Ananya Vajpeyi’s ‘Place’ begins with a refusal to see cities as scenery, to consume them as experiences, to flatten them into photographs. This is travel writing with a conscience. Every city here is a contested terrain, shaped as much by power, memory, and erasure as by streets and skylines. Vajpeyi does not visit cities; she enters arguments they have been having with history.
A cultural historian, political theorist, and one of India’s most incisive public intellectuals, Vajpeyi is best known for her landmark study, ‘Righteous Republic’, which explores nationalism and moral thought. ‘Place’ emerges from that same rigorous mind, but loosens the academic collar. Written across years of movement and return, this book feels like the afterlife of scholarship— what remained once as ideas have been lived with long enough to bruise, deepen, and settle.
Structured as a series of essays on cities across India, Europe, and the United States, Place is less about geography than about inhabitation - intellectual, emotional, historical. Vajpeyi writes as a scholar who knows her archives, but also as a traveller who understands that the deepest truths of a city often emerge not in landmarks but in repetitions: walking the same street again, returning to the same room, rereading the same poet in a different light.
Her cities are political, layered, and alive. Delhi is not merely streets and monuments; it is a palimpsest of medieval poetry, colonial impositions, and contemporary power struggles. Varanasi folds time into itself, forcing contemplation of mortality, ritual, and social hierarchies. European cities are examined with equal rigour: beauty interwoven with empire, culture shadowed by exclusion. Even New York, mythologised as perpetual motion, is portrayed in moments of solitude, alienation, and intellectual exile.
Vajpeyi’s great strength lies in her ability to braid the personal with the historical without letting either dominate the narrative. The prose is elegant, restrained, and often quietly beautiful. Vajpeyi writes with the assurance of someone uninterested in performance. Her wit is dry, her lyricism disciplined. She trusts the reader, refusing to flatten complexity or over-explain ideas. This makes Place intellectually rewarding, especially for readers who enjoy travel writing that thinks as much as it moves.
The book’s strength lies in Vajpeyi’s attention to nuance. She blends reportage with lyrical reflection, centring the experiences of ordinary people-street vendors, activists, and neighbours, alongside politicians and bureaucrats. Travel here is never superficial; it is deeply ethical.
Yet, for all its grace, ‘Place’ is not without flaws. The essays demand patience and occasional historical literacy; casual readers may find themselves lost in layers of references or slowed by a measured pace. Some sections, particularly the European city essays, risk feeling more intellectual than visceral, offering analysis over sensory immersion. At times, the lyricism flirts with abstraction, leaving the reader craving more concrete human moments. Some essays feel more like meditations than journeys, and the emotional temperature can remain cool, even when the subject-displacement, loss, and historical injustice invite greater heat. The politics is subtle, sometimes almost too polite, especially given the urgency of the questions being raised. Readers looking for narrative propulsion, sensory excess, or dramatic encounter may find the book withholding.
Still, Place lingers. It insists that cities are not neutral backdrops but moral landscapes shaped by exclusion and remembrance. In an era of algorithmic travel, curated experiences, and shrinking attention spans, Vajpeyi offers something braver: slowness, doubt, and the refusal to arrive at easy conclusions. Place is not a book that tells you where to go. It asks why you are there and what you are willing to see.
Title: Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities
Author: Ananya Vajpeyi
Pages: 239
Language: English
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Women Unlimited Ink
Price: ₹625