A traveller with a view

Travel writing, at its best, is subjective. Rahul Jacob describes this collection of pieces written for the Financial Times, where he is travel editor, as "travel writing on a whim and a wing "" travel for the fun of it." As to where to go and what to like, he admits that "where travel is concerned, one man's mad house is another man's heaven".

Rahul Jacob reserves some of the highest praise in the book for Jan Morris, the celebrated writer and traveller who is a regular contributor to the Financial Times. He says of Jan Morris that her travel writing is best described as biography "" it draws a three-dimensional picture of the mindset of cities visited. His own writing is a bit like that of Jan Morris, sensing and capturing in words the look and feel of places.

Hence you can hardly expect him to follow the beaten track laid out by the hyped literature selling the business class five-star itinerary. He very often stays with friends while travelling. A whole section of the book "" he is at his subjective best here "" entitled "Confessions of a frequent flyer" outlines his ideas of where, how and when to travel. Business class travel is highly over-rated, economy class can actually do better.

To get the most out of a place it is best to avoid queues and discover what's not on a standard tourist's must-do list. One such discovery of his yields a memorable passage on Singapore's Asian Civilisations museum, "a jewel box by the river where in gallery after gallery I often found myself the only person in the room. As I made my way through a section that had Burmese Buddhas made of marble that seemed malleable and Thai bronzes of standing Buddhas so delicate that the robes seemed to be cloth, I contemplated conversion. Minutes later, the dashing buckles worn by Malay couriers over their equivalent of cummerbunds made me renounce a monk's robes for a nobleman's riches instead."

The section ends with a piece entitled "A child's Garden of Eden". It is as much about physical journey as that of the mind in which he revisits his grandmother's home in Kerala, where as a child he had spent many summer holidays. He is also for train journeys; fellow travellers on trains are nicer than those on planes. By train you can take in the passing country, arrive at the centre of town.

Train journey and returning to Kerala get rolled into one in another striking passage. "Enchanted by the sight of tracks bisecting preening paddy fields and barefoot girls running to school with hibiscus in their hair and the smells of breakfast emanating from a thousand woodfires, I wondered whether all tropical homecomings were so redolent... As the train trundled along I stood by an open door for two hours to take it all in; the windows were simply not big enough."

If that is a high water mark of journeys undertaken and remembered, Dubai scores a low. It is a moderated protest of someone sane wondering how so many can go for the hyped-up development, where workers have no rights and there is construction dust everywhere. He was able to recapture his moorings only when he visited old Dubai with its gold souk, spice market and boats crossing waterways.

Not all put downs are complete. Take the piece entitled "Air China: Hilarious inanity in airspace". It hangs an astute commentary on today's China from an article in Air China's in-flight magazine. It is the story of a young woman who thought "luxury was empty" but a chance invitation by a friend who was travelling first class to sit with her changes all that. The protagonist discovers what luxury is all about and never looks back. Rahul Jacob tellingly comments, "The story, and indeed nearly all of Air China's magazine is a kind of parable that captures China's rapid transformation from dialectical to diabolical materialism. ... from the grey, socialist monochromes in which they were born, to the neon-lit, frenetically capitalist cities they now inhabit."

There is a lot more "" encounters with great travellers like Jan Morris and Vikram Seth, as also lunch with Madhur Jaffrey at Rahul Jacob's apartment for which both cook their favourite items. There are celebrations of great cities like New York and London. But it is fitting to end with the cameo on Bangalore, where his parents moved from Calcutta, where he was born. Bangalore during his school holidays was "slow to the point of being soporific". Today it "may be going places but it takes ages to get anywhere." Its abiding duality is captured in leafy south Bangalore, where his home is. Old men gossip by their gates in crisp white lungis, Tamilian matrons only venture out swathed in six yards of colourful silk, even as the engineer you bump into reveals that his company manufactures doors for Airbus.

TRAVELS FROM BROOKLYN TO BALI

Rahul Jacob
Picador India
Rs 250; 266 pages