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2023 - The Year That Was

Places impact you for a variety of reasons. And the same place impacts different people in different ways. This is especially true when it comes to spiritual experiences, where every single person’s experience is unique. And personally, every spiritual experience is unique, the same person can have different deeply spiritual experiences at different places, at different times. This thought has emerged because of my own experiences over the years, but especially so this year, with different and unique experiences at various places I have visited recently. I began this year with a visit to Baroda (Vadodara) with friends. It was meant to be a relaxed trip, a touristy trip, with our sons. We enjoyed ourselves to the hilt, but the highlight of that trip was a visit to the Lakulisha temple at Pavagadh. It was the iconography of the temple that I connected with, and I spent a few hours simply lost in the details of the figures carved around the temple. There was an indefinable connect with
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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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