India in Mind

Informationen zum Autor Pankaj Mishra was born in North India in 1969 and now lives in London and India. He is the author of The Romantics , which won the Los Angeles Times 's Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World . He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, Granta, and The Times Literary Supplement. Klappentext Ever since Herodotus reported that it was home to gold-digging ants! travelers have been intrigued by India in all its beguiling complexity. This superb anthology gives us some of the best fiction! nonfiction! and poetry that has been written about the world's second most populous nation over the past two centuries. From Mark Twain's puzzled fascination with Indian castes and customs! to Allen Ginsberg's awe at the country's spiritual and natural splendors! or from J. R. Ackerley's delightful recollections of his visits with an eccentric gay Maharajah! to Gore Vidal's unforgettable scene in his novel Creation ! in which his character finally meets the Buddha and is bewildered-all twenty-five selections in India in Mind reveal a place that evokes! in the traveler! reactions ranging from fear and perplexity to astonishment and wonder. Edited and with an introduction and chapter notes by the award-winning novelist Pankaj Mishra! India in Mind is a marvel of sympathy! sensitivity! and perception! not to mention outstanding writing. J. R. Ackerley (1896-1967) J. R. Ackerley was born in England. His father was a business tycoon and secretly maintained two separate households. Ackerley himself was no less unconventional and was certainly franker about his homosexuality and the greatest love of his life: his dog Tulip, who was brilliantly commemorated by Ackerley in My Dog Tulip (1956). He fought at Somme in World War I and saw his brother killed there. After serving eight months as prisoner of war in a German camp, he studied at Cambridge University where he met, among other furtive gay men, E. M. Forster, who had visited India in 1922 and had spent some time at the court of a campy Maharajah. As it turned out, the Maharajah was then looking for a secretary and had even written to H Rider Haggard for help in locating someone who resembled Olaf, a character in Haggard's The Wanderer's Necklace . The Maharajah wasn't impressed by Ackerley's good looks but fell for his poems. Ackerley later described his five months at Chhokrapur ("City of Boys"), his jokey name for the Maharajah's capital, in Hindoo Holiday (1932), which is one of the more witty products of the Anglo-Indian encounter. Ackerley shared none of the racial and political prejudices of the Englishmen of his class; the five months were, on the whole, great fun. As this excerpt shows, he and the Maharajah were perfectly matched as eccentrics. from HINDOO HOLIDAY January 7th I spoke to His Highness yesterday about a tutor for myself (he is very anxious for me to learn to speak Hindi), and taking advantage of some remark of his on Zeus and Ganymede, asked whether I might not have his valet to teach me. "I suppose he is indispensable to you?" I asked. "No, he is not indispensable to me. I will send him to you if you wish. I will send him to you tomorrow morning." "Do you think he will be pleased to come?" "Oh, he will be very pleased-especially if you pay him two or three rupees a month." After this neither of us said anything for some time, and then His Highness remarked with finality: "No, he is not at all indispensable to me." But this morning a tonga arrived at the Guest House bearing two men I had never seen before, with a letter from His Highness. It ran as follows: " Dear Mr. Ackerley ,-Here are two men who know English and Hindi very well. The bearer of ...

Autorentext
Pankaj Mishra was born in North India in 1969 and now lives in London and India. He is the author of The Romantics, which won the Los Angeles Times’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, Granta, and The Times Literary Supplement.


Klappentext
Ever since Herodotus reported that it was home to gold-digging ants, travelers have been intrigued by India in all its beguiling complexity. This superb anthology gives us some of the best fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that has been written about the world's second most populous nation over the past two centuries.

From Mark Twain's puzzled fascination with Indian castes and customs, to Allen Ginsberg's awe at the country's spiritual and natural splendors, or from J. R. Ackerley's delightful recollections of his visits with an eccentric gay Maharajah, to Gore Vidal's unforgettable scene in his novel Creation, in which his character finally meets the Buddha and is bewildered-all twenty-five selections in India in Mind reveal a place that evokes, in the traveler, reactions ranging from fear and perplexity to astonishment and wonder. Edited and with an introduction and chapter notes by the award-winning novelist Pankaj Mishra, India in Mind is a marvel of sympathy, sensitivity, and perception, not to mention outstanding writing.

Leseprobe
J. R. Ackerley

(1896-1967)

J. R. Ackerley was born in England. His father was a business tycoon and secretly maintained two separate households. Ackerley himself was no less unconventional and was certainly franker about his homosexuality and the greatest love of his life: his dog Tulip, who was brilliantly commemorated by Ackerley in My Dog Tulip (1956). He fought at Somme in World War I and saw his brother killed there. After serving eight months as prisoner of war in a German camp, he studied at Cambridge University where he met, among other furtive gay men, E. M. Forster, who had visited India in 1922 and had spent some time at the court of a campy Maharajah. As it turned out, the Maharajah was then looking for a secretary and had even written to H Rider Haggard for help in locating someone who resembled Olaf, a character in Haggard's The Wanderer's Necklace. The Maharajah wasn't impressed by Ackerley's good looks but fell for his poems. Ackerley later described his five months at Chhokrapur ("City of Boys"), his jokey name for the Maharajah's capital, in Hindoo Holiday (1932), which is one of the more witty products of the Anglo-Indian encounter. Ackerley shared none of the racial and political prejudices of the Englishmen of his class; the five months were, on the whole, great fun. As this excerpt shows, he and the Maharajah were perfectly matched as eccentrics.


from HINDOO HOLIDAY

January 7th

I spoke to His Highness yesterday about a tutor for myself (he is very anxious for me to learn to speak Hindi), and taking advantage of some remark of his on Zeus and Ganymede, asked whether I might not have his valet to teach me.

"I suppose he is indispensable to you?" I asked.

"No, he is not indispensable to me. I will send him to you if you wish. I will send him to you tomorrow morning."

"Do you think he will be pleased to come?"

"Oh, he will be very pleased-especially if you pay him two or three rupees a month."

After this neither of us said anything for some time, and then His Highness remarked with finality:

"No, he is not at all indispensable to me."

But this morning a tonga arrived at the Guest House bearing two men I had never seen before, with a letter from His Highness. It ran as follows:

"Dear Mr. Ackerley,-Here are two men who know English and Hindi very well. The bearer of this is called Gupta, he is my assistant librarian of Hindi books; and the other called Champa Lal, he is my icemaker. You can choose any one of them, and they will do for preliminary work well. Perha…

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