Travel Literature Transgresses Cultures and Boundaries: Reading Samanth Subramanian's Nonfiction Following Fish.

Travel literature intends to put to record usually the personal experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel or intentionally for the purpose of research transgressing the cultural, social, racial, ethnic, religious and gender based boundaries that exist among humanity. Travel writing is another genre that has, as its focus, accounts of real or imaginary places. The genre encompasses a number of styles that may range from the documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic, and from the humorous to the serious. It is a form whose contours are shaped by places and their histories. Critical reflection on travel literature, however, is a relatively new phenomenon. Moreover in this context, India remains a land of deserts, mountains and plains in most imaginations. Only a few of the stories about India explore its vast rivers actually mention its coasts. This paper aims at exploring an Indian journalist turned writer, Samanth Subramanian's nonfiction, Following Fish: Travels Around The Indian Coast (2010). In this attempt, he observes the cosmopolitanism and diverse influences absorbed by India's coastal cities, the withdrawing of traditional fishermen from their craft, the corresponding growth of fishing as pure and voluminous commerce, and the degradation of waters and beaches from over-fishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]