| Kavita Watsa Pages: 290; Price: Rs 295 Penguin |
| There is apparently such a thing as history south of the Vindhyas, and thanks to Watsa, it proves to be almost as fascinating as its northern counterpart. |
| Certainly, it was almost as fierce and as complex as that of Delhi under different dynasties, and perhaps even as colourful""if in a somewhat more discreet and elegant manner. |
| Watsa's effort at travel writing is refreshing, avoiding the usual cliches of experience recounted at leisure. Instead, Watsa""who grew up in the neighbourhoods she writes so eloquently about""sets out to re-discover her surrounds when she learns to her dismay that her childhood was spent amidst the rubble of history, only no one had taken the trouble to point it out at the time. |
| She sets out to remedy this, armed with travelogues and history books, and pokes around the vestiges of clinging memories while rooting through fallen fortifications and derelict bungalows, looking for links to times past. |
| A self-deprecating, ironical wit and the easy assimilation of masses of written material guide her into compressing history into bit bytes. |
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