AustLit

'This intriguing and colourful collection of stories was written when the author first went to India in 1949 and during her return in the 1980s. A beautifully crafted book, it is startlingly fresh in style.Dorothy captures an India that is no longer-an India at the time of independence but still marked by colonialism and class. We meet the people of one of the world's most crowded and colourful cities-Bombay, and experience some of Dorothy's most unusual adventures and escapades. Dorothy often ventures where no man, let alone a woman at this time, would dare to go. Her "reality" journalism is racy but still maintains a sense of dignity and grandeur with a shrewd eye for what is hidden just below the surface.The chapter headings give a taste: The Queen's Necklace, Commuting to and from Bombay, Caught short at the Bazaar, A cup of tea at the bank British-Raj style, Dowry Dracmas, Bombay Opportunists versus Western Adventurers, That's Not Cricket Mr Kipling, The Sikistan Riddle and Lord Louis Mounbatten's Treachery, and The Myths of the British Raj.'  (Publication summary)