January 2020 Reading Wrap-Up

The start of the year has been great. I wanted to read 20 books. Ended up reading 13. Not bad though, out of which two were graphic novels and one a picture book for children (seemingly). .

Books read transported me to so many lands and made me explore my own stance on issues and life in general. From a story of a marriage to a story of how a movie on Manto was made to a novel on racism in modern-day America to a book on Dara Shukoh, I’m quite pleased with the diverse reading. At the same time, it so happened organically that I ended up reading 12 books by women and 1 by a man. Also, thank you to all the publishers who sent these books.

Here are the titles with my ratings:

1. A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid (5/5)
2. Grass by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim (5/5)
3. Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy (4/5)
4. I Remember Beirut by Zeina Abirached (5/5)
5. Jaipur Journals by Namita Gokhale (4/5)
6. All my Goodbyes by Mariana Dimópulos (5/5)
7. Manto & I by Nandita Das (4/5)
8. North Station by Bae Suah (5/5)
9. The Beach at Night by Elena Ferrante (5/5)
10. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (5/5)
11. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (4/5)
12. So All is Peace by Vandana Singh-Lal (5/5)
13. The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India by Supriya Gandhi (5/5)

This is my list. What have you read this month that has got you excited or made you want to recommend it to everyone you know? .

The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India by Supriya Gandhi

Title: The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India
Author: Supriya Gandhi
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 978-0674245969
Genre: Biographies and Autobiographies
Pages: 304
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

 

I have been afraid of history books. Reads that somehow seem to take a lot of time to process and take a lot from me as a reader. That’s the perception I had for the longest time of history books. Till I read Dalrymple, Thapar, Manu S. Pillai, and now a recent addition, Supriya Gandhi’s, “The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India”.

This is a fascinating read. It reads like a novel. It reads easy. It speaks of Shukoh, of whom less is written, much less spoken of. A fascinating look of a family, the succession to the throne, and the politics that happened in its wake. Dara died at the hands of his younger brother Aurangzeb, and that forever changed the course of South Asian History. Let me speak more about the book.

Shukoh was the eldest son of Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal emperor. The Mughals did not practice the concept of primogeniture (the right of succession passed to the firstborn). How did Aurangzeb ascend to the throne and what happened to Dara, and Shahjahan’s other children is what the book is about.

I was enthralled by the writing. Like I said, Gandhi’s writing is very accessible and doesn’t seem heavy at all. There was not a single place in the book that seemed forced or unwanted. Every detail of the family, to what the siblings felt, to Dara’s sense of being, and Aurangzeb’s personality (sometimes misunderstood as well) was perfectly laid out.

Supriya Gandhi almost gets into the skin of Shukoh – the man he was, how he embraced Sufism, and yet he wasn’t without his own flaws. She transports the reader to a land of constant conflict and gives us a biography that is balanced – there is no bias of any kind and she doesn’t take sides. She presents history the way it happened.

We live in times when politicians in India (some of them) are out to erase the history of this nation. The Emperor Who Never Was by Supriya Gandhi reclaims history and gives us a complex, nuanced biography of a man who was not known at all, and also of a family that was different and always at loggerheads with each other. Read the book to know more. Read the book and educate yourself. We live in times, where a good open perspective is always needed.