Having just finished reading John Keay's India: a History, I have finally gathered a rough outline of histories of India and its relations to Pakistan and Bangladesh. Finally will I no longer read newspaper articles concerning India with great zest yet with ignorance as to its historical implications. Just the other day my friend asked me where did I gather such intense interest in the affairs of India, I could come up with not an obvious answer (I have no connections whatsoever with the region, except I like the food). Certainly it has to do with novels I'd read in the past, whether it be E. M. Forster's The Passage to India (the British Raj), Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance and Such a Long Journey (the untold human tragedies caused by sectarian madness and government-declared emergency), Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan (the tragedy of the partition of 1947), or Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, each novel presented itself as a microscopic phase of history during the tumultuous period. And to be able to gather up the dribs and drabs of each history as told in the novels in a streamline fashion I gain an even more profound understanding and appreciation as looking at the big picture.