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Review of Executive Lounges at New Delhi Railway Station (NDLS)

During my recent trip to Uttarakhand , I was faced with a problem I had never encountered before. We were passing through Delhi, but we had hardly any time in the city. On earlier visits when I have had to change trains/flights at Delhi, I have always arrived in the morning and left again at night, visiting relatives in between. This time, I was arriving in the city at night, and leaving again early in the morning. There was hardly any time to visit people. I would only have a couple of hours with them before I’d have to leave again. For the first time, we considered booking a hotel, but there again, we were hesitant about the actual hotels, the costs involved, and the logistics of getting from the airport to the railway station and then back again from the station to the airport.  That’s when we remembered reading something about a corporate-managed lounge at Delhi station. We soon figured out that we could book online and pay by the hour. Besides, we also learnt that there wasn’t ju
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Book Review : India A to Z, An Alphabetical Tour of Incredible India



A for Aadhar, B for Bazaar, C for Cricket, D for Dabbawala… and so on… goes this version of the alphabet – a very identifiably Indian version. India A to Z: An alphabetical tour of Incredible India, compiled by Veena Sheshadri and Vidya Mani, for Puffin Books, with illustrations by Sony Bhaskaran and cartoons by Greystroke manages to put forth a huge amount of information, combining it with a good dose of humour and titbits of fun facts.


It is impossible to compress India into 160 pages and 26 alphabets. But the team has done a wonderful job in putting it together. All the usual, popular, typically Indian things are there, but so are bits and pieces of the less known ones.

B, for example, covers not just Beaches, Bazaars, and Bollywood, but also the Bhopal Gas Tragedy; M, among Monuments and Monsoon, also lists the Metros and Mythical Monsters; R talks of Religion and Railways, but also the Rupee and the Rajasaurus; and my favourite is X which tells us of the X Avatars of Vishnu and Xuanzang.

The information is short, with multiple illustrations or cartoons on every page. The writing is wonderful, and the editing excellent, because it comes through, not as terse and educational, but concise, informative and engaging.


The target audience is obviously children, and here, they have tapped a booming market. Among the masses of huge encyclopaedias which aim to cover just about anything and everything, the size of the book itself is inviting. The only negative of the size is that there are so many things which are not included, but then, I don’t think it is possible to squeeze India into a book at all! The idea is to engage with young and emerging readers, and encourage them to explore more of India by themselves. This is a cause I heartily concur with, and feel that the book is well placed to do just that!

This book was sent to me for review by Penguin India. The views expressed are my own.





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