Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Two countries, two men, one intertwined destiny
Being Someone
What you need to know before your trail
James is drifting through life with no real sense of direction as to where he’s been or where he’s going. He doesn’t care for his job and isn’t all that good at it either. There’s not even a partner at home waiting for him to change things for the better. That’s until he meets Lainey – beautiful and confident, she’s everything that James isn’t and he becomes totally enamoured with her. She becomes his reason for living and his reason for being.
He is a lonely PR officer in the art world in London, she a glamourous American lawyer. But these two people connect in a way that is to have consequences beyond their control.
Meanwhile there is another story – one of the relationship between a mahout and his elephant in India. This man trains and cares for his elephant, who then becomes a star in the annual parade of Dasara
Connections? You’ll just have to read to find out.
Travel Guide
India – elephants and Mysore
The setting for the story of Annayya , the manhout and Iravatha, his elephant. This story is one of connections and relationships and the landscape is as bright and as vivid as an oil painting:
“In the early year, before Annayya was married, he would often sleep in the forest with Iravatha, better to understand ow the beast though and behaved to reinforce the authority and control he had over it. But it was also out of affection – the found that he like the animal , that he sometimes caught a glimpse of something itn its eyes that might have been love or simply respect”
Badami
As well as the prestigious Dasara festival and the role elephants play in society, the landscapes, sights, sounds and aromas of India are richly evoked. Women wash their colourful saris in the waters close to the Badami temples, the sky is awash with several hues of orange and red, the silhouette of the trees and cliffs nearby.
James takes Lainey here at a later stage and travels there alone too where the two stories collide..
London
Calmer and colder than India – the temples of India are a symbol of peace and tranquility – now in London the landscape is one of the creative buzz of the art world. Clerkenwell is booming, art galleries here on getting on the world’s radar.
Two very distinct landscapes and cultures proving that we are different and very similar all at once.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: Being Someone
Author/Guide Adrian Harvey Destination: Mysore, London
Departure Time: 2000s
Back to ResultsWhere Next?
