Rating: 
Summary: Really About India
Review: The first thing I should carp about (and that will be the last time I do about this book)is that it has never been recommended to me by friends or at the university by my teachers. The reason could be the the rather candid and matter-of-fact approach of Ackerly to homosexuality (belonged to the circle of friends including Forster and Auden):I should have guessed immediately because the locale is 'Chokrapur' whose American counterpart would be 'Ladsville'! One is left wondering if there was no persecution of people with different sexual orientation, after all, as its widely believed and is true, the British Victorian attitude were responsible(the British enforced out-lawing of homosexuality still persists in the Indian penal code) for casting a pall of repression over an otherwise liberated and taboo-proof(especially in matters relating to sex)Indian social order? Apparently not, for Ackerly carries on and there is nothing furtive about the advances:its all grown up and consent based.The other point that should be brought up and very few readings have thrown up, is that India's cliched image about being a land of diversity(thats true here, for the Indians Ackerly comes across are of all types), colour, and paegent is totally ignored.No monuments are praised here, nor is the culture sung about:For a change here is a book about the Indian people and the Indian attitudes and psyche. Ackerly seems totally unaware of the cultural difference.He just faithfully logs the absurdities of a group of people without any prejudice and judgement. If one has read 'A Passage To India'(EM Forster), which incidentally is as empathatic towards the Indian people, tends to cast the characters into an heroic mould and makes them very rounded in the attempt to compensate(rather over-) for the contemporary British view of their subject people, one would find it refreshing and indeed intriguing that some one could empathize so deeply with another people and be so impervious to notions of difference and all the baggage British took along as luggage when they visited their colonial cousins. Ackerly carries no 'White Man's Burden' thus giving the book such a contemporary feel to it. like his pen and ink drawings, his portraits are laconic but truly convey the character of their subjects. This is truly a book about real India, that is often missed out in glossy publications about the glorious monuments, or the patronising tomes about the Indian-way of life.This should be a must-read for anyone trying to understand India or pretends to be an Indophile.The patriots in India and the ultra-patriots in saffron policing the indian culture today should be ashamed for not having read the book and equally ashamed if they have, for then they have not understood much about their past.
Rating: 
Summary: Insufferable
Review: This is one of the worst books I have ever read. The descriptions of India are not authentic. Shows no insight. It is the travelogue of a traveler who did not care to digest the surface impressions.
Rating: 
Summary: Sly and Witty
Review: This is one of those books that I will always keep by my bed as a reminder not to take myself too seriously in any capacity. I found this a terribly funny book, mostly becuase it rang so true. Ackerley is fabulous company, shockingly observant and brutally honest, even when it plunges him into bad light. We tip-toe so carefully around so many of the subjects he faces head on - racism, homosexuality, class and privilege. He doesn't flinch.
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