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Delhi to Mussoorie

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Mussoorie is only 200 miles or so from New Delhi, so why does the trip take seven hours by car? The answer will become clear….

On the first part of the journey, a modern and efficient highway takes you, without interruption, from the urban sprawl of New Delhi to the urban sprawl of Ghaziabad. This is the capital city’s commuter belt and it now extends almost as far as Meerut. Anyone falling asleep for an hour after leaving Delhi will miss nothing, but it starts to get a lot more interesting at that point. The next stretch, moving north through Saharanpur and Biharigarh, sees India’s countryside assert itself. This is a place where fields of sugar cane stretch for miles, but it’s certainly not some rural idyll. Scores of brick making factories, their huge chimneys spewing filthy smoke into the sky, make sure of that. Hundreds of dhabas line both sides of the highway, catering for the hungry hordes heading in both directions. Progress slows at this point because India’s highways have a habit of stopping abruptly, giving way to smaller and slower roads. Often, and somewhat frustratingly, a new and as yet unopened stretch of highway, appears on the horizon, promising a speedier trip for future travelers but not today’s. An accident can close the highway entirely, as it did for me, forcing a long and fascinating detour through small villages.

A few miles south of Dehradun things really slow down, sometimes to little more than walking pace as the winding, sometimes treacherous road narrows and makes the climb to Uttarakhand’s capital. Looking to the left, travelers see an elevated, empty, and yes, unopened, highway stretching into the distance. Once in Dehradun, it’s wise to sit back, relax, and enjoy the sights and sounds of the busy city. There’s no alternative. The journey north from here cuts directly across the city and that itself takes a minimum of an hour.

The traveler’s expectation of what constitutes progress is well and truly re-educated by this point, and that’s just as well because what follows next requires patience and a strong stomach. From Dehradun, it’s probably only twenty miles to Mussoorie, but the ride can take anything up to two hours. These are steep mountain roads with hairpin bends, clogged with buses, cars, trucks, and the motorcycles and Vespa-style scooters that Indians love. I came to see the mountains, so I could hardly complain. Needless to say, the views are beautiful. Choose your cliche. Stunningly, breathtakingly, heart stoppingly wonderful.

Mussoorie sits high on the mountain, at approximately 7,500 feet. By the time one gets there, every foot and mile has been felt. But such is the magic and beauty of this place, stepping out of the car after seven uninterrupted hours, everything that came before, every slow mile and every traffic jam, is forgotten.

Gandhi Smriti

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It seemed right to visit Gandhi Smriti. I had been before, but at times when the world had been less volatile, less dangerous, and less polarized. Now, when the voices of conflict and separateness are drowning out messages of peace and unity, it felt like an appropriate time to connect with the Mahatma’s message of non-violence in the place in which he died in 1948. There were almost no other visitors. 104 degrees, the hottest time of the day, and Delhi’s tourists and residents alike were wisely staying out of the sun.

Old Birla House, as it used to be known, is where Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and where, on 30th January 1948, he was shot to death by Nathuram Godse. It has been turned into a simple, slightly old fashioned, but powerful memorial to someone venerated in Indian society and around the world. At its heart is the austere living quarters that Gandhi occupied in his final months and the path, marked by cut-outs of his footprints, to the place he was assassinated as he walked to his daily prayer site. Elsewhere in the house is a museum where his life and achievements are summarized. I learned something new on this visit, that one of my favorite photographers, the great Henri Cartier Bresson, was one of the last people to meet Gandhi before the assassination, just a few minutes before the shots were fired.

The Healy Pass

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The devastating famine that struck Ireland in the mid-1840s shamed the British government into devising initiatives to try to alleviate some of the worst of the suffering. These included poorly devised and managed job creation schemes such as building roads in rural areas. One such road, built in 1847 to make it easier for travelers to move between Cork and Kerry, became known as The Healy Pass. It was named after a Bantry-born politician and the first Governor General of the Irish Free State, Timothy Michael Healy (1855-1931), who petitioned for its construction. A plaque in Bantry’s town center marks his contribution.

The Healy Pass cuts through the Caha mountains on the Beara Peninsula. It offers beautiful views of the Cork-Kerry countryside as well as a few nervous moments to inexperienced drivers! Fine weather is rare in these parts, but on a good day there is nothing better than pulling into one of the parking spots and walking over the hills to the road’s highest elevations. The going was boggy last week when I was there, and the sky stayed clear for only a few minutes before the inevitable rain showers started, but who cares in a place of such extraordinary beauty?

I’ve been traveling to these parts since I was a boy, often using Bantry or nearby Glengarriff as my base. It’s a region with something for everyone. Unbeatable scenery, outstanding walking, hiking, and fishing, a rich cultural scene, great food – West Cork has it all.

