IN SEARCH OF BASANT: A Letter to Amelie & Irya

DescriptionIn Search of Basant is a daughter’s intense desire to reconnect with her father, to reconcile her long buried feelings about him. It is an exhilarating journey of turmoil, change, and hope, spanning more than 200 years. Through her father’s carefully preserved correspondence, journals, postcards from a colonial era, portraits in both words and images, rare newspaper clippings from World War II, the Partition of India, and the Independence movement, etc. – woven into a vibrant tapestry of poignant photographs and moving narratives – Shobha Shroff tells a tale of India, the Marwari community, the Shroff family, and the timeless story of humanity itself, always at the crossroads of the past, present, and the future. The book germinates from France. However, the story begins from a village in the deserts of Rajasthan, India, journeys across Europe, America, and witnesses the end of the British Empire. It is about the elusive connection of self with others that makes life meaningful, of letting go of the pain and unanswered questions, holding on to the good with its tragic, comic, poignant moments. It is a gift of their precious heritage to the seventh-generation daughters of the family Amelie, an American and Irya, an Indian.Shobha Shroff, a Buddhist, is a grassroots peace activist. She is a passionate student of philosophy, history and psychology and holds a Master’s degree in Psychotherapy. Having lived all over India, steeped in Indian heritage combined with her years in multicultural UK, makes for it wonderful life rich with experiences facilitating her mentoring. In ‘In Search of Basant’, she invites her readers to go on an exhilarating journey of discovery into family roots, travelling over a vast period of time and a terrain of memories, unravelling a diamond like net of interconnectedness of people and places. Her first foray into ‘formal’ writing fulfils her motto in life, ‘Dare Mighty Things’! She hopes to excite the readers to celebrate the art of remembering and rejoicing in the beauty of ephemeral life moments that lie forgotten in the mists of time.Reviews“A fascinating and beautifully moving memoir told with a novelist’s eye, In Search of Basant: A Letter to Amelie & Irya is a quest for a father, a past, and a country, studded with memories and illuminating insights that Shobha Shroff excavates at each turn of the search.” – Jenny Xie, Winner of the 2018 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets.“This book is a heart-warming hug wrapped in nostalgia, masterfully weaving together six generations of the Shroff family’s history.” – Ridhima Kumar, Commissioning Editor, HarperCollins Publishers, India“Narratives such as Shobha Shroff’s are the need of the times: I can’t help but dream of many, many individuals, inspired by the Shroffs’ story, setting out on their own journeys of discovering the extraordinary in their own pasts, so that history repeats every time in its better version.”- Padmamalini Gali Rao, Writer & Editor