New Books Network: Ananya Vajpeyi on "Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities"

Date: February 23, 2026
Host: Lukas
Guest: Ananya Vajpeyi

Overview

In this episode, Lukas interviews writer and scholar Ananya Vajpeyi about her new book Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities (Women Unlimited Ink, 2025). The conversation explores how Vajpeyi’s experiences across different cities, cultures, and languages have shaped her writing and understanding of place. The talk moves from personal memories and linguistic identity to broader themes of pain, displacement, architecture, love of place, gender, historical consciousness, and loss. Throughout, Vajpeyi’s rich, reflective, and deeply personal prose is foregrounded, providing a window into why and how place matters—politically, aesthetically, and morally.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Early Experiences and the Formation of Place (00:31–06:52)

• Childhood Migrations: Vajpeyi narrates her early moves from India to Mexico, then the U.S., and back to Delhi. The instability of language—losing Spanish, acquiring Hindi, Punjabi, French—marked the transitions.
  • "I think...one of the ways in which I related to a place and had a sense of a change of place was linguistic." (Ananya, 03:55)
• Memory and Reconstruction: She reflects on how much of her earliest memories are shaped or "co-constructed" through family stories, photos, and dreams, as in her poignant connection to the film Roma that evoked visceral memories of 1970s Mexico City.
  • "I just felt like such a shock of recognition of the place somehow. I just felt like everything was very familiar." (Ananya, 05:40)

Language as Both Window and Barrier (06:52–13:17)

• Multilingual Upbringing: Vajpeyi’s development as a writer was deeply embedded in a multilingual environment—English, Hindi, Punjabi, French, Italian—and in exposure to earlier, non-standard forms of Hindi through her poet-scholar father.
  • "I began writing...as soon as I could write...I had a pretty multilingual environment and exposure and that was something that my parents valued a lot." (Ananya, 07:31)
• Formal Study & Philology: Later academic paths led her to study linguistics and philology, increasing awareness of the complexity and history carried by language.
  • "The formal element of my...linguistic education really began in my masters...and I became more interested, you know, formally in, in linguistics." (Ananya, 12:12)
• Language as a Bridge, but Also a Limit, for Empathy: Vajpeyi discusses how language allows some access to others’ pain, but always imperfectly.
  • "At the core of it, there is an inexpressible expressibility, an inexpressible core of individual experience that it's easiest to understand when talking about pain, I think." (Ananya, 14:30)

Pain, Testimony, and the Limits of Language (13:17–26:26)

• Expressing Pain: Language can approach, but not fully arrive at, expressing physical or emotional pain; metaphors and images serve as proxies but are always asymptotic.
  • "You're able to approach it through language, but maybe you never quite arrive at it." (Ananya, 14:33)
• Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Testimony: While language can fail (as in trauma or torture), non-verbal events—visual images, places—offer alternative, and sometimes more direct, ways of bearing witness.
  • "Both walking through places...focusing hard on linguistic communication and the breakdowns...and looking at non linguistic ways...are all elements that I've kind of used in a very serious way as a writer." (Ananya, 24:39)

Violence, Displacement, and Political Space (26:26–40:55)

• Witnessing Violence in Place: Vajpeyi speaks to her experiences in places marked by violence—European concentration camps, the Kashmir conflict—and how memorials and trauma are hidden or revealed in the landscape.
  • "Kashmir...conceals its wounds in lovely flowers and snow peaks like a woman concealing her gashes and bruises...with clever makeup." (Lukas quoting Ananya, 27:00)
• Refugee Camps vs. Camps of Death: Contrasts are made between European camps of extermination and Indian refugee camps, examining how architecture and intention shape survival or destruction.
  • "Refugee camps are actually spaces for life to continue...not a place for the end of living." (Ananya, 36:10)
• Architecture and Social Order: Urban space in India, particularly in Mumbai, is analyzed as both revealing progressive ideals and entrenched caste boundaries.
  • "Caste is such a thing that it really permeates and structures space...they're somehow disenfranchised or...excluded..." (Ananya, 41:35)

The Love of Place (43:32–50:07)

• Attachment and Belonging: Vajpeyi discusses how profound attachment to place—country, city, home—is foundational to civilization and personal identity.
  • "It's like, you know, putting your hand on the pulse of what makes people tick...what shows whether they're alive or not is whether they get to be at home." (Ananya, 46:12)
• Loss and Urbanization: The pain and conflict of mass displacements (Partition, contemporary migrations) are situated as central to Indian—and global—experience.