Intermezzo

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I finally got around to reading a novel by Sally Rooney. There is no obvious explanation of why it took me so long. Huge sales, well received TV adaptations, and all the critical plaudits a young novelist could hope to attract turned Rooney into a literary sensation quite some time ago. I caught up with everyone else just recently and completed her most recent book, Intermezzo. It’s very good.

Intermezzo tells the tale of two very different brothers. Peter, the eldest, is a successful lawyer in Dublin. Socially fluent, accomplished, and intellectual, he’s a conventional success story, at least on the surface. Closer inspection reveals the flaws. The insecurities, the grief following his father’s recent death, and the inability to settle, are masked by drug taking, but he’s not fooling anyone. Ivan, ten years younger, is a competitive chess player, once expected to get to the very top, but now plagued by doubts. He’s socially inept, shy, and nerdy. Each is offered the prospect of salvation through the love of good women (two good women in Peter’s case).

Not much happens by way of a plot. The brilliance of this novel lies in the exposure of Peter’s and Ivan’s interior lives and their troubled relationship. I can’t remember when I was last so impressed by a novelist’s skill at dialogue, or by the uncovering of those interior monologues we all deploy to make sense of our own and others’ experience. It’s all so utterly convincing. The climax of the novel is deeply impressive – truthful and authentic. Strange to say, but I now feel slightly reluctant to read Rooney’s earlier books in case they are not as good as Intermezzo.

Munichs

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Only a small proportion of Manchester United’s fans around the world gets to visit Old Trafford. For those that do, the trip to the Theatre of Dreams has the character of a pilgrimage. The statue of Best, Charlton, and Law might top the list of sights to see, or a seat in the Stretford End, but for many it’s the Munich clock, that painfully poignant memorial to the terrible day in 1958 when eight of the first team died as their plane crashed on take-off from Munich airport. David Peace’s book, Munichs, tells the story of that tragic day and its aftermath. It is, quite simply, a masterpiece.

Although the tragedy happened less than seventy years ago and is remembered vividly by older United fans, Munich has become part of the mythology of the club. And, as is so often the case with myths, the real story of what happened that snowy day in 1958 is known to many only in outline. The death of the precociously talented Duncan Edwards or the remarkable recovery of the manager, Matt Busby, for example. But Munich was about much more. The journalists who died that day, the relatives of those who perished, the guilt of those who survived, the grief of hundreds of thousands of supporters who lined the streets for the funerals, and the shock of a nation – all this and more is captured brilliantly and unforgettably by David Peace.

Munichs is not a history book. It’s a novel, but one obviously informed by a deep engagement with contemporary sources. Its brilliance in part is due to its evocation of a world that feels long past. A world in which football was a working class sport, one with deep roots in local communities and one where the passion to play and win had nothing to do with money. David Peace tells the story with the imagination, empathy, and compassion of a fine novelist, portraying the grief, courage, and resilience of those who survived and those who lost loved ones. Only ten years after the tragedy, Manchester United went on to win the 1968 European Cup. I remember that game very clearly, but had no idea as I watched the post-match celebrations on television that Bobby Charlton, Bill Foulkes, and Matt Busby had been pulled from the burning wreckage only a decade earlier. Munichs should be read by anyone who loves football, but it will have special meaning for those who follow United.

Our Evenings

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Critics love Alan Hollinghurst’s work. They receive every new novel with rapturous reviews. They applaud the elegance of his prose, the emotional precision of his observations, the brilliance of his characterizations, and celebrate him as the great chronicler of gay lives and experience in recent decades. His most recent novel, Our Evenings, has been greeted in very much the same vein, with some critics saying it is his best yet.

We meet Dave Win at the beginning of the novel looking back on his early life from the vantage point of middle age. With an English mother and an absent Burmese father, Dave’s dark skin makes him a target at a rural boarding school in postwar England. Dave is a scholarship boy of very limited means (his mother is a seamstress), and the beneficiary of a rich patron’s generosity. His school friends are well aware of his precocious intelligence and his relative poverty, and his status as the outsider looking on from the sidelines is confirmed as he moves to Oxford. He excels there as a student actor and, after university, drifts into acting jobs in television and theatre.

I felt peculiarly detached from Our Evenings. It was easy to admire Hollinghurst’s style, but little here really engaged me, other than perhaps the touching portrayal of Dave’s love for his mother. I think that may be because so much of the ground felt well trodden by novelists of the past. The man, defined as an outsider by his race, skin color, social class, and sexuality, looking into, but never fully joining, the lives of his “betters” is a theme that many others have felt drawn to, and it takes some special ingredient to elevate it to somewhere that feels new and special. I could not detect or experience that ingredient and I closed the book at the end with a feeling of admiration but no real sense of immersion.

