The Hindu Business Line : `A search for the self' in the guise of visiting places

Who can forget Jaswant Singh for the mountain-of-a-mole that his book A Call To Honour had stirred? Now that the ruckus has simmered down, here is another from Jassie: Travels in Transoxiana, published by Rupa (www.rupapublications.com) .

Travel is an adventure and an escape, he says. `A search for the self,' in the guise of visiting places. Which explains why `mystics, wanderers, monks and pilgrims always travel'. So does the author "in lands over the Hindu-Kush and across the Amu Darya".

The longest river in Central Asia is Amu Darya, informs Wikipedia. "Amu is said to have come from the city of Âmul, now known as Türkmenabat." Greeks called it Oxus in 300 BC, and `ancient lands' lie beyond the river, entices the author. It is `the crucible of mankind' wherefrom emerged `not just Babur but so many other formidable forces of primeval energy'. The chapter titled `a note on Babur' may create a stir for citing Rene Grousset's The Empire of the Steppes to say that Babur rejected being called a Mughal. "For us, in India, this is almost heretical," concedes Jassie.

In Tashkent, `the Communist city of lifeless concrete blocks put together as buildings, shapeless, tasteless and utterly lacking in the smallest spark of humanity,' the author finds that `the public transportation system works'. But then, `why do people buy cars?' he asks of his guide.

The `mean question' gets `a dialectical reply' - that `it is a manifestation of bourgeois mentality'. The guide, though, offers a practical reasoning: "Because in a car we go where we like and when we like but a bus may go only there and there and there."

Enter Samarkand, a place that has `so many strands of history' linking with India, ranging from Alexander to Changez to Taimur.

"In Samarkand, Islam is alive; tradition and religious belief and customs and lifestyles have all not been swamped under the dead weight of a faceless system," notes the author.

`A fascinating town' with `rare examples of the great flowering of Islamic architecture.' The `silk road' is still there, but `it is now a cement concrete affair... so empty of adventure and romance,' rues Jassie.

"The old town of Bukhara has alleys and lanes so familiar to my Indian eyes," he reminisces. "Open gutters and hordes of children playing barefoot and two kites lazily circling in a cerulean sky...

Women squat outside their houses for air and routinely yell at truant children." The squatting posture, according to Jassie, is characteristic of the Asians and the Africans; and it is `the posture of infinite patience', he says.

Ferghana has many a chai khana, sporting long and broad cots for visitors to sit and ruminate. "The traditional way of wasting time," a guide tells the author, who is eager "to meet people in their homes; human beings, not cement concrete buildings."

A hundred kilometres away is Kokand, with all ancient splendour gone, and "reduced to a Europeanised, centralised, township and that too of no great distinction".

After winding through Khiva, Ashkabad, Almaty, Frunze, Khirgizia, Siberia and Irkutsk, the book ends.

But Jassie's `inner search' is not over. "I found a great deal, but there is so much left to be found still," he confesses. "So I must take to the road again," he declares, with a line from `an incomplete Haiku by Basha'.

For a leisurely read.

SayCheek@TheHindu.co.in