Read Of The Week (Aug 29 to Sept 4)

Indians in London is a chronicle of 500 years of Indian immigration to Britain — exploring the adventures of the imperial capital and how its saga fuelled the journey of Indian independence.

In September 1600, Queen Elizabeth and London are made to believe that the East India Company will change England’s fortunes forever. With William Shakespeare’s death, the heart of Albion starts throbbing with four centuries of an extraordinary Indian settlement that Arup K Chatterjee christens as Typogravia.

In the five acts that follow, we are taken past the churches destroyed by the fire of Pudding Lane; the late 18th-century curry houses in Mayfair and Marylebone; and the coming of Indian lascars, ayahs, delegates, students and lawyers in London. From the baptism of Peter Pope (in the year Shakespeare died) to the death of Catherine of Bengal; Gandhi’s experiments in Holborn to the recovery of the lost manuscript of Tagore’s Gitanjali in Baker Street; Jinnah’s trysts with Shakespeare to Nehru’s duels with destiny; Princess Sophia’s defiance of the royalty to Anand establishing the Progressive Writers’ Association in Soho; Aurobindo Ghose’s Victorian idylls to Subhas Chandra Bose’s interwar days...

Indians in London is a scintillating adventure across the Thames, the Embankment, the Southwarks, Bloomsburys, Kensingtons, Piccadillys, Wembleys and Brick Lanes that saw a nation — a cultural, historical and literary revolution that redefined London over half a millennium of Indian migrations — reborn as independent India.