Third Class Ticket (Penguin Travel Library)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent portrayal of rural Indian.
Review: Being an Indian and having travelled a bit into the rural India, I have always been fascinated by the energy and enthusiasm of the rural Indian. The average urban Indian is bored, boring and nervous, but the average rural Indian is cheerful and full of energy as you can read from this book.

Indira Gandhi once said "India lives in its villages !". Though she was obviously eyeing the huge vote banks of the rural India, what she said is a fact indeed. :-)

I had heard about this book years ago and have been looking around for it ever since. I was surprised when I found it on... I did enjoy reading it, though I couldn't help noticing that the story flows rather abruptly at times and rather slowly at other times. Still I must say, Heather Wood has done a wonderful job. Sometimes it looks like she gets a little carried away with her characters.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant - a must read for anyone interested in India
Review: Third Class Ticket details a journey around India by a group from a poor rural, and tradition-bound, village. Although a supposedly factual account, this book reads like a novel and the reader becomes emotionally involved with the characters as they discard old village prejudices and have their eyes opened by the diversity of their own country. Heather Wood tells the story with a wonderful combination of humility and compassion.

For anyone with the slightest interest in India (or in people!), this book is required reading; its only drawback is that it doesn't go on for much longer than it does.