Finding beauty in the ordinary
Reviewed by Parbina Rashid

Intriguing India: The Colourful East
By Hugh and Colleen Gantzer
Niyogi Books. Pages 218. Rs 595

Travel writing, according to a friend who is a prolific writer, is the most difficult thing to do. For, one needs to be part of the narration without becoming the central element in it, and to present facts without sounding boastful. Hugh and Collen Gantzer’s book The Colourful East, which is the fourth in their Intriguing India series, taught me something else: In a good travelogue, topography plays second fiddle to demography. After all, the essence of a place lies in its people and its cultural roots, not the geographical boundaries.

Hugh and Colleen Gantzer, the travel writer-cum-photographer team, started India’s first travel column in a national daily and later hosted India’s first national television travel show. They have recently been given the National Tourism Award for their earlier two books in the same series — Intriguing India: The Alluring North and Intriguing India: The Vibrant West.

The duo’s eastward journey starts from Puri with Lord Jagannath’s Rath Yatra where the Nandighosla — the 45-feet and 6-inch tall and 34-feet and 6-inch wide rath —is not just a spiritual symbol but also a source of cultural assimilation.

When the authors seek out non-descript places like Raghurajpur, a heritage crafts village in Puri, and present them as places designed by a rural Le Corbusier, one realises that travel is not about visiting exotic locations but finding the unusual in the most commonplace. As one hitches on to their bandwagon along the coast of Odisha, learning about the Gotipua culture or getting pleasantly shocked by the erotic art of Konark or feeling reassured that the over-hyped war between man and nature will not destroy the planet, which they inferred from their visit to Chilka, and finally arrive at the celestial power base Kamakhya, via places like Bastar and Bodh Gaya, one gets wiser about the metal casting process which the tribesmen follow in Bastar, the tingling taste of red ants and the ethical silk Kosa and more.

The final leg of their journey is along the mighty Brahmaputra on a ship called RV Chairaidew, exploring remains of the Ahom dynasty, the world’s largest riverine island Majuli and culminating at Kaziranga, the wildlife sanctuary. The East is intriguing without a doubt, but the places, people or the myriad cultural traits would have been a distant reality without a link. Luckily, the authors have been showing their curiosity and asking questions like "Was it not against nature for boys to dress and gyrate like girls like they do in Gotipua culture?" and coming up with unpretentious answers like any ordinary people would, to justify an out-of-the-ordinary situation. With this quality they make that distant place a reality, which one feels like visiting someday!

HOME