Life's feast with Jane Austen

Seeing Delhi through the great writer sensibilities

- Mayank Austen Soofi

Surely no enjoyment is as amiable as reading Jane Austen. The year 2025 might be one more year of busy nothings, but it does mark the 250th birth anniversary of the world's greatest drawing-room novelist. (After all, when Jane Austen's characters aren't plotting about paisa-pyar-shaadi, they are found huddled in the drawing-room, gossiping about the weather and the lace on neighbour's gown).

Jane Austen died at 41. In her brief life, she wrote only about what she knew most intimately—the lives of women and men of rural England. But her storytelling has magically transcended the hyperlocal, becoming relatable to all of us worldwide. Her heroines are our very own mummies and mausis, her heroes our jijajis and phoophajis.