Finished reading Pankaj Mishra's Butter Chicken in Ludhiana. I found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable book. While reading it I had frequently burst into fits of laughter. It was genuinely funny.

For instance, while describing Bangaloreans' modernised sensibilities, he writes:

"Bangaloreans were modern people, with sophisticated sensibilities. And the
confirmation seemed to come one evening, watching Indecent Proposal,
when not a squeak came out of the lower stalls as Demi Moore's breasts popped
into view on the screen. Up in the uncivilised north, they would have
been, I knew from experience, tearing the stuffing out of their seats."

I found the book to be quite a commendable body of work. The descriptions of his travel experience across small towns of India were not just hilarious but also poignant to a great extent.

In his travels to Murshidabad in Bengal he talks about a young man named Abdul. Abdul's father works as a caretaker at a mosque there. But his father only draws a salary of Rs. 50! Which he claims have remained unchanges since Lord Curzon's time. Astonishingly, with that salary "his father had supported in the past a family of five sons and three daughters." And he "had doggedly refused to take up any other kind of work; he valued his job not for the money but the regard itearned him within his community."

The subjective account Mishra proffers us about his interaction with numerous personalities across myriad Indian landscapes particularly stands out in this book. The portrait he draws of his subjects' demeanours is quite true to life - it is real India. His work is like an ethnographers' account of Indian travel.

A highly recommended book.