Rating: 
Summary: Sankes and Ladders was an entertaining and formative.
Review: If there was one thing that I wish I would have done before going to India would have been to read more books about India. Snakes and Ladders tells bluntly what the people are really about. How the government helped the people and supressed them as well. Going through this book allowed me to once again walk through the busy city streets and the quite village road. I know better to think that all of the people in the slums just live there because they have no place to go but they are people working very hard to support their families. India is beautiful, read about it.
Rating:
Summary: The Whole Masala
Review: In the past six months I've read at least twice that many books about India, and of them all "Snakes and Ladders" and Wm. Dalyrmple's "City of Djins" have been the best. Gita Mehta is an exceptional writer who manages to combine fact and emotion in a series of elequent essays. The last 50 years in Indian history - her first 50 years of independence - are a swirl of social change in a country that is aswril in its every moment. When you think "India" you must think of a dance of a billion richly colored veils. Ms. Mehta plucks veil after veil from the dance and by describing the veil she describes India. It's a remarkable achievement, and a real insiders view into the politics, arts, and life of an extremely complex nation. Ms. Mehta captures India in a short 220 pages and in doing so presents a view that other authors might take volumes to display. Highly, highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Fluffy
Review: In the past six months I've read at least twice that many books about India, and of them all "Snakes and Ladders" and Wm. Dalyrmple's "City of Djins" have been the best. Gita Mehta is an exceptional writer who manages to combine fact and emotion in a series of elequent essays. The last 50 years in Indian history - her first 50 years of independence - are a swirl of social change in a country that is aswril in its every moment. When you think "India" you must think of a dance of a billion richly colored veils. Ms. Mehta plucks veil after veil from the dance and by describing the veil she describes India. It's a remarkable achievement, and a real insiders view into the politics, arts, and life of an extremely complex nation. Ms. Mehta captures India in a short 220 pages and in doing so presents a view that other authors might take volumes to display. Highly, highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: The Whole Masala
Review: In the past six months I've read at least twice that many books about India, and of them all "Snakes and Ladders" and Wm. Dalyrmple's "City of Djins" have been the best. Gita Mehta is an exceptional writer who manages to combine fact and emotion in a series of elequent essays. The last 50 years in Indian history - her first 50 years of independence - are a swirl of social change in a country that is aswril in its every moment. When you think "India" you must think of a dance of a billion richly colored veils. Ms. Mehta plucks veil after veil from the dance and by describing the veil she describes India. It's a remarkable achievement, and a real insiders view into the politics, arts, and life of an extremely complex nation. Ms. Mehta captures India in a short 220 pages and in doing so presents a view that other authors might take volumes to display. Highly, highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Fluffy
Review: Lacking in depth and daring, this book is entirely unexceptional. Elsewhere one of the readers of Snakes and Ladders cites A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, now that is a wonderful novel. It delivers more information, more emotion, more understanding than this little book of magazine-like essays. I was very disappointed in Snakes and Ladders, thought it a waste of time and money. Read a Fine Balance, it's glorious.
Rating:
Summary: I found this book boring.
Review: Snakes and Ladders bored me to tears. I only finished it because it was assigned reading in a class. Sometimes I felt disconnected from the author for several pages until Mehta got back to the point.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific Overview
Review: Some time ago I read a really outstanding piece of fiction about India - "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry. I am very pleased to have subsequently read this.It's a collection of very easy to read short essays on Indian politics and society since Indendence (including the author watching Gandhi's funeral pass as a 5 year old). It covers many of the events forming the basis of A Fine Balance, especially The Emergency period. It also brings things more up to date. I really like reading it after A Fine Balance - I might not have been so interested, or it might not have meant so much before. In particular, things like references to crowds being herded together for Indira Gandhi's rallies etc - those sorts of events were just so vividly conveyed in Fine Balance. Mehta delivers information about the vast and fascinating mosaic that is India in bite-sized and very digestible pieces, but she certainly doesn't gloss over the uglier seams in Indian political life.
Rating: 
Summary: Introduction to India
Review: With this book the author declared her affections for India. It is done in a very unobtrusive, pleasant way. All a bit too general, but still moving. Maybe the better choice for foreigners.
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