Bait Elowal

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The Arabic word Bait means house or home. Elowal is a more difficult word to translate, but Emiratis use it to describe travelers returning home, bringing with them gifts, stories, and memories from the journeys they have taken. Bait Elowal opened recently in the heart of Sharjah and is designed to evoke the rich trading heritage of this part of the world and its ancient links with places like Morocco and India. Its heart is a traditional Emirati house located alongside Sharjah Creek which has been transformed to include a restaurant, some small stores selling books, accessories and clothing, and a cultural space decorated with local art.

It is the brainchild of Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi, a daughter of Sharjah’s Emir, and herself a committed traveler. She has created a magical space, filled with warmth and color, that reminds visitors of Sharjah’s long and extensive connections to the region and the world. I had dinner there recently and was given a tour of the premises beforehand. The food was exceptional, surpassed only by the kindness and hospitality of my hosts. I recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in Dubai or Sharjah. Stop for a meal, buy a book by a local author, or just marvel at the beauty of the space.

Elektra

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Sophocles seems to be having a moment in London’s West End. Last year saw two stagings of Oedipus, one of which, featuring Mark Strong and Lesley Manville, I was lucky enough to see, as well as a production of Antigone. Now, in early 2025, Elektra comes to the London stage with Brie Larson in the title role. I saw it recently and was impressed. It’s a “punky” production, with Larson using a handheld microphone throughout and sporting a shaved head, jeans, and a Bikini Kill T shirt. The text was by the acclaimed poet, Anne Carson.

So, what’s with the sudden spurt of these productions in London’s theatres and how does one explain their appeal for some actors better known for film and TV work? Elektra is a play about rage, revenge, betrayal, and family strife in a time of conflict. Something in that mix, I suspect, speaks to these uncertain and dangerous times. And the wonderful production of Oedipus I saw in 2024 cast Mark Strong as a politician committed to honesty and full disclosure in his re-election campaign. Written nearly 2,500 years ago, these astonishing plays are as relevant and vital today as they have ever been. Audiences know it, and I find that encouraging.

Heart, be at peace

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Novelists who choose to narrate a story using multiple voices set themselves a very difficult challenge. Making a handful of characters sound distinctive and recognizable is tricky enough, but deploying a chorus of twenty-one voices to tell a story pushes the skills of the writer, and the tolerance of the reader, to the absolute limit. Donal Ryan is clearly a very accomplished writer (some earlier work won prizes), but on the evidence of Heart, be at peace, he just bit off more than he could chew.

I didn’t feel this way in the early stages of the novel. In some of the initial chapters, the voices seemed distinct and some of them struck powerful and poignant notes, but as the novel progressed it all melded confusingly into something of an amorphous blob, a soup where few of the ingredients could be identified reliably from the others.

The Ireland portrayed by Ryan here is a gritty and edgy place. There is little sense of ease. People are troubled and their emotions frayed, trying to make their way or just survive. Relationships are similarly uneasy. There is betrayal, jealousy, disappointment, and very little that’s simply loving and kind. My hunch is that Ryan has powerful stories to tell but has chosen the wrong way to tell them. This is a book where the whole is less than the sum of the parts.

The Land in Winter

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I have written here in the past about my admiration for Andrew Miller’s fiction, so when I saw The Land in Winter showing up on critics’ “best books of 2024” it was bound to be one of my first priorities in 2025. The winter referred to in the title is the infamous one of 1962-1963 when Britain recorded some of the lowest temperatures ever recorded and heavy snowfalls persisted in many parts of the country until early March. Miller’s story is set in a frozen and fog-bound village not far from Bristol and has as its central characters two young couples living as neighbors. Eric, the local doctor, and his genteel wife, Irene, occupy a cottage next to a small farm where Bill is struggling in his first farming venture while his young, bohemian wife, Rita, stays at home reading science fiction novels. At the opening of the novel, both women are in the early stages of pregnancy.

It’s ostensibly a novel about marriage and love, about the accommodations and compromises that individuals make as they seek to manage the task of living with someone else. Miller is superb at exploring the nuances of relationships, but this is just the foreground and he has bigger ambitions. England in 1963 was still a country living in the shadow of a world war and a place where its horrors were still vivid for some. Miller’s theme is how we avoid madness and how we carve out lives and futures when those horrors are so close and so real. The snow, ice, and fog that have frozen and paralyzed Somerset foreshadow a world broken beyond repair by environmental catastrophe.

The Land in Winter is a novel of unusual subtlety and nuance. That won’t surprise anyone who has read Miller’s earlier work. He’s an ambitious and cunning writer, and understands better than most how the conventions of traditional fiction can be adapted and subverted to explore and explain the deepest workings of human behavior. It is not a perfect novel. Some of the story’s tension is dissipated when the plot moves beyond the confines of the snowbound village and some of the peripheral characters are sketched rather than drawn. These are quibbles. The Land in Winter should be on the reading list of anyone interested in the best of contemporary English literary fiction.