India, April 25 -- How does one remember a city? How does one pay homage to a place that was part of one's being; its sights, sounds and smells, its very air, embedded in the bones?

I just finished reading Hindi writer Mamta Kalia's memoir, Jeete Jee Allahabad (Living in Allahabad; for which she won a 2025 Sahitya Akademi Award), and I think she may have the answer. As the title suggests, the book is about Allahabad, a city where she and her husband, the Hindi writer Ravindra Kalia, lived from the 1970s to the turn of the millennium.

In her memoir, Kalia writes of its storied literary history, as the home of authors, poets, and numerous publishing houses. Some, such as Lokbharti Prakashan, were the favoured addas of Hindi writers. One m...