WALKING THE INDIAN STREETS

The author, a young British-educated Indian, revisits his home during a summer vacation from Oxford. His companion, Dom, a lively young poet, and he are extreme examples of that Anglo Indian hybrid--externally suave, witty and cynical in the best university way, but at the core, passionately compelled and bewildered by the problems facing India. Casually journeying about India and Nepal, the two young men meet Americans, Indian contemporaries, and, as they are of a privileged group, Indian leaders. And it is through one of these, Nehru, that the author's courage and hope is born, inspired by Nehru's understanding, energy and reasoned optimism. This continues the author's story begun in Face to Face (1957) which recorded his fight against blindness and is a more informal journal. There are sensitive observations but the whole, which includes some schoolboyish antics, is of less substance than the earlier, more admirable personal history. Readers of the first book, however, will probably want to know more of that story.