This is a really interesting take on the book. I discovered at the International Kolkata Book Fair 2025 two days ago and was thinking of purchasing it. This makes me want to read it all the more.
This is an uncommon, and enriching, angle to take on the locales in question, Tanuj - small town India, also governmental spaces in cities - and the natures of the homes and colonies in them . This sentence touched off much thought: 'Access, in other words, would mitigate scarcity to some extent, and whether that differential must be considered significant or not is anybody’s guess.'
Also very interesting are your views on the watershed moment of retirement, the attendant anxieties and the sudden sense of dispossession. Plus how these can be much sharper if one has been in a government job, owing to the somewhat peculiar privileges that come with some of them. Locating Amitabh Bagchi's novel in amidst all this makes me intrigued ... must read it
The 'stream of comprehension' as a counterpoint to 'stream of consciousness' is an interesting point. I haven't read Unknown City but now that you've explained it, I can see how the phrase fits the narrative in A Passage North.
I loved reading this, Tanuj. Perhaps even more as I grew up in a “colony” in Ranchi and have enjoyed a lifetime of trying to reclaim the sense of belonging I have to those roots.
Loved this sentence: “That there's a way to be so invested in the questions of conditioned masculinity that a wish for impossible corrections become natural.”
This is a really interesting take on the book. I discovered at the International Kolkata Book Fair 2025 two days ago and was thinking of purchasing it. This makes me want to read it all the more.
This is an uncommon, and enriching, angle to take on the locales in question, Tanuj - small town India, also governmental spaces in cities - and the natures of the homes and colonies in them . This sentence touched off much thought: 'Access, in other words, would mitigate scarcity to some extent, and whether that differential must be considered significant or not is anybody’s guess.'
Also very interesting are your views on the watershed moment of retirement, the attendant anxieties and the sudden sense of dispossession. Plus how these can be much sharper if one has been in a government job, owing to the somewhat peculiar privileges that come with some of them. Locating Amitabh Bagchi's novel in amidst all this makes me intrigued ... must read it
Delightful essay, thanks for this.
Thank you, Rohit :) You'll enjoy Bagchi's novel.
The 'stream of comprehension' as a counterpoint to 'stream of consciousness' is an interesting point. I haven't read Unknown City but now that you've explained it, I can see how the phrase fits the narrative in A Passage North.
I loved reading this, Tanuj. Perhaps even more as I grew up in a “colony” in Ranchi and have enjoyed a lifetime of trying to reclaim the sense of belonging I have to those roots.
Loved this sentence: “That there's a way to be so invested in the questions of conditioned masculinity that a wish for impossible corrections become natural.”
Thank you so much, Natasha. One more writer with *that* experience :)
In an edit, I removed the word 'impossible' before corrections.