Bazaar

In Bazaar, his new memoir, Robert Dessaix makes four flamboyant, kaleidoscopic forays into obsession, glamour, genius and ritual, calling them ‘choreographed performances of my inner self in an Indian setting’.

Dessaix takes us back to Mogul times to meet Thomas Coryate, a parson’s son from Somerset, who walked from Constantinople to India in 1612, but we also encounter many other odd souls, including John Lang (Australia’s first published novelist), a modern Swiss yoga teacher and an Indian fortune-teller.

We visit Pushkar in Rajasthan, where Brahma makes the world out of a lotus petal; Haridwar on the Ganges to join a Hindu bathing festival; Rishikesh, the yoga capital of the world to confront the hippy-dippy; and Mussoorie in the Himalayan foothills to frolic in a raj hill-station.

A journey through time ‘more circular than linear’, Bazaar reveals its treasures through Robert Dessaix’s irresistible storytelling voice. Like Thomas Coryate, he refuses ‘to let life pass him by—not for an instant’.

This wonderful book is about the zest for being alive.