Gender, Mobility, and Safety (50:07–56:04)

• Freedom and Constraints: Vajpeyi candidly describes the persistent physical and social limitations facing women versus men when traveling and inhabiting cities, past and present.
  • "Being a woman or being in a woman's body automatically restricts your mobility...you always have to weigh the danger to yourself." (Ananya, 51:21)
• Historical Time Travel: Reflections on who gets to be a "traveler" in history—nearly always men—and the privilege and limitations inherent in imagining oneself across time and place.

Monuments, Memory, and Consolation (56:04–64:57)

• Monuments as Temporal Anchors: Landmarks serve as both navigational guides and vessels of memory, providing continuity through change.
  • "Monuments are like a good heuristic for a historian also for a traveler." (Ananya, 59:55)
• Language, Text, and Endurance: While people fade, language (and texts) can preserve the voice and presence of the lost, as with her father’s poetry.
  • "It gives me great comfort...that his poetry is always with me, you know, till I die...his work lives in some very real way." (Ananya, 62:13)

The Melancholy of Loss and the Illusion of Return (64:57–71:31)

• Transience and Melancholy: The essays often dwell, consciously, in a mood of loss—of people, places, former selves—and the impossibility of truly returning to what was, even when physically revisiting.
  • "Every time you return, you're different and the place is different and how you feel about it and what happens is different." (Ananya, 67:13)
• Poetry, Memory, and Mortality: The conversation closes with the notion that, while places and words may outlast individuals, they too are subject to reinterpretation and ultimately, to loss.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "I think...one of the ways in which I related to a place and had a sense of a change of place was linguistic." —Ananya (03:55)
• "At the core of it, there is an inexpressible expressibility, an inexpressible core of individual experience that it's easiest to understand when talking about pain, I think." —Ananya (14:30)
• "Refugee camps are actually spaces for life to continue...howsoever altered it is...It's still a place for shelter, rehabilitation, and survival." —Ananya (36:10)
• "Being a woman or being in a woman's body, I think, automatically restricts your mobility, it restricts your freedom." —Ananya (51:21)
• "Monuments are like a good heuristic for a historian also for a traveler ... They have a cartographic value. They also have a chronological value." —Ananya (59:55)
• "It gives me great comfort and great solace that his poetry is always with me...I have his poetry. So there's a level at which he's present to me." —Ananya (62:13)
• "Every time you return, you're different and the place is different and how you feel about it...some people are not there anymore. And some things have changed." —Ananya (67:13)
• "There's this overwhelming kind of theme of loss. And there is a kind of melancholic mood in a lot of the essays. I think that's correct. I mean, that's a correct reading." —Ananya (66:32)
• Memorable Image: The transforming of her father’s presence into “a collage of memories” via death rituals—a metaphor for the ambiguity about what remains and what is lost. (71:31)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Personal Memories and Language: 00:31–06:52
• Writing, Multilingualism, and Family: 07:31–13:17
• Pain, Empathy, and the Limits of Language: 13:17–20:26
• Witnessing Violence and the Meaning of Place: 26:26–40:55
• Architecture and Indian Social Space: 39:21–43:32
• Love and Belonging to Place: 43:32–50:07
• Gender, Mobility, and Time Travel: 50:07–59:55
• Monuments, Memory, and Consolation: 56:04–64:57
• Loss and Returning to Places: 64:57–71:31

Conclusion

This episode offers a deeply evocative, intellectually rich meditation on how place shapes—and is shaped by—language, history, trauma, identity, and memory. Vajpeyi’s interdisciplinary perspective weaves together personal narrative, political history, and philosophical reflection, making Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities a compelling exploration of how we navigate, love, and mourn the cities and languages that make us who we are.