A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes
Sam Miller
Hamish Hamilton. First published 2014.
Sam Miller was the BBC correspondent in New Delhi, and now part of the BBC world Service Trust, a 'charitable' organisation. In this book, which is a kind of a light historical travelogue, with large dollops of personal history, his affection for India shines through. The affection appears slightly condescending, but perhaps that's because any European encounter with the country, especially the India of the middle class and the poor, is bound to be asymmetrical. No matter how much an European observer of India, especially a British one, tries to empathize, there is in the background always the understanding that he, the observer, can always retreat to a more materially comfortable life, when such an escape route is not available to the the observed. Furthermore, that comfortable life was, at least in part, made possible by the bad treatment of the ancestors of the observed by his own. The fact that this book transcends those limitations is due to its patently sincere and implicit appreciation of these facts. Thus, Miller is not judgmental at all. His attitude towards India is something like that of Bill Bryson towards USA.
The book describes a selection of writings and attitudes about India as found in non-Indian sources, beginning with the Greek Megasthenes and his contemporaneous account of Mauryan times, to the recent impressions of Richard Attenborough (Gandhi), Paul Scott (The Jewel in the Crown) and M.M. Kaye (The Far Pavilions). Miller uses quotations or reviews of such writings (and impressions on other media) as points from which to jump off into descriptions of his travels as he visits the places mentioned in those writings. Here the book is often a typical backpacker's travelogue, extracts from the diary of a sun-burned and sweating European in shorts and dirty T-shirt, determinedly 'doing India' in his gap year. And between the chapters Miller gives us interludes where he describes his deeply personal encounters with India - he married an Indian (at least - part Parsi, part Greek, from Goa and Bombay) and had children and separated...
I enjoyed reading the book, and though written in a light-hearted tone, with no attempt at any analyses - political, social or cultural - I learned some little bit of stuff about Indian history from it. As just one example, in the very first chapter Miller narrates his travels to Central India to look for the Greek column erected by Heliodorous in an otherwise empty field near Bhopal as a gift to the local king some 2000 years ago. There are others such titbits, including some details about St. Thomas Mount here in Chennai I was not previously aware of. Altogether, this is a book that cannot be slotted easily into any special genre, except that I have come across more than just a couple of others which are similar in tone, attitude and subject matter - 'The Great Hedge of India', as just one other example.
Sam Miller was the BBC correspondent in New Delhi, and now part of the BBC world Service Trust, a 'charitable' organisation. In this book, which is a kind of a light historical travelogue, with large dollops of personal history, his affection for India shines through. The affection appears slightly condescending, but perhaps that's because any European encounter with the country, especially the India of the middle class and the poor, is bound to be asymmetrical. No matter how much an European observer of India, especially a British one, tries to empathize, there is in the background always the understanding that he, the observer, can always retreat to a more materially comfortable life, when such an escape route is not available to the the observed. Furthermore, that comfortable life was, at least in part, made possible by the bad treatment of the ancestors of the observed by his own. The fact that this book transcends those limitations is due to its patently sincere and implicit appreciation of these facts. Thus, Miller is not judgmental at all. His attitude towards India is something like that of Bill Bryson towards USA.
The book describes a selection of writings and attitudes about India as found in non-Indian sources, beginning with the Greek Megasthenes and his contemporaneous account of Mauryan times, to the recent impressions of Richard Attenborough (Gandhi), Paul Scott (The Jewel in the Crown) and M.M. Kaye (The Far Pavilions). Miller uses quotations or reviews of such writings (and impressions on other media) as points from which to jump off into descriptions of his travels as he visits the places mentioned in those writings. Here the book is often a typical backpacker's travelogue, extracts from the diary of a sun-burned and sweating European in shorts and dirty T-shirt, determinedly 'doing India' in his gap year. And between the chapters Miller gives us interludes where he describes his deeply personal encounters with India - he married an Indian (at least - part Parsi, part Greek, from Goa and Bombay) and had children and separated...
I enjoyed reading the book, and though written in a light-hearted tone, with no attempt at any analyses - political, social or cultural - I learned some little bit of stuff about Indian history from it. As just one example, in the very first chapter Miller narrates his travels to Central India to look for the Greek column erected by Heliodorous in an otherwise empty field near Bhopal as a gift to the local king some 2000 years ago. There are others such titbits, including some details about St. Thomas Mount here in Chennai I was not previously aware of. Altogether, this is a book that cannot be slotted easily into any special genre, except that I have come across more than just a couple of others which are similar in tone, attitude and subject matter - 'The Great Hedge of India', as just one other example.
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