28 Shades
of India

This book began, as most journeys do, with a window. It looked out over a lane in Srikakulam district where nothing much happened except everything: vegetable sellers arguing gently about the price of brinjal, schoolchildren racing the rain, an old radio playing songs older than the man who owned it.

Over several years — in second-class compartments and overnight buses, on the backs of shared jeeps and the decks of slow ferries — that lane led to every state and Union Territory of India. Each chapter chooses a handful of places, people and meals that carry the character of a state, and leaves you wanting to go and find the rest of it yourself.

Some of what follows is the best of it. Some of it is a closed gate, a wrong bus, a bag that went missing between Veraval and Ahmedabad. Those are left in on purpose. A road with no bad days on it is not a road, it is a brochure.