Companion texts to travelling

There's so damn much history in India for which I had no reference points. I was working so hard in the months before I left, I didn't even have time to read the Lonely Planet guides, and my previous knowledge of the entire Indian subcontinent included "big" and "crowded" and "sacred cows" and not much else. So I did a lot of reading while I was there, mostly around politics and cultural conflict, because that's what I found most interesting. I present to you, in the order I read them, all the India-related material I devoured while abroad. (I also read some Douglas Adams and a Wodehouse novel, but I'm sticking to the salient items, here.)

• A Traveller's History of India by Sinharaja Tammita-Delgoda. The Cliff's notes history of the subcontinent. Woefully inadequate as a single source, but an excellent jumping-off point for further exploration.
  
• The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. A light re-read that was far more interesting after my English degree than before, but still less than illuminating.
  
• India: A Million Mutinies Now, by V.S. Naipaul. Amazing. People have told me that Naipaul is known for being a "cranky" author, but this was the first of his works I have read, and it was a very open, honest series of interviews with various Indians, from the standpoint of one who truly wishes to listen. A great introduction to the bewildering variety of cultures that comprise the nation.
  
• The Jewel in the Crown, by Paul Scott. The first in the "Raj Quartet" series, a novel set in 1942 India before Partition and Liberation. Fascinating, well-written, and politically interesting.
  
• The Algebra of Infinite Justice, by Arundhati Roy. Essays on politics and social justice by the author of the Booker-Prize-winning The God of Small Things. She writes with passion and a leftist slant that is dear to my heart about both Indian and global issues. I would like to introduce her to my Aunt Max, if they don't already know each other; they seem kindred spirits.
  
• No Full Stops in India, by Mark Tully. I didn't get to finish this, but it was my favorite of all, after the Naipaul. Nonfiction from the British BBC correspondent who has been covering India for decades.
  
• India: From Midnight to the Millennium, by Shashi Tharoor. The elite educated Indian's perspective on India, from the UN Director of Communications and Kofi Annan's right-hand man. He's also a Keralite, and it was wonderful to read about Kerala specifically.

All of these were in some way the accounts of outsiders, or people not representative of "the common man" (who is, as far as I can gather, even more of a mythical figure in India than he is elsewhere). For one, all were written in English, which is not the primary language of 98% of the country. Most of the authors were well-off and had spent quite a bit of time abroad, and four of the seven were not Indian nationals at all. Our cousin Gayatri, when asked for book recommendations, said that we should read something written in an Indian language and translated, because authors who write in English are not addressing the same audience as authors who write in Indian languages. She suggested Pather Panchali, by Bibhut Bandopadhyay. Rabindranath Tagore's work was also highly praised by several people I asked. Unfortunately, I ran out of time before I could pick up either one.

Still, I think my reading helped me to get some vague shape of what India or the many Indias might look like, a sort of through-a-glass-darkly kind of impression. Like an intermediary step to reading more "authentic" Indian literature (though, yes, I'm entirely aware of the many problems with the whole concept of "authenticity"). Whether or not I will ever have time or inclination to take that next step is unclear; what's certain is that I know a great deal more now than I did when I left, which is all I hoped for upon my departure.