A Return to Self

In 2019, the Government of India revoked Aatish Taseer’s citizenship, thereby exiling him from the country where he grew up and lived for thirty years. This loss, both practical and spiritual, sent him on a journey of revisiting the places that formed his identity and, in the process, compelled him to ask broader questions about the complex forces that make a culture and nationality.

In Istanbul, he confronts the hopes and ambitions of his former self. In Uzbekistan, he sees how what was once the majestic portal of the Silk Road is now a tourist facade. In India, he explores why Buddhism, which originated here, is practiced so little. Everywhere he goes, the ancient world mixes intimately with the contemporary: with the influences of the pandemic, the rise of new food cultures, and the ongoing cultural battles of regions around the world. How do centuries of cultures evolving and overlapping, often violently, shape the people that subsequently emerge from them?

In this blend of travelogue and memoir, Taseer casts an incisive eye at what it means to belong to a place that becomes a politicized vessel for ideas defined by exclusion and prejudice, and delves deep into the heart of the migrations that define our multicultural world.