Book Reviews

I chose this book because I had spent significant time in Sonipat during my undergraduate years and had always been fascinated by Delhi. After reading it, I regretted not being born in Delhi and being part of such a rich history. In From the King’s Table to Street Food , Pushpesh Pant never explicitly argues that food is political; he lets the narrative reveal it. Through his portrayal of Delhi’s culinary past, he captures a city continually reshaped by displacement, war, disease, migration, and caste hierarchies. “We must also remember that many of the so-called traditions of Delhi’s food are hardly older than 175 years.” That’s a statement that dismantles the fantasy of some eternal, static culinary identity. Instead, Pant presents a more compelling truth: both the city and its cuisine are products of constant movement and reinvention. This approach defines the book's strength. Rather than offering a rigid, scholarly account, Pant crafts a fluid and accessible memoir that invit...

 This book was picked up out of a long-standing fascination with the migration of Marwaris and their remarkable success across diverse fields of Indian business. It offers a detailed account of the role played by Indian business communities during the British Raj, with particular emphasis on the migration of Marwaris from Rajasthan to commercial centres of that time such as Calcutta. Drawing on archival sources like business registers and ledger entries, the narrative reconstructs their steady rise during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The book also highlights the expansion of influential business houses such as the Jagat Seths and examines their complex relationship with British colonial authorities. At its core, the book seeks to answer a compelling question: why have Marwaris been disproportionately successful in Indian business? Timberg approaches this by analysing patterns of migration, the community’s embeddedness in the bazaar economy, and their gradual transitio...