India - Across & Around by Prafull Goradia

Indeed, history might well pronounce its judgement on this period as one that definitively altered the very character and disposition of the human race.

on Feb 21, 2023

Raconteurism is easy to gloss over as possibly a much-hackneyed form of storytelling, this happens to be a more mundane prism of viewing this aspect of conveying a message in the form of tales and anecdotes. Particularly, if the anecdotal approach to the subject attempts to cover the grand canvas of a journey of people and nations; societal and historical.

My latest collection of essays (India: Across & Around) arguably essays a raconteur's ramblings, though with what I dare humbly suggest - a deeper purpose of trying to capture or at least endeavouring to, the changing tide of the onward journey of peoples and societies, politics and nations; causal and epochal. As an observer of Indian society and politics-the latter from the inside as well-I dare venture the claim that I find myself somewhat perched atop a vantage point of some decades and slightly more, to be able to comment on the changing shades of India and the world through what can justifiably be termed as one of the most tumultuous epochs of human history. Indeed, history might well pronounce its judgement on this period as one that definitively altered the very character and disposition of the human race.

From the still vexing question of who actually won freedom from colonial rule- Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose or the Congress party- to the issues still bedevilling the subcontinent, the changing nature of the Indian polity (admittedly, this is still a work in progress) and of course, the inexorable chiselling away of the earlier world order to a new-and as yet unclear and still emergent-global arena form the narrative of India: Across & Around. Needless to say, it is anything but a definitive commentary on the rapidly changing life and times. Some essays and a bunch of contemporary (and of course, soon to be dated articles and stories) are a lay observer's humble attempts to make sense of the happenings of the present and the events of the past, with their propensities to shape a future that as of now appears uncertain but is laden with the potency to fundamentally alter man and society.