A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes

A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes, Sam Miller, Hamish Hamilton (2014)

I was delighted with Sam Miller’s A Strange Kind of Paradise: India through Foreign Eyes. Miller works for the BBC and has written other books on India too. I don’t quite know how to describe this book. It’s a bit of history, laced with the present.  It goes backwards and forwards, and as the title suggests, it’s a take on how foreign visitors and foreigners have looked at India – outlandish and bizarre – all woven in with a delicious dose of fun and humour. Most Indians will pick up little-known nuggets about their own history from the book. For instance, I didn’t know about Hanno, the Indian elephant, presented to Pope Leo X in 1514. Hanno was the Pope’s favourite. After it died in 1516, the grief-stricken Pope was presented with a stuffed Indian rhino, which was poor consolation. In a courtyard next to the Vatican Library, Hanno’s remains were found in 1962.  But it wasn’t until the 1990s that a historian connected the dots. There are many such factoids, great fun and educative to read, covering a span of 2500 years.

This isn’t a book on India’s history. It’s a book on some aspects of history, written by someone who is in love with India, and also in love with his Indian wife.  I read this book and wondered – why doesn’t someone write such a humorous book on how Indians, and Indian travellers, have looked at the rest of the world?  Perhaps someone will.

This week’s ‘Good Books’ column is contributed by Bibek Debroy