Mapping memories | Review of Place by Ananya Vajpeyi

Why do we love a city? Is it the beauty of its architecture — its old buildings and large domes that stand witness to the inexorable passage of time? Is it the weight of its history, the enduring legacies of its philosophers, scholars, musicians, and writers? Does it have to do with its politics, its traditions of inclusion? Or does it have to do with our own memories, which remain frozen in time and that offer the comfort of what once was?

For Ananya Vajpeyi, it is all these and much more. In Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities, Vajpeyi, an academic, is a writer, philosopher, thinker, and guide. Part memoir, part intellectual history, and part travel writing, this is a collection of essays written over 25 years of her experience of 13 cities across the world.

Vajpeyi is not a mere observer of the frenetic lives of city-dwellers, nor does she seek to capture the moments that define a city, as photographers do. Cities, for her, are repositories of memory; they are living archives of intellect, power, and history. Drawing from notes scribbled during her travels and stays, she writes with scholarly rigour about the ways in which the past and present of a city intersect.

Cities as home

Travel, for Vajpeyi, is “synonymous with life itself”. Having lived in several cities for long stretches of time, she defines home as the cities she knows well enough — Delhi, Istanbul, and New York — where she can not only find her way but also guide others. Cities that are not home, yet have shaped her academic writing, relationships, and experiences of love and loss, also have dedicated essays. These include Venice, Chennai, Bengaluru, Banaras, Santiniketan, and Pune.

In New York, where she lived as a student, Vajpeyi dreamed of becoming a writer. But when 9/11 happened, and the city wobbled like a child learning to stand, Vajpeyi realised that New York had changed. What was lost was irretrievable, and what lay ahead was uncertain. She writes, “I had not thought death had undone so many.”

Beauty and despair

In Delhi, “the crucible of Amir Khusro’s poetry”, she juxtaposes beauty with despair. Khusro’s presence lingers in parts of Delhi and can be found by those who go in search of it. But his devotional songs lose some of their charm when performed amid thick smog, against the backdrop of a foamy river. Delhi is particularly special for Vajpeyi. It is where her parents lived with their dogs, and it is where she keeps returning despite political majoritarianism, environmental hazards, and the overwhelming fog of grief. It is also where she realises that a world she knew ended with the death of her parents, but where she also learned “new ways of inhabiting” the city.

Vajpeyi’s “principal window into Turkey” is the writer, Orhan Pamuk. Absorbed in his works, she finds her way across Istanbul, walking endlessly, taking in views from the Bosphorus, sitting in cafes and watching cats, and listening to the “singsong call of the vendor”. In Istanbul, “the familiar was unfamiliar. The unfamiliar was familiar”, she writes. “I was at home, abroad.”

The most beautiful essays are those where the memoiristic element is strongest. In one of them, she recounts her father’s delightful meeting with the playwright Samuel Beckett, and her own conversations with the philosopher Giorgio Agamben. What struck me most was how these reveal a desire, even among poets and scholars, to seek out those they admire, inspired by curiosity and the joy of widening their intellectual horizons.

Wandering in Santiniketan

In another, Vajpeyi looks back at her time in Santiniketan, at that precise moment when she spoke to her father for the last time, in vivid, excruciating detail. In this town, the home of the Tagores, Jamini Roy, Amartya Sen and others. In this town, where the spirit of Rabindranath Tagore, “overflowing with creativity, its wellsprings still not dry after a century and a half”, lingers, she finds herself perpetually wonder-struck. In yet another essay on Banaras, where she let go of her mother’s mortal remains, she writes evocatively about her parents’ love for each other.

Place is not a typical travel book. Bursting with ideas and observations, it often demands close attention from the reader. But while measured and quietly reflective, it also has a tendency to meander. You may find yourself lost in a maze of names. Or be immersed in a section, only to be abruptly carried into another. In a work where the personal and political intersect, the inclusion of a lone fictitious chapter is a puzzling choice. And while the postscripts on Gaza convey a sense of helplessness and urgency, they often feel disconnected from the rest of the essays.

But this otherwise well-wrought work stayed with me long after the final page. Place narrates stories while offering glimpses into scholarship; it gives attention as much as it seeks it. With achingly beautiful prose, deep empathy, and layers that reveal themselves anew, it is deserving of a place on your bookshelf — to savour, not rush through, more than just once.

Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities

Ananya Vajpeyi

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radhika.s@thehindu.co.in

Published – February 06, 2026 06:30 am IST