A remarkable, multi-dimensional book that oscillates smoothly between the past and present, illuminating both via rigorous historical research and inspired prose.
Mishi Saran has done what the most adventurous traveller can at best only dream about as she retraces the monk’s long and arduous route. Travelling from dusty Xinjiang through enchanting Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan, she loops around India as smoothly as one would on an evening stroll around a park, entering Pakistan before finally floundering at the harsh shores of Taliban-controlled Kabul two years later. The result of this remarkable journey is a remarkable, multi-dimensional book. Chasing... oscillates smoothly between the past and present, illuminating both via rigorous historical research and inspired prose. This isn’t just a competent travelogue. It’s touchingly human, funny and sad as we follow her into her inner journey, her own, specifically, female vulnerability.
Particularly satisfying is Saran’s nose for fragments and clues that connect seemingly disparate cultures, histories, geographies and people: a familiar word hooked and fished out from the torrent of a ‘foreign’ language; an ancient cave painting in a ‘foreign’ land where its subjects look startlingly familiar; ancient Buddhist statues in Hindu temples of Kanchipuram. What is foreign and what is Indian, who is self and who the other, when one feels alienated in Orissa and much at home in Peshawar? Perhaps unintentionally, Saran raises extremely important questions on how we look at nation-states, at modern history, at our times.