On one of his visits to Benares, Aatish Taseer is dazzled by the sight of scholars conducting an academic conversation in fluent Sanskrit. His quest, therefore, is distinguished from the start from other search-for-self narratives by his choice of the difficult: Sanskrit, Brahmins, Benares. The last is yet another cliché in writing on India, but in Taseer’s book it is also a real place, sometimes quite unbearably so. But Taseer’s driver, from a lower caste, is asked to wash his own plate. The Twice-Born: Life and Death on the Ganges By Aatish Taseer, Fourth Estate, Rs 599

Source: The Telegraph December 21, 2018 15:22 UTC