Gifts of passage

However one defines this book, it is a work of unique interest and charm. Here are a dozen memorable pieces, dramatized episodes from the writer's experience, caught into a narrative account of her life in many far places of the earth: India, Africa, China, Indonesia, Ceylon, Spain, Afghanistan, Russia, Japan, England, the United States. Santha Rama Rau is one of the most perceptive observers of our curious and very complex world. As an Indian educated in the West, she brings a wonderful balance as well as sympathy to her vision. Surely no one in her generation has had a more varied life, has traveled more widely or lived closer to the people and events which are giving dramatic shape to this century. Her recollections, covering a period of thirty years, are informed, witty, highly diverting. In a prefatory note Miss Rama Rau says: "The stories which form the body of this volume have appeared in various magazines over a number of years. In rereading them with a view to book publication, I was interested to discover that, taken in sequence, they provide a sort of rough outline of my life story. To me, my life has seemed ordinary enough, not usual perhaps as lives go but satisfactory to my needs. Yet I know that there are many people, including some of my best friends, who consider it odd, peculiar, even a little mad. Or exotic. So it occurred to me that it would be amusing to weld together these very personal stories - each of which has a basis in a true happening - with autobiographical comment. This I have done, prefacing each story or group of stories with such details of my wandering life as seemed relevant. The result is a curious kind of book, I suspect h- a highly irregular self-exploratory essay which attempts to explain how the woman I am emerged from the child born thirty-odd years ago in Madras, India. In trying to recapture people and events, I have hoped to come upon the illuminating moments which have fixed the pattern."