Rashmi Sadana is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University and author of English Heart, Hindi Heartland: The Political Life of Literature in India. Her latest book Metronama: Scenes From the Delhi Metro is a rich and intimate account of urban transformation told through the story of Delhi’s Metro. Ushnav Shroff, Copyeditor at Roli Books, exclusively interviewed her for you to know more about your author.
What is the last book you read?
Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. It’s a unique mix of memoir, history and travel writing.
A guilty pleasure?
Homemade chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven.
Where do you write? Do you have a favourite spot?
Usually at home, at my desk – where I can look out onto the street. I also like to write in libraries. I have written drafts in the Sahitya Akademi library, Santa Monica Public Library and Fenwick Library on the George Mason University campus.
What is a book that has stayed with you?
Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man. This is a book I teach so it has stayed with me in more ways than one.
Your mornings are incomplete without…
Yoga and coffee.
What apart from what you do today do you wish you could do or pursue as a career?
A judge.
Your greatest fear?
The melting ice sheets.
A trait you admire in yourself?
I like to listen to what people have to say.
Who would be the guests at your perfect dinner party?
My closest friends who are strewn across many cities and continents. To have them all in one place would be perfection.
A book you’d recommend to someone to get them out of a reading slump?
Fiction that grips – such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, or Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces.
