Review of Rajat Ubhaykar's Truck De India - a Hitchikher's Guide to Hindustan

Rajat Ubhaykar’s Truck De India is fun, refreshing and sweet. Suitably subtitled ‘A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Hindustan’, the author escorts us on random truck rides across the ‘cheek of our nation’ in a spirit of journalistic inquiry but also with a childhood fascination and a sense of adventure. The result is a delicious cocktail that you want to both savour and drink down in a single sitting.

Highly recommended.

How much did I know about Hindustan? Every now and then I paused while reading the essays and tried to assess myself. Not factually, not in terms of general awareness quotient, but instinctively, thoughtlessly. It’s my land, after all. I grew up here imbibing its codes and morals, mirroring its body language, consuming its culture, art, politics and food; I have traveled through the heart of the land on buses and trains and bikes, have trekked to its pristine mountains, goofed around on its muddy beaches, weathered the severity of temperatures in its plains, and in the process I must have interacted with people from all walks of life. India must be known. What am I going to see anew about the familiar highways from a slightly unfamiliar vantage point?

As soon as I would resume reading the answer would come staring right in my eyes – I don’t know much. My sweeping gaze and limited comprehension registers none of its vastness and diversity, despite all the experiences and readings. The geography varies drastically with every few degrees of change in latitude and longitude, and with that changes the story of its people too. Every district has an ancient rich history recorded and lost and mythologised. Rajat, with a fascination for the subject, shares some of them to our delight and education. North-East – a one-word label by ‘mainland Indians’ like me – continues to be understood in clichés of silkworm and dog meat meals, of heavy rainfall areas, of exaggerated matriarchy and rock music by denim wearing guitar playing commoners. (There is, in fact, a section of the book titled ‘Almost-India’). Kashmir remains mysterious and distant too. This is where Rajat’s essays come in handy: the truck drivers sharing their mundane travails give a perspective. Mind you, the book doesn’t indulge in purposefully educating you. The author has refrained from gyan-baji, and has expertly handled politically complex topics, making the book so refreshing and approachable.

Which is why I read it without putting the book down despite my ignorance ;-) Paradoxically though, reading along, I do discover that India indeed is familiar in some sense. There is that quality, the ‘Indianness’, that can be promisingly observed from Mumbai to Leh to Kolkata to Kanyakumari. The ubiquitous traits that comfort a lost, enervated, bewildered traveler that he/she is still in a known terrain. Book highlights it - given-for-granted mehmannawaji, popularity of Bollywood songs, rampant corruption, deeply entrenched caste-dynamics, love for spicy food, frustration with government’s lack of will to take care of its most vulnerable and kick starting of the day despite everything with hope and sugary chais... beans in the thread that bind us together. 

What does this paradox mean?

As would happen in every travelogue, what Rajat shows is filtered through his consciousness. What he captures is based on chances rather than some carefully, scientifically selected methodology for testing a premeditated outcome. The highways he visits determined by the driver’s professional assignment. Another author, another driver, another route, another day – and it would have been a significantly different book altogether.

And yet in its essence, somehow, somewhere, it would be unchanging, I postulate.

I remember watching a Carl Sagan video (or was it in a book that I read) where he gives an example of a tribe living in an island (pardon me if my recollection is off the mark here) – the European colonizers were marching towards the shore of the clueless islanders in a fleet of huge ships. The tribal-folks could hear the sound of the incoming soldiers but when they turned their heads towards the sea they couldn’t see the large metallic ships - not until they were extremely close! Why? Because in their minds there was no conception of this machine, this locomotive. That information passed from their eyes through their brains as Noise rather than Signal.

So it happens with 'seeing'. We notice as much as we know already. All travel books giving us a picture through the eyes of a narrator, sifted further in the channels of their minds.

Which is why it is fun to read Rajat’s work. While he is quite knowledgeable about his subject matter, as I mentioned before, he is not here to educate us – look you privileged book-reading adult, here’s a picture of the marginalized community that you give little thought to: now feel ashamed. Nor is he there to exoticise his subjects or do an anthropological study or to write an authoritative statement on India’s highway life and economy. In fact, some of his conversations are as mundane as those you might have with your chatty Uber driver while stuck in a traffic jam during your daily commute to work (and hey, Rajat, this can be an area of improvement). Rajat’s there because it is pretty much where he wants to be. As a child he says he was fascinated by trucking - in his innocent mind it meant ultimate freedom. In his twenties he decided to do something about it – travel with them and document their lives; he was doing it and having a good time while at it. That is the overall persistent feeling in the book which, to me, makes it sweet (never have I used that adjective to describe a book before).

The degree of separation between him and the truck drivers is never aggrandized. Nor does he humanize them effort-fully to get into the good books of the scrutinizing readers. His sincerity is palpable. So is the cuteness of his travails. The language, spattered with Hindi phrases, is rife with good heated humour and a gentle flow. I read the complete work in two sittings which is unusual for me (I usually read 4-5 books together taking months to finish them and finish them together).

Once again I highly recommend reading this book. It is not going to leave you thinking you know much more about India, truck drivers or the highway economy. It is going to leave you with a good feeling of how less you know about your own country. How, no matter how old, well-traveled, well-read you become, it is always going to marvel you should you be willing to keep your eyes and ears open.