Excess: Crafting Mishti in Bengal (Routledge) by Ishita Dey examines the industry and its history through the lens of caste, religion, science, and law. “This geography has witnessed famine and food movements, yet has never lost its passion for mishti,” she says in an interview with Anagha Maareesha. Dey says the work is based on a decade-long journey of observing sweet-making in shops in select district towns of West Bengal and the Rajshahi Division of Bangladesh.

In fiction, we have a review of the much-awaited book, Hooked (HarperCollins), by Azako Yuzuki, the author of the much-celebrated work, Butter. The book, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton, is about Eriko Shimura, a high-achieving 30-year-old businesswoman, who becomes obsessed with a blog written by a woman called Shoko. Eriko tracks down Shoko, expecting friendship on the basis of her blogposts. Their bond slowly turns into a possessive relationship. Sumana Mukherjee writes in her review, “Dark and disturbing, provocative and intriguing, spiky and uneven... Hooked looks at fractures and imbalances in picture-perfect Japanese society and is unafraid to hold it to account.”

Muddasir Ramzan’s The Man from Kashmir (Bloomsbury) is set in the 1990s and brings back to life the old Kashmir of war-torn lives. The novella follows the fortunes of two local families — one Muslim and the other Hindu. Bilal Gani writes in his review that this is a “poignant debut that captures the hidden struggles and quiet resilience of Kashmir’s people with rare empathy, emotional depth and grace.” 

Voices in the Wind, edited by Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal, is a rich selection of folktales, folklore and spirit stories from the Himalayas. Saikat Majumdar writes in his review that it is “less a book and more a museum, holding echoes of lives, communities, and places that are impossible to contain within the jacket of a book.”

Spotlight

Law is often associated with solemnity, procedure, and reason. But beneath that exterior is a history filled with eccentric personalities, judicial excesses, and moments of absurdity. Reviewing two books by Tushar Mehta — The Lawful and the Awful and The Bench, the Bar, and the Bizarre — and R.E. Megarry’s Miscellany-At-Law, Kartikey Singh’s essay explores how humour can show us the legal profession’s human side. Drawing on documented episodes from foreign courts, these books feature colourful judges, bizarre cases, judicial bullying, ghost-related litigation, and the challenges posed by AI in legal practice. 

Nightstand

I’m not reading anything as of now. 

And that’s all from me. Do write to me with suggestions, comments, and feedback to radhika.s@thehindu.co.in. Have a happy reading week!