Why a Booktrail?
2000s: What is home and what does it mean to go back, long after you’ve left?
A State of Freedom
What you need to know before your trail
Five people, in very different circumstances, from a domestic cook in Mumbai, to a vagrant and his dancing bear, and a girl who escapes terror in her home village for a new life in the city, find out the meanings of dislocation, and the desire for more.
Travel Guide
India
Calcutta, Mumbai
The first story concerns an native Indian who has brought his child to see the land where he was born. But India has changed and he is both shocked and ashamed of how a country, his home can show so much poverty and despair.
Jharkhand –
“It was one of India’s newest states, cared out of the southern and Eastern part of Bihar only three or four years ago after decades of agitation and activism by tribal peoples and backward castes – they had that dreaded Indian distinction, the branding iron of an acronym: OBC OTher Backward Castes – for a separate state where their interests and welfare would not be counted as nothing. It was also one of India’s most troubled states, with a strong Maoist presence and consequently, brutal state-sponsored repression.”
The second – a man doesn’t know how to treat the staff and he can’t explain how everyone in England cooks their own food. He is ashamed to think of how people live here and what assumptions he had.
Rituals – “This was one of the bengali rituals mu parents had held on to: the man, too busy or elevated to be involved in the domestic drudgery of daily or even weekly grocery shipping, made an exception for buying fish because fish held a special place in Bengali cuisines and only a man could discern the freshest and the best specimens.”
Story 3 – Karanataka – the harsh reality of dancing bears in India. This will upset many people but it is of course something which happens.
Story 4 – Dumri – Milly is sent away from a very remote village to work as a domestic servant. She wants to return but told that she won’t ever be able to. She years to escape and be free and one day, it looks as if she might get that chance…
Story 5 – A man who has worked in construction for years sees a young boy in a car and suddenly wishes his life could have been one of richness and wealth. Wishing what he doesn’t have. A life outside of his own reality.
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
This is not the book I expected when I sat down to read it but it’s one I felt very emotional about. It’s actually a series of fives stories interconnected in many ways but also open to being read as separate vignettes of observations.
They’re also stories about how someone can feel at home in one place or not, how they feel when moving from one place to another, their sense of belonging. The characters are all living their lives in various places across India and each place is put under a microscope – village, hamlet, city, every place and the person’s place in it is scrutinised. Where does each of them belong?
The story about the bear was very hard to read given the importance of animal welfare now. A man returning to his homeland with his child and feeling ashamed of what his home is like now. A girl forced to leave the only home she’s known but then finding her own place to belong.
This is a sad and heartbreaking account of a country and its people. Class, poverty, rituals, family, independence and freedom…
It did feel disjointed at times. But then maybe, given its subject, is the point.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: A State of Freedom
Destination : India Author/Guide: Neel Mukherjee Departure Time: 2000s
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