The Twice-Born: Life and Death on the Ganges

by Aatish Taseer Narrated by Neil Shah

Overview

When Aatish Taseer first came to Benares, the spiritual capital of Hinduism, he was eighteen, the Westernized child of an Indian journalist and a Pakistani politician, raised among the intellectual and cultural elite of New Delhi. Nearly two decades later, Taseer leaves his life in Manhattan to go in search of the Brahmins, wanting to understand his own estrangement from India through their ties to tradition.



Known as the twice-born-first into the flesh, and again when initiated into their vocation-the Brahmins are a caste devoted to sacred learning. But what Taseer finds in Benares, the holy city of death also known as Varanasi, is a window on an India as internally fractured as his own continent-bridging identity. At every turn, the seductive, homogenizing force of modernity collides with the insistent presence of the past. In a globalized world, to be modern is to renounce India-and yet the tide of nationalism is rising, heralded by cries of "Victory to Mother India!" and an outbreak of anti-Muslim violence.



From the narrow streets of the temple town to a Modi rally in Delhi, Taseer struggles to reconcile magic with reason, faith in tradition with hope for the future and the brutalities of the caste system, all the while challenging his own myths about himself, his past, and his countries old and new.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

11/26/2018
Hindus’ struggle to reconcile modern life with age-old traditions is at the heart of this ruminative study of India’s identity crisis. Indian novelist and journalist Taseer (Stranger in History) visited the holy city of Benares on the Ganges River to meet members of the priestly Brahmin caste who study ancient Sanskrit literature. These “twice-born” students and professors embody, as Taseer sees it, India’s cultural contradictions, as they are devoted to Hindu spirituality, but are aware of its distance from the scientific, materialistic Western worldview that India must pursue to achieve progress and economic development. Resentful and uncertain, they savor stories of magic and miracles, gravitate to Hindu nationalist politics, and cling to the caste prejudices that give them social prestige. Taseer probes his own deracination—he’s gay, agnostic, and the illegitimate son of an Indian woman, details that he doesn’t discuss with his Brahmin subjects—as part of a Westernized, English-speaking, subcontinental elite that’s increasingly isolated and precarious. (He stoically recounts the assassination of his father, a liberal Pakistani politician, by a Muslim fundamentalist in 2011.) Taseer sets these meditations against a gorgeous, sinister portrait of Benares—“the river was flat and oily; beggars circled... there was a darkling energy abroad in the city”—with its religious fervor, funeral pyres, and floating corpses. The lengthy conversations about Hindu philosophy sometimes drag, but Taseer’s wonderfully atmospheric rendition of landscapes and gnarled social psychologies make for an engrossing dissection of India’s discontents. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

"[The Twice-Born] doesn’t sit squarely in the camp of memoir, travelogue, or long-form reportage. It hovers among the three—but with such lilting grace as to make that limbo feel like a lovely hybrid . . . Taseer grew up in cosmopolitan, postcolonial New Delhi but has spent much of his adult life in the U.S. and Europe.” —Chloe Malle, Vogue

"A detailed, learned and highly readable tour of Hindu history . . . [and] a sharp-eyed condemnation of the evils of Hindu nationalism and caste." —Wendy Doniger, The New York Times Book Review

"Moving . . . For Taseer, Benares incarnates a curious quality of modernity: the city makes anthropologists of the devout and believers of the skeptical. The book’s charm resides in the way the author orbits this tension between faith and rationality." —Shaj Mathew, The New Yorker

"A gorgeous, sinister portrait of Benares . . . Taseer’s wonderfully atmospheric rendition of landscapes and gnarled social psychologies make for an engrossing dissection of India’s discontents." —Publishers Weekly

“Superb. Anyone wishing to understand the rise of the right—in India, but also elsewhere—should read this brilliant, disquieting, personal book.” —Karan Mahajan, author of The Association of Small Bombs

"In The Twice Born, a beautifully written portrait of the Brahmins of Benares, Aatish Taseer takes us on a journey of exploration through the strange and unsettling city that is the spiritual center of Hinduism. Full of profound insights about the stubborn hold of caste and tradition on the Indian psyche and the deep resentments that fester beneath the surface of modern India, this compelling book is a must read for anyone trying to understand the resurgence of Hindu nationalism in India." —Liaquat Ahamed, author of Lords of Finance, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"The Twice-Born is a book of portraits, in which the testaments of Brahmins tell of an unresolved dispute between tradition and modernity. Every encounter here is a story of wonderment and disillusionment, of pursuit and remoteness, of contentment and suppression, and mixed rewards are inevitable, for Benares, as [Taseer] discovers, is the enigma of the elevated mind . . . The most rewarding [book] written by a contemporary writer on the perpetually romanced—and sacred—geography of India." —S. Prasannarajan, Open

"Taseer writes like he always does, relentlessly, intensely, sometimes unkindly, in a complex way, raising questions with a deep intelligence that disturbs more than it quietens." —Chandrima S. Bhattacharya, The Telegraph (Calcutta)

“[Taseer] draws the reader to look at the world through the eyes of a series of unsympathetic but unswerving characters . . . Taseer’s talent lies in his ability to bestow on the reader this temporary gift of double vision even as his own sense of outrage is never in doubt . . . The Twice-Born makes the reader think about religion, caste, culture and the idea of modernity, and most rewardingly, about where she stands in relation to all of these.” —Manjula Narayan, Hindustan Times

"I love Aatish Taseer’s writing: his introspection, his lucid and supple prose, his sensitivity to the interplay of tradition and modernity, East and West, old and new India. The Twice-Born is a poignant reflection on identity, change and politics on the banks of the Ganges. A moving and thought-provoking read." —Shashi Tharoor, author of Inglorious Empire and Why I Am a Hindu

Kirkus Reviews

2018-11-21

A British-born novelist who grew up in New Delhi but also spent much of his adult life in New York seeks a closer connection to his native land through explorations into the Brahmin scholarly caste, the "twice-born."

Taseer (The Way Things Were, 2014, etc.) began tentative forays back to India to learn Sanskrit in the ancient spiritual center of Benares, "the key to secret India," as his mother told him. "In Benares," he writes, "it was possible to see in miniature every major event that had etched itself onto India's consciousness." The author sought teachers to help him make a more intimate intellectual connection to India. In 2014, he spent many months in the Ganges-skirted city to interview Brahmins, who are by birthright the intellectuals, scientists, astrologers, and scholars of the society; during adolescence, they are "initiated by rite into [their] ancient vocation of the mind." Taseer felt that penetrating the intellectual secrets of this "twice-born" caste would somehow dispel for him the feeling of always being an outsider—the sense, as Jawaharlal Nehru has written, of feeling a "queer mixture of the East and the West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere." In presenting his first-person stories of the Brahmins, the author also examines tales of Hindu nationalists; a scholar trying to synthesize the traditional vs. ancient currents; a revolutionary upstart; a spiritual feminist; and a family man who ultimately cannot wash the dish of the visitor who belongs to a lesser caste because it will contaminate his house and village. Unfortunately, despite Taseer's earnest attempts to force a declaration of truth from his Brahmin interviewees, he is evasive about his own ethnicity and identity—namely, his Muslim family and his gay sexual orientation—often stranding readers with him in emotional limbo.

A beautifully rendered but flawed exploration of how caste still prevails painfully in modern India.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170243648
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	03/05/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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