Nandini Das
How To Greet An Elephant
When Thomas Roe arrived in India in 1616 as James I’s first ambassador to the Mughal Empire, the English barely had a toehold in the subcontinent. At the time the kingdom was beset by inner strife and financial woes, and deeply conflicted about its own identity. In contrast, the court Roe entered was that of the ‘Great Oliphant’, the wealthy and cultured Mughal emperor, whose dominion in India was widely considered to be one of the greatest and richest empires of the world. Roe was an ambassador on the back foot. Drawn from Nandini Das’s fascinating recent book, Courting India, this is the story of that meeting and others around it, and of the role that memory – both individual and collective – plays in shaping moments of travel encounters.
https://Travel_Writing_Festival_Nandini_Das.eventbrite.co.uk
