In 2019 journalist Taseer wrote a cover story for Time magazine calling Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi “India’s Divider in Chief.” Months after the article’s publication, the Modi administration revoked Taseer’s immigration status, forcing him to leave India, where he had lived most of his life after being born in Britain. Losing his legal status in the country leaves Taseer emotionally adrift. His exile prevents him from visiting his beloved grandmother in the days before she dies. It also forces him to confront the tenuous relationship he has had with the place he calls home. Being a gay man and “the illegitimate son of a Pakistani” yields what the author describes, in these essays, as a lifetime spent in “the crucible of all anxieties related to belonging.” In response, Taseer uses his travels around the world to interrogate the idea of home. In Mexico, he reflects on the origins of rice to ponder the idea of authenticity. In Sri Lanka, he explores how the symbolism of the lotus became associated with political parties built on hate. In Bolivia, Mongolia, and Iraq, he attends pilgrimages in search of “the great metaphors for the ties that bind and those we are prepared to shrug off.” Taseer’s work is lyrical, heady, and vulnerable, expertly weaving memoir with research and reflection. He writes, “I woke up one day to find the bars of my prison had magically disappeared, and, far from being scared, I felt a new vein of intellectual curiosity had opened for me.”
