By Roshan Pussewela –
In a world increasingly defined by curated experiences, algorithm-driven itineraries, and digital storyboards, genuine travel writing—deep, dirty, and daring—has all but vanished. It is within this sterile landscape that Vishnu Vasu’s new Sinhala travelogue Made in India erupts like a wild weed through polished pavement. This is not a tourist’s tale. It is a confession, a cultural autopsy, and a road diary of a man unafraid to walk barefoot through the contradictions of one of the world’s most complex nations.
In his recent review in the Colombo Telegraph and Daily FT, respected economist and former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank, Mr. W. A. Wijewardena, draws our attention to the unique character of Vasu’s narrative. He praises the book’s earthy “worm’s-eye view” of India—a bold contrast to the bird’s-eye gazes of elite commentators and spiritual seekers who arrive looking for “the soul of India” and leave with little more than curated enlightenment.
Vasu offers no such mysticism. His India is not the India of Rumi quotes and Taj Mahal sunsets. It is the India of overburdened trains, bureaucratic bribery, caste-based suppression, and roadside dhabas where philosophy is spoken in cigarette smoke and chai steam. He doesn’t attempt to decode India; instead, he allows India to baffle and intoxicate him, as it will anyone who dares to step off the brochure page.
A Travelogue That Offends—and Awakes
Vasu’s power lies in his willingness to be uncomfortable. Where many travel writers insulate themselves with cultural sensitivity and journalistic neutrality, Vasu plunges into the grey zones—those moral and political no-man’s lands where truths are messy and questions lead to more questions.
He witnesses, for example, the commercialisation of Godse’s legacy—yes, the very man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi—and reports on the unsettling normalisation of such fringe ideologies. These are not mere political footnotes. They are barometers of a society wrestling with its own moral compass. Vasu makes no attempt to editorialise with academic distance. Instead, he reacts, he reflects, and sometimes, he recoils.
This is where Mr. Wijewardena’s analysis becomes invaluable. He frames Vasu’s style as one of a “capitalist Bohemian”—an almost contradictory identity, yet strikingly accurate. Vasu is a rebel who understands money, a cultural observer who doesn’t pretend to be above the system. He is, in some ways, the embodiment of the modern South Asian intellectual—shaped by economic pragmatism, political cynicism, and emotional honesty. He has little time for ideological purists, and even less for sanctimonious leftism when it is untethered from the realities of everyday life.
A Literary Style Rooted in the Sri Lankan Psyche
What makes Made in India so compelling is not just what it documents, but how it documents. Vasu writes with a mix of irreverence, sharp satire, and intimate self-awareness. His style is deeply Sri Lankan—blending humour and heartache, jest and judgement. He uses language not as a protective layer, but as a scalpel. He cuts into social wounds, but never without first exposing his own skin.
In this way, he carries on the tradition of Sri Lankan subversive literature, but on foreign soil. His India becomes a mirror, not only for the Indian condition, but also for our own. The class systems, the cultural tokenism, the pretence of democracy underpinned by moneyed power—it all hits close to home. The only difference is the dialect.
He writes like someone who’s travelled not to escape, but to confront. He does not moralise, nor does he pretend to be neutral. He is on the street, sweating and swearing, dodging philosophical potholes and ideological speed bumps. In doing so, he builds a travelogue that is closer to a memoir of becoming—a human experience punctuated by awkward conversations, strange nights, and moments of revelation that come not from epiphanies, but from exhaustion.
India as a Stage, Vasu as Its Rogue Narrator
India, in Vasu’s hands, becomes a performance. Not a stage-managed play, but an improvised act of survival. His characters—be they street vendors, police officers, sadhus, or drunk philosophers—don’t serve to illustrate a thesis. They live and breathe within the pages. And like India itself, they resist simplification.
And perhaps this is where I must speak not just as a reader, but as a friend.
Vishnu Vasu is someone I know closely. I’ve seen in him the same relentless curiosity and critical compassion that runs through this book. What you read in Made in India isn’t just a persona—it’s the man. Honest, bold, full of contradictions, and never afraid to laugh at life’s absurdities. This isn’t just travel writing. It’s a form of self-revelation that dares to remain vulnerable.
At a time when Sri Lanka too is undergoing its own reckoning—with memory, identity, and power—books like Made in India remind us that truth is not always found in stillness, but in movement. And sometimes, to understand ourselves better, we must allow ourselves to get lost in someone else’s country.
