India, Aug. 2 -- This is a blend of travelogue and memoir spanning countries from Turkey to Mexico, exploring Aatish Taseer's blended identity and asking: Why do certain cities become epicentres of great historical shifts and sites of unpredictable communities? In 2019, Taseer's Indian citizenship was revoked. This loss, both practical and spiritual, sent him on a journey back to the places that shaped his identity, and led him to ask broader questions about the complex forces that make a culture and a nationality. In Istanbul, he confronted the hopes and ambitions of his former self. In Uzbekistan, he saw how what was once a majestic portal of the Silk Road is now a tourist facade. Everywhere he went, the ancient world mixed intimately with the contemporary. How do centuries of cultures evolving and overlapping, often violently, shape the people that emerge from them? In thoughtful prose that combines reportage with romanticism, Taseer gets to the human heart of the shifts and migrations that define our multicultural world....