After The Empires of Indus, it's Ganesh of Delhi

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Subject: Re: About your book

From: "Alice Albinia" <alicealbinia@gmail.com>

Date: Tue, December 1, 2009 5:29 pm

To: "Sudipto Das" <sudipto@sudiptodas.com>

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Dear Sudipto,

Thank you for your nice mail. I'm really glad you enjoyed reading my book - and read it in record time! - and that it is inspiring your own writing. By the way, my next book is a novel set in Delhi, with the god Ganesh as a character, which you might find interesting. I'll let you know nearer the time when it's due out (around 2011).

Till then, all the best,

Alice

2009/11/20 Sudipto Das <sudipto@sudiptodas.com>:

Hi Alice,

I believe by this time you'd been already flooded with tons of mails from your surprised readers. So I'm not sure if this mail of mine would attract your attention.

I'd seen your book quite sometime back at a bookstore in Bangalore. I'd browsed through a few pages while sipping tea at the store and decided to get back to it later. I already had a pile of books to be read and I didn't want to make me feel worse with a bigger backlog of books. But then I saw the book again at one of my friends' place and he spoke very highly about it. Next time I was at the same book store I again saw your book and while going through the later chapters I saw a whole chapter on Kalash people and that's when I just bought the book and completed reading in record time. I'm a slow reader and I've to fight to get time out of the grinding of my work, but still I completed your book in one night - while at hospital recuperating from an operation just after I'd bought the book!!

I've been always fascinated by history and literature and lately I've been reading a lot about the ancient history of Indian subcontinent. And you can expect very well why an avid reader with investigative mind - reading deeply about India's past shrouded with mysteries and myths - would get attracted to the Kalash people. For quite some time I've been struggling to find unbiased and authentic materials about the origin of the Aryan people and the myths around it. Interestingly few chapters in your book provided me exactly with the kind of stuff and reference I was looking for. The bibliography you provided has been also very helpful. I've been reading many of the books you've referred - but I was not sure if I'm reading the right type of books.

I'd like to thank you a lot for writing such a wonderful piece of travelogue. I don't think I have read a better travelogue!! Most interestingly if Western people read your book they may get a totally different perspective of Pakistan which is now midst of all wrong things. It's high time that people within and outside Pakistan take a different perspective of their own culture and history and get things on right track. Anyway, if you happen to read my mail - please accept my best wishes. I hope to see many more similar stuff from you!! Thanks again for your wonderful book!! I await for more from you!!

Regards,

Sudipto