The Global Desi: Reflections on Home and Away, a new book released by Sundeep Bhutoria’s, which is sixth from his Kolkata based wordy-stable, has hit the stands. A Macmillan publication with nearly 360 pages decodes the Indian-ness of a person who has travelled overseas without losing his long ‘kurta-pyjamas.’ Read the book review by Harshvardhan.
The ‘desi’ probably has found full-throated amplification. It is amidst humdrum of overseas crowd-clan. Unhesitatingly, he sings about his traditional moorings, adding colloquial euphemism.
The author intelligently saves his readers from dozing off by dividing the entire text in three segments: Travel and Food, Social Issues, and Literature. He is a celebrated social mammal. So readers would expect usual charade about what he breathes and encourages others to inhale more than what his large lungs could absorb. It is the food that he has tried to decipher, separating red chilly from yellow turmeric, so to say. No doubt he has flaunted, as he names them, some top-of-table restaurants. So here is an account of each one as though he was a salesman. But the ‘desi’ bounces back, “I always carry India in my heart wherever I go…”
Social filibuster appears to be his top-seeded milieu. He excels in rubbing shoulders with men, women, and possibly animals and birds too. Starving in Incheon, Wafting Indian Aromas in Brazil, Rajesh Khanna cooks in Malaysia, The Indian Pulse of Montreal, etc., are some scorching head-lights he throws at weak-eyed readers. Too obvious, he sheds his oft-adored cultural armour as he dedicates it to Sujangarh, “my native place where it (?) all began.”
This scribe is nostalgic of his stay at its PWD Rest House on western fringe of the sleepy town, as Tal Chhapar, a sanctuary in Churu, then had no night halt facility.
The book, nay Sundeep scores a hurried ton (at The Lords?) through the remaining sixty pages. Here he deploys a delectable mix of idioms, nouns, verbs, adjectives, epithets, etc., for an event in Jaipur that sings for ‘literature.’ He appears ecstatic elated at its venue. One should admire his honesty when he states that the Jaipur Literature Festival had been “an initiative of Jaipur Virasat Foundation.” But he questions in next breath: “Or is it Teamwork Arts…. Or is it Sanjoy Roy… or Namita Gokhle…or William Dalrymple….?” Too obvious, his psyche is hovering among the organizing blokes. He has to make mileage. Yet his strong-business-acumen attempts an emphatic gallop audit of the Festival. It looks like he would spare none. He spared all. Jesting Pilate said, what is Truth and did not stay for an answer!
