Travel and Self -Discovery: Exploring Identity in Monisha Rajesh’s Around India in 80 Trains

Abstract

This paper examines how Monisha Rajesh’s travelogue Around India in 80 Trains (2012) becomes a site for articulating identity in flux in a postcolonial context. Drawing on theories of hybridity, liminality, and the postcolonial flâneur, the paper argues that Rajesh’s train journeys not only map physical distances but also traverse cultural, social, and psychological boundaries. By analyzing Rajesh’s narrative voice, encounters with ‘otherness,’ and the spatial‑temporal structure of train travel, this study reveals how identity emerges as relational, mobile, and negotiated. The work contributes to travel literature by offering a nuanced understanding of how diaspora, memory, and space intersect in modern India, and suggests how such narratives complicate essentialist notions of nation, culture, and belonging.