This book tells the story of an apparently territorial journey—the one between the village and the city—to capture some of the core fantasies and anxieties of the Indian civilization in the past hundred years. It looks at the vicissitudes of the metaphor of journey; profiles various heroes as they negotiate the transitions from the village to the city and back to the village; and focuses on the psychopathological journey from a poisoned village into a self-annihilating city. It contends that the decline of the village in the creative imagination of Indians in recent decades has altered the mea ... More

This book tells the story of an apparently territorial journey—the one between the village and the city—to capture some of the core fantasies and anxieties of the Indian civilization in the past hundred years. It looks at the vicissitudes of the metaphor of journey; profiles various heroes as they negotiate the transitions from the village to the city and back to the village; and focuses on the psychopathological journey from a poisoned village into a self-annihilating city. It contends that the decline of the village in the creative imagination of Indians in recent decades has altered the meaning of this journey drastically. And that even the true potentialities of Indian cosmopolitanism and urbanity cannot be realized without rediscovering the myth of the village.