Older Than History

What brings together Manhattan, Mapu Singh and a Modi-led Benares? AATISH TASEER’s new book, a paean to the holy city, is the answer.

- Rajni George

There have been many Aatish Taseers; the passionate student leader who started a Communist-style underground newspaper with me as his deputy (shut down after one issue); the glamorous reporter everyone wanted to marry when he moved to Delhi after dating English royalty; now, the successful writer and house-holder with the dreamy husband, gazing out at his panoramic view of Manhattan while examining fraudulent notions of Indian identity.

This is the man we meet in his disquieting new work of narrative non-fiction. The Twice-Born: Life And Death On The Ganges (HarperCollins India) pierces the riddle of contemporary India with trademark acuity and sophistication. The book uses the Brahmins of Benares as a means of understanding “an older life that had been forced inward”, and modern India, which has leapt into the chasm through its smartphones. Stubborn Sanskritists, young ascetics with SUVs, enterprising priests like “medieval friars”, men preaching complete renewal or annihilation, even a twice-born woman. He explains, “If there’s any conclusion the book moves towards, it is the impossibility of return. One wants to honour the memory of the past, but it may be necessary to be ruthless. The Indian sentimentality is killing. I want to see an India that has hardened its heart to the demands of belonging—that thinks only of self-improvement.”