2022
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Monitor Daily Podcast

August 15, 2022
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As part of my prep for interviewing Indian oral historian Aanchal Malhotra for my story on the 75th anniversary of colonial India’s partition, I purchased a copy of her latest work – 700-plus pages of interviews with the survivors and their descendants of one of the 20th century’s most searing events.

I was still in the impressive tome’s introduction, reading about Ms. Malhotra’s own family’s experience with Partition, when I stopped at this sentence: “When I began these informal explorations, my understanding was limited to the condensed version of events in my school curriculum, and the fact that in 1953 my paternal grandfather had set up a bookshop in Delhi’s Khan Market – then a refugee market, created as a commercial initiative for those who had migrated from the other side.”

A bookshop in Khan Market, I wondered. Could it be?

On my last reporting trip to India in 2019, I’d stayed in a hotel within walking distance of Khan Market, now a collection of mostly tony boutiques and restaurants catering to Delhi’s well-off. 

But on one evening stroll, I’d come upon Bahrisons bookshop, and it quickly became a refuge for me – from the oppressive 120-degree Fahrenheit heat Delhi was experiencing, for sure. But it also opened a window into Indian society by the books displayed most prominently, or by the books patrons chose to leaf through. I purchased a couple that offered insight into stories I was doing and led me to several new sources.

So when I reached Ms. Malhotra, before we got down to the business of the interview, I shared my experience with the Khan Market bookshop, and asked if it was her grandfather’s. Indeed it was.

I could hear in her voice her delight. She said my experience with the shop would put a smile on her grandfather’s face, because what I’d found there was what he’d always intended – a welcoming place open to anyone keen to learn new things and to dream.  


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Today’s stories

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Courtesy of Noor Anand Chawla
Noor Anand Chawla poses with her paternal grandfather, Col. Dalip Singh Anand, at her wedding in Delhi in 2013. A couple of years later, in 2015, he was interviewed by the 1947 Partition Archive, an oral history repository that set out to digitally record the stories of Partition survivors.

Points of Progress

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Book review

Courtesy of Dan Corjulo/Simon & Schuster
Rinker Buck pilots his flatboat Patience. As he explains in "Life on the Mississippi," one of the most difficult tasks was steering safely among long strings of barges.

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A message of love

Ross D. Franklin/AP
Navajo Code Talker Thomas Begay (third from left) stands with the Ira H. Hayes American Legion Post 84 Honor Guard prior to the Arizona State Navajo Code Talkers Day ceremony, Aug. 14, 2022, in Phoenix. During WWII, Code Talkers provided the United States Marine Corps essential military communications encoded in the Navajo language, which the enemy could not decipher. Mr. Begay is one of three Code Talkers who are still alive.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Here’s a question for you: Who is Maryrose Wood? In tomorrow’s issue, Books Editor April Austin talks to the author, who writes for 8-to-12-year-olds. Ms. Woods says her stories are “animated by hope” – something that catches the eye of adults as well.

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