THE READING ROOM

The Indian Summer: Australian Anglo-Indian Stories
compiled and edited by Bernadette Earle

This is a nostalgic collection of stories, poems and history by Australian Anglo-Indians. The authors share their lives and experiences in India during the first half of the twentieth century, during and after the demise of the British Raj which led to Partition and the formation of India and Pakistan in 1947. The tales, whether amusing, vivid or dramatic, all seek to pass on to the next generation the evocation of an era which has vanished forever, but which continues to live on in the memories and affection of Anglo-Indians scattered throughout the world.

In Canada: contact Margaret Deefholts, 12715-104 Avenue, Surrey, B.C. V3V 6A5, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]Phone 604-582-9932
Only six copies available on a first come, first serve basis.
Price: Cad$20.00 plus $4.00 postage & handling.
Cheques payable to "Margaret Deefholts"

In Australia: contact Bernadette Earl, 2 Parkin Street, Torrens, ACT 2607, Australia
e-mail: [email protected] Phone 02-6286-4422
Price: Aus$19.95 plus $4.00 postage & handling (Australia) or 10.00 sterling postage & handling (U.K.)
Cheques/money orders payable to "B.I. Earle."

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White Mughals-Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India
by William Dalrymple (2002 Harper Collins)

(Book Review by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones: Courtesy "The Chowkidar" Newsletter: Spring 2003)


There can be few readers who have not yet heard of this book, or indeed who have not received it as a Christmas present, because it has had a well deserved runaway success, being broadcast as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4, and there is talk of it being made into a film.

The story that it tells has been told before, the romantic love affair and marriage of James Achilles Kirkpatrick, British Resident at the Nizam of Hyderabad's court at the end of the 18th century, to the bewitching Khair-un-Nissa, great niece of the Nizam's chief minister. But it is clear that the Author has fallen under Khair-un-Nissa's spell too, and the result is this definitive book, rich in atmosphere, beautifully written, as one would expect, and handsomely illustrated with many previously unknown paintings. One of these, an Indian miniature of Kirkpatrick, as British Resident in flowing native robes of transparent muslin and heavily jewelled, shows just how far the cross-over had gone between the 'White Mughals' and the Indian nobility they encountered and admired. (Just to show it wasn't entirely a one-way love affair there is a picture of a Lucknow dinner party, where, although he isn't identified, the chief diner in British uniform, looks very like the nawab Saadat Ali Khan, who would surprise his guests by appearing in the dress of an admiral or an English vicar.) There was, as Dalrymple rightly points out, a brief period, roughly between the handover of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa revenues to Robert Clive in 1765 and the arrival of Richard (Marquis) Wellesley as Governor General in 1798, when Europeans and Indians of a certain social class met on equal terms.

There was mutual respect among men of letters like Sir William Jones, and his Sanskrit scholars, among Europeans like Richard Johnson, who commissioned Indian artists to paint their own country and its people, and men like Antoine-Louis Polier with his love of Indian dance and music. Because of the tiny number of Europeans in India, especially those up-country, it was not surprising that they adopted the manners, customs, and in most cases, the dress of those around them. So we find oppose page 116 the rater stolid figure of John Wombwell, formerly a Yorkshire accountant, now gorgeous in printed muslin, striped cummerbund and pugri, enjoying a hookah on the banks of the Gumti.

But the subtitle of Dalrymple's book hints that this love affair was not going to last, and in fact Kirkpatrick's own romance was brought to a sudden, shocking end by his early death (at forty-one years old) in Calcutta, far from his loving wife Khair-un-Nissa. Only nineteen years old, she was now a widowed mother whose two children had already been taken from her and sent to England to be educated. Worse was to follow. On the way back from visiting her husband's tomb in Calcutta (in the now demolished North Park Street cemetery), she was seduced by the caddish Henry Russell, who had acted as assistant to Kirkpatrick in the Hyderabad Residence. Khair-un-Nissa never recovered from the death of her husband and the shameful betrayal by Russell. She died in 1813, aged twenty-seven. The story might have ended here but Dalrymple is too good a writer to leave it without a twist in the tale, which the reviewer won't spoil for those who still have the pleasure to come of reading this contemporary masterpiece.

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Take Me With You:
A Round-the-World Journey to Invite a Stranger Home
by Brad Newsham (Ballantine Books Ca$22.95)

The book blurb reads: "It was the dream of a euphoric young traveler awed by the crystalline silence of Afghanistan's Hindu Kush: "Someday when I'm rich, I'm going to invite someone from my travels to visit me in America. Twenty-five years later, Brad Newsham set out from his home in San Francisco to make good on his youthful vow-and this irresistibly charming, deeply humane book is the chronicle of what happened along the way.

Giving himself 100 days to journey round the world, Newsham began in the Philippines and immediately found himself embroiled in serendipitous adventures and unexpected relationships. An affable young Filipino father led him on a challenging hike into the secret green heart of Luzon. He savored the panorama of the Himalayas from a two-dollar hotel room in Darjeeling, drank tea with an Egyptian family in the Valley of the Kings, and struck up an impromptu friendship with a Tanzanian shopkeeper on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. And through all the exotic encounters, Newsham kept an eye out for that special person, the one stranger he would invite back to America.

As engrossing as a novel, Take Me With You is an enchanting account of one man's mission not only to see the world but to leave it just a little bit different."

Not surprisingly the book has generated appreciative comments from several well known travel journalists, including Pico Iyer who comments: "Newsham brings back treasures that every wanderer might envy. His journey, at heart, is into humanity." Jamie Zeppa (author of Beyond the Sky and Earth) adds, "No travel book can be as satisfying as the journey itself. Take Me With You brims with the very details-wondrous, startling, beautiful, strange-that makes travel so stimulating, so perplexing and so addictive."

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