I Want Everyone to Read These Books About India And Indian Culture

It’s a mix of non-fiction and fiction.It’s difficult to compress India in a few books. The country is too vast, too wide, too diverse to include all stories that will give you any deep understanding. But these are the books that I have enjoyed, or that are on my to-read list. It’s a mix of non-fiction and fiction, and though I haven’t covered all grounds, these are my top picks. Books are personal, and these are my recommendations for travelers interested in India. Go ahead and bookmark whatever you like, and if you would like something else to be included, drop a comment. Related: 10 Iconic American Beaches and the Perfect Book to Read at Each One 1 OF 8 'The Palace of Illusions' The great Hindu epic Mahabharata is revered in India. Written in Sanskrit, it’s one of the longest poems, and takes you back 4,000 years to a time when two sets of cousins fought for the kingdom of Kuru. Apart from the 18-day war, the epic narrates stories of different characters and their backgrounds, while also imparting wisdom through moral lessons. The Bhagavad Gita, which is about moral duty or karma, is part of the Mahabharata. But Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni writes The Palace of Illusions from the perspective of Panchaali or Draupadi, the wife to one set of cousins whose humiliation leads to the war.Reading Mahabharata from a woman’s lens was a novel experience as most of us have grown up listening to these tales from a man’s point of view. The same stories of heroic battles are told by a woman who paints the picture with her turmoil, her angst, and her strengths. It’s quite an interesting piece of feminist study, despite all the creative liberties Divakaruni takes, and a condensed version of the epic. 2 OF 8 'Funeral Nights' Recently, at the FENIX Migration Museum in Rotterdam, I saw a coffin shaped like a car. It is part of Ghanaian culture, where a fantastical vehicle takes people on their final journey. It’s fascinating that every culture has a distinctly personal relationship to death, and you get a glimpse of it in Funeral Nights. This novel by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih is unique. Six friends travel from Shillong to Meghalaya in northeast India for a funeral ceremony. But not just any ceremony, it’s a six-day Ka Phor Sorat (feast of the dead), an ancient rite that the Lyngngam tribe (a sub-tribe of the Khasi people) perform. The body of the elder has been preserved for nine months for this ceremony that involves many rituals, and it might be the last time that it is performed. The friends arrive days early, so to pass time, they exchange stories about life, death, heroes, myths, and religion every night. This one is a mammoth, and it gave me deep insights into a region and a people in my country that I knew nothing about. 3 OF 8 'The Inheritance of Loss' Kiran Desai won the Booker prize for this 2006 novel, and you know what that means: it’s not an easy-breezy read. Give it time, because the book will reward you. I read it slowly as many pages demanded absolute attention, sometimes twice over. The story brings you to Kalimpong, a mountainous town in the northeast of India. Here in the 1980s, an insurgency is threatening the peace and quiet, while a retired judge is living in a crumbling house with his granddaughter and cook. Biju, the cook’s son, is an illegal immigrant in the U.S., who went to the country in the hopes of a brighter future, and the romantic ideas wipe away as he faces humiliation and isolation.The colonial heritage of the book is heavy—racism, casteist, and classism make this book grim, especially for those who realize how real this is. The judge, who has such deep hatred for himself and Indians, is one of the most unlikeable characters you’ll read. But the story takes you back to his time in London, and the contrast between his journey and Biju’s is another insight into the immigrant story. 4 OF 8 'Unaccustomed Earth' British-American author Jhumpa Lahiri has written widely acclaimed novels, including The Lowland and The Namesake, but my favorite book from her has long been Unaccustomed Earth. This collection of short stories gives you a glimpse into the lives of Indian immigrants, like Lahiri’s parents, who feel love, hope, despair, and joy while in a tug of war between their old life and new identity. There are eight stories in the book, divided into two parts. Lahiri keeps the stories crisp, but they are emotionally complex, with characters you might not meet otherwise. The Indian diaspora is the largest in the world. British colonizers forced migration of Indians to other colonies before independence, while merchants moved for economic reasons. Today, Indians are still migrating for education or jobs, and the conflict of their dual identity, especially for first-generations born abroad, is a constant. Lahiri and Desai capture this beautifully in their other works, too. 5 OF 8 'Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh' Shah Rukh Khan is the biggest actor in India, think Tom Hanks but more beloved. Shrayana Bhattacharya seeks to explore this connection that women have with Shah Rukh Khan in this non-fiction book. I give this to people to understand why Bollywood is so important to Indians, and what a star can do for a gender.Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh introduces you to women from different socio-economic backgrounds. They may not have anything in common but their love for this one man who has given them the chance to fantasize about a life that’s freer. Amidst toxic masculinity on and off screen, he offers them escape from oppression and comforts them when they’re lonely. With the background of his movies, Bhattacharya narrates the everyday realities of Indian women—participation in the work force, safety statistics, and intimacy within their culture. 6 OF 8 'The Day I Became a Runner' Sohini Chattopadhyay is an investigative journalist who runs, but this isn’t her story. In this book, she chronicles women athletes of India, before the country’s independence in 1947 to the present. Women athletes have to fight battles with patriarchy before they even lace up their shoes, and this book introduces readers to eight heroes who did it against all odds. Some won, but many did not. If you ever wanted to understand the Indian sports culture beyond cricket from the lens of women athletes, this book is it.I felt inspired by this book because it showed us how far we have come as women in our nation—I’m in Amsterdam, that’s how far—and how much we still need to do. A grim reminder that the fight for equality isn’t over. 7 OF 8 'A Suitable Boy' Vikram Seth’s 1,400-page novel has been on my to-read list for longer than 10 years—it is one of the best English novels in the world. It’s one of those books like Tolstoy that you hope to get to one day, but the commitment scares you. Published in 1993, and now also a Netflix series, it’s a simple story of a mother trying to find a suitor for her daughter. But the setting is post-independence India, so the dark realities of the bloodied partition, rebuilding of the nation through class and religious divide, and poverty and politics are always in the background. India got independence from the British in 1947, and the partition from Pakistan tore the two nations apart, leading to genocides on both sides. Any books that deal with these subjects, even superficially, can be heavy reads. Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children are two other great most-recommended books about the partition. 8 OF 8 'Around India in 80 Trains' Another one of my to-read list is this Monisha Rajesh autobiographical journey on 80 trains in India. Rajesh’s parents moved from England to Madras to make India their home, but packed up in two years. Twenty years later, Rajesh did an epic journey covering 40,000 kilometers on commuter trains, luxury trains, and toy trains. But it’s not all romantic—trains can be crowded, people can be annoying, and journeys may be delayed. Some of the poorest people take these trains in search of a different life, and with that context, you see travel without rose-tinted glasses.India’s railway system is a lifeline in the country and serves seven billion people annually. I have always shied away from trains, but my friends grew up traveling on wheels with their families, and some of their fondest memories are from these journeys. This book is a way for me to be a voyeur into Rajesh’s (and by extension my friends’) adventures.