3 Review(s)

STRANGE ENCOUNTERS is a book of essays and stories inspired by Sahni's experiences in Russia, India, and Bollywood. It is a collection of travel portraits, impressions and life lessons that Parikshat Sahni has accumulated in his itinerant life, moving within the golden au-tumns of Moscow to the tune of Tchaikovsky, returning to Mumbai and his roots, entering Bollywood and finding fame. Sahni chronicles stories from a life whose pendulum swings wildly from the humorous to the utterly horrifying. He confronts his thanatophobia on film sets and his atheism on an ill-prepared trek to Amarnath; he gives us drinking lessons with screenwriter friends and a profound insight into the state of culture wars in present-day Kashmir. He recalls the thrill of young love in Russia and its attendant treacheries of the heart, as well as a study of Pakistan, a history of India as the land of the many, and a look at the current political discourse through the eyes of a refugee.Written with the usual Sahni penchant for erudite storytelling techniques while still maintaining accessibility to uninitiated readers, Strange Encounters is a prismatic collection of memories, drawing its wisdom from Hindu, Judaic and Islamic philosophies; a multi-cultural, multi-faceted narrative of Parikshat Sahni's journey from being a film student in Soviet Russia to surrendering Stanislavsky for Indian cinema, finding peace and a place to belong along the way.