Treading new ground | Ananya Vajpeyi's 'Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities'

In Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities, author Ananya Vajpeyi not only takes the reader across the globe through her experiences, but also into the internal landscape of humanity. The central premise of this collection of essays written over 25 years and spanning 13 cities is that ‘place’ is not merely a set of GPS coordinates or a patch of soil; it is a vessel for memory, culture and the sacred.

The historian, political theorist and established writer blends pedagogy with vibrant detail, incisive insights with poetic beauty. She allows her personal experiences to shine a light on interesting aspects of these cities and yet manages to ask the key questions, seeking answers that are not mired in the myopic and the mundane. Be it a surreal Sufi encounter, a disdainful (yet accurate) word picture of old Bengaluru and the new “tawdry Silicon Valley”, or the caste politics of Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, Vajpeyi wields her writing like a sword that cuts through all the presets and prejudices. As you allow the concepts to sink in, you realise Place isn’t just about where you are physically, but where you are in life; and that to be human is to perennially seek one’s ‘rightful place’ in the world.

Ultimately, Place is a call to attentiveness. It invites us to stop treating our surroundings as mere backdrops for our lives and to start seeing them as active participants in our story. It’s a reminder that while we may travel far, our identity is always anchored somewhere, waiting for us to recognise it.