Itinerary of a trip to India 2001-2002

Trip to Southern India, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, 2001-2002 itinerary
Day	Date	Visit	Night	Km	hrs
1	22 Dec	Arrive Delhi via Paris	Delhi	0	0
2	23 Dec	Shopping, flight Chennai at 16:45	Chennai
3	24 Dec	Chennai, city tour	Chennai
4	25 Dec	Kanchipuram, Mahabalipuram	Mahabalipuram
5	26 Dec	Visit Mahabalipuram	Mahabalipuram
6	27 Dec	Depart to Pondicherry, visit	Pondicherry
7	28 Dec	Depart to Chidambaram, visit	Chidambaram
8	29 Dec	Depart to Gangaikondacholapuram, Darasuram and Kumbakonam, arrive Tanjore	Tanjore
9	30 Dec	Brihadeeshwara temple	Tanjore
10	31 Dec	Depart to Trichy, visit Srirangam en route	Trichy
11	1 Jan	Depart to Madurai, visit Meenakshi Temple	Madurai
12	2 Jan	Vishnu temple and Alargarkovil as well as the Tirumala Nayak Palace	Madurai
13	3 Jan	Depart to Periyar	Periyar
14	4 Jan	Boat ride Periyar, depart to Kumarakom	Kumarakom
15	5 Jan	Kumarakom, sunset cruise	Kumarakom
16	6 Jan	Depart to Cochin	Cochin
17	7 Jan	Visit Cochin	Cochin
18	8 Jan	Cochin	Cochin
19	9 Jan	Flight to Delhi and connection to Europe	In the air
20	10 Jan	Arrive Europe

Book Review: The Idea of India (1999), by Sunil Khilnani, ****

Synopsis

A key book on India in the postnuclear era, with a new Introduction by the author. Sunil Khilnani's exciting, timely study addresses the paradoxes and ironies of this, the world's largest democracy. Throughout his penetrating, provocative work, he illuminates this fundamental issue: Can the original idea of India survive its own successes?



Review

The author tries to encapsulate the idea of India in five chapters:

Democracy (how this was possible in India, and in fact how democracy made India possible!);

Temples of the future (on growth after WW II);

Cities (and the role they play in changing India);

Who is an Indian (the most complicated of all chapters!)

The Garb of Modernity (on ongoing change)

A useful bibliographical essay completes this articulate book.

These are important aspects of what makes India, of course, but hardly the only ones and perhaps not the main ones. Most people in India still live in the countryside.

In my view the main drawback of the book is its excessive praise of Nehru. Yes he did keep India united after partition and preserved democracy but his autocratic economic planning delayed India's development, which really took off after the Nehru/Gandhi dynasty came to an end with Rajiv's resignation in 1989 and assassination in 1991.

In any case, there can hardly be any such thing as "the" idea of India. A better title might have been "One Idea of India".

See my other reviews on India in this blog.

Book Review: In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors (2001), by Doug Stanton, *****

Synopsis

The USS Indianapolis was the last ship sunk during the Second World War. Savaged by a salvo of torpedoes from a Japanese submarine, the warship, one of the fastest in the US Navy, sank in a matter of minutes. One thousand two hundred men went into the water, and only 321 were to survive. This is their story. On 30 July 1945 the Indianapolis was returning from the small island of Tinian, having delivered the components of the atom bomb ‘little boy’, which was to decimate Hiroshima and bring on the end of the war. As the torpedoes ripped into the side of the ship hundreds of men were killed. Those lucky enough to survive were to face extremes of physical and mental hardship in the water. Many were left to float in the ocean with little or no food or drinking water in deteriorating life jackets and, most chillingly of all, open to attacks by sharks...