Books That Will Make You Fall in Love with India

Wouldn&rsquot you agree that India is an abundantly diverse land, often chaotic and hard to define Many have tried to do justice&mdashmany of them foreigners&mdashby explaining what it means to live here. While travel guides can offer helpful ideas on what to do once you&rsquore here for a visit, nothing can quite get into the soul of a country like fiction can. Let&rsquos explore some of these novels by Indian authors from different parts of the country on what it means to live in India, one page at a time.

If it&rsquos Monday It Must Be Madurai A Conducted Tour of India &ndash Srinath Perur

This delightful book is written in a first-person narrative which turns around the idea of travel writing. This entertaining travelogue around ten conducted tours contains myriad riches from the Camel rides in the Thar Desert to the music on the trail of Kabir in the North West, and the root bridges in Cherrapunji that are still growing. Throughout the book, Perur makes many earnest and amusing observations about his group's uniquely Indian characteristics. In the duration of the entire book, the author does not pass judgment on any of his travel companions, he merely observes. But his observations bear the kind of extreme sincerity that toes on sarcasm, and delightfully so. 

Interpreter of Maladies &ndash Jhumpa Lahiri

There are things in life that baffle us with their staggering normality, things so simple yet captivating, subtle yet profound. Jumpa Lahiri's stirring collection of short stories about Bengal, Boston and beyond is one of them. Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in her touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. She writes with a grace and elegance that transforms her simple stories into a delicate myriad of words and feelings. Each story somehow seems to be explicitly woven together to make a sari of the most beautiful kind. She writes about ordinary people who just happen to be Indians caught in the throes of immigration pangs, of trying to be two different identities at once and justifying both, fighting usual battles in their own unique ways.

Maximum City Bombay Lost and Found &ndash Suketu Mehta

Suketu Mehta reveals a city of shocking contradictions when he returns to Bombay after 21 years abroad. In this rich, eclectic portrait of Bombay and in character sketches that extend over pages and months, Mehta, a brave and persistent reporter, sheds light on the darkest and most bizarre corners of the city. Much like the city, this book swarms with a jostling, heaving crowd of narratives, each story as riveting as it is symbolic of the city in which it is rooted. Bombay native Mehta fills his kaleidoscopic portrait of "the biggest, fastest, richest city in India" with captivating moments of danger and dismay. 

The God of Small Things&mdash Arundhati Roy

Roy has struck the perfect balance between the traditional English of Dickens and the sing-song rhythms of India. Kerala, famous for its sprawling backwaters and lush green vegetation is generally referred to as a tropical paradise of waving palms and wide sandy beaches. But in the book, Kerala is evoked through every sense. This novel tells the story of a fractured family from the southernmost tip of India through flashbacks and flash-forwards as it unfolds the secrets of the characters&rsquo unhappiness. While the story is heartbreaking and sometimes brutal, Roy has a way with words and composes some very beautiful sentences. Aymanam, described in beautiful detail is not merely the product of a highly imaginative mind but is truly a beauty.

Delhi, a novel &ndash Khushwant Singh

Travelling through time, space and history to 'discover' his beloved city, the narrator meets a myriad of people-poets and princes, saints and sultans, temptresses and traitors, emperors and eunuchs - who have shaped and endowed Delhi with its very special mystique. The novel tells the history of Delhi beautifully. The narrative voice right at the start tells us that Delhi is vulgar, loud, and dangerous and a damaged city, but once it is known intimately it reveals its charms, its seductions. The heart of the story is the city itself. This is actually a love story about the author and the city where the air is packed with centuries of whispers and the author packs many interesting ones into this novel.

Boats on Land &mdash Janice Pariat

In a world where every day is infused with folklore and a deep belief in the supernatural, girl dreams of being a firebird, an artist watches souls turn into trees and a man shape-shifts into a tiger. Set in and around Shillong and pockets of Assam, Boats on Land&nbspis a collection of short stories that offer a new way of looking at the world, and, in particular, India&rsquos little-known northeast. Looking at the northeast through a fresh lens, these 15 stories range across time from the early days of the British Raj to the 1990s. Political struggles and social unrest interweave with fireside tales and age-old superstitions. The result is a book that throbs with confident prose and a quietness that stays with you well after you&rsquove put it down.

A Breath of Fresh Air &mdash Amulya Malladi 

A Breath of Fresh Air is exactly that, a breath of fresh air, the kind of novel that gets you invested in the people and their stories. A love story framed by the horrifying Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal, India in 1984, the first pages of this novel, will draw you right in. This book&nbspis a fast, involving read about Anjali, her ex-husband, husband, and son. In a landscape as intriguing as it is unfamiliar, the protagonist, a divorcee, struggles to reconcile the roles of wife and ex-wife, working woman and mother, illuminating the difficult choices women must make. Told in alternating first-person sections narrated by three characters, the novel jumps back and forth in both time and perspective, but the story it weaves is still tight and focused, but rich in the complete picture it creates.

The Shadow of the Kamakhya &mdash Mamoni Raisom 

In all the stories set in Assam, Raisom enthrals one with the kaleidoscopic descriptions of the land and people. The details of the birds, the flora and fauna are vividly described with the flourish of a poet. The characters absorb the ambience of the landscape and are shaped by it. Raisom always manages to rescue humanism from the clutches of the grind of daily life, misunderstandings, and human failings. The stories are invested with a wealth of detail, which evoke a feeling of the region. The themes explored, however, are wide-ranging &mdash the pain of thwarted passion, the struggle for existence and they transcend the ambience with ease.

A Town Called Dehra &ndash Ruskin Bond

The book is a nostalgic journey back to Dehradun where Ruskin spent his early childhood and later wrote some of his best stories before settling down in Mussoorie. The beautiful and simple depiction of daily life in a small town during the pre and the post-independence times proves to be an intriguing read. Typical of his writing style, the words come flowing from him like a beautiful river and it sweeps you completely with it.&nbspThe characters in this memoir are his relatives, friends, love interest and the common people of Dehra. A beautiful collection of short stories, the stories are based on the author's childhood memories of growing up in the sleepy little town of Dehradun which is a beautiful valley at the Himalayan foothills.