There is something to this that bespeaks a thorough first hand knowledge of India and its peoples, for it is quite a vivid and well handled little survey. Choosing for her hero, Arun, a 12 year old boy who lives with his parents and sister in a modern Bombay apartment house, Emily Hahn gives him a grandmother too and it is through her often crotchety complaints that we see a bit of the old way of life as it contrasts with the new. Arun's family is well enough off to have servants, which are plentiful in India, and we get quite a bright and bouncy picture of them all as they go about daily life and as the citizens of a nation that won its modern individualism the hard way. Visits to grandmother's country home provide good opportunities to describe festivals, rural activities and many religious practices- which Miss Hahn does very colorfully.