Dear Reader,
With money and leisure both in short supply, I am doing a lot of armchair travelling these days. I hear bulbuls chirping in the tiny patches of green in the city and am transported to forest nooks with mossy patches and babbling brooks; I listen to music and find myself in monasteries nestled under turquoise skies; I watch a historical drama and see myself walking on a windblown heath with the Victorian heroine.
The book I am reading now is taking me to places where nobody has ever been—heaven and hell, as imagined by theology, mythology, music, comic artists, writers. Mostly a fun read, 100 Places to See After You Die: A Travel Guide to the Afterlife (Simon & Schuster, 2023) by Ken Jennings seems at times to try too hard. Each chapter, describing places like Hades, Bardo, Vaikuntha, Milton’s paradise, Jahannam, etc, comes with helpful boxes detailing important things like local fare, attire, languages, things to do, what to avoid, and what to check out.
After going through the places listed in the book, I have chosen the Native American afterlife as my ultimate destination. It starts with a walk up the Milky Way, whose stars are imagined as dust kicked up by buffaloes, or as snow shaken off by a great grizzly bear, or as campfires along the road—romantic, isn’t it? If I am deemed unworthy of this afterlife, then I choose the canine heaven, for obvious reasons.
The recent Netflix series, Kaos, a superb reimagination of the Greek myths, has an interesting take on the afterlife. The communist-style buildings in the land beyond life are perpetually shrouded in a black-and-white gloom where rigid bureaucratic rules control every action of the dead. It would have been Kafkaesque but for the fact that the ruling couple of the underworld, Hades and Persephone, are unlikely rebels, willing to break rules. I will stop here before I give away any spoilers—do watch the series, you won’t regret it.
Another book you might enjoy is Shahnaz Habib’s Airplane Mode: A Passive Aggressive History of Travel. I liked it all the more because Habib confirmed my long-held belief that one need not travel to see the world—reading books can do that for you even if it means you spend all your life cooped up in a room on a rocking chair. Read the review by Sukhada Tatke here, and buy the book for sure.
Of course, the Greeks knew all about armchair travelling on the wings of art and literature—the wisdom gained by Odysseus through his adventures on the high seas for over 10 years is not more than what his wife, Penelope, gathered in the same period by sitting home at her loom, weaving stories to ward off the monsters of despair, loneliness, and unwanted suitors.
So, here’s a toast to books—may they continue to fuel our visa-free travels to magic lands.
Cheers!
Anusua Mukherjee
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