‘Tales of Hazaribagh’ review: In search of Hazaribagh
The Hindu
Profiling a Jharkhand hill station, not too beautiful nor too popular, but always interesting
A poet is a prosaic lover, writes author Mihir Vatsa in his debut non-fiction,Tales of Hazaribagh. “Talent lodges itself, useless, against love’s gaze,” he says. Love is an important way of understanding Vatsa’s gaze on his hometown and Jharkhand’s hill station, Hazaribagh. This book is all about Hazaribagh, a place that does not occur much on lists of places to see in India.
In this self-assured debut, Vatsa is possessive about his Hazaribagh, yet refusing to do the obvious — to romanticise or prettify it. In resisting the travelogue trope of rose-tinted glasses, he chooses not to condescend on the present. His gaze is not just his view of the landscape — plateau dotted with a town, lakes, waterfalls and rocky escarpments — but is also responsive to how the area changes him. What we get in this frequently surprising book is a vocabulary of love for a home which cannot always stand steadfast to the forces of change.