Hmmm … August. Even with the topsy turvy southern hemisphere seasons to confuse my natural instincts, this time of year sees us pining for India since that magical three weeks in 2001. The feeling to return is as constant as the monsoon. It starts a cycle of your life once you go there that sees you constanly ask yourself when will we go again? Yes, the classic ever-recurring question.
Given that we can’t go, I’ve decided to do everything I can to bring India to us. Food, myth, belief, ritual, art, music … culimating with a celebration of Diwali on October 21st at the start of our holiday (at home).
My first step was to finally order a book from a small publisher in the UK (Persephone Books) that specialises in the forgotten female authors around the 1940s/1950s. There seems to be a whole tribe of great novels by great women who fell out of the publishers orbit and onto planet ‘out-of-print’ and never returned home. The book, The Far Cry by Emma Smith is a story about a young girl who travels to India with her father. Some of the reviews I have read cite Smith’s writing as summoning up the essence and sense of India. Air mail can seem to take forver.