What do you think?
Rate this book
A strange kind of paradise: India through foreign eyes
A strange kind of India through foreign eyes
Hardcover
First published February 15, 2014
24 people are currently reading
417 people want to read
About the author
Sam Miller
130 books11 followersThere is more than one author with this name
Sam Miller was born and brought up in London. He studied History at Cambridge University and Politics at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, before joining the BBC in 1986, for which he has worked, on and off, ever since. In the early 1990s he was the BBC World Service TV and radio correspondent in Delhi, and on his return to the UK in 1993 was the presenter of the BBC ’s current affairs programme, South Asia Report. Later he became the head of the Urdu service and subsequently Managing Editor, South Asia. He was posted back to Delhi in 2002 and has remained there ever since. He is the author of Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity (2009) and Blue Guide: India (2012).
Sam Miller was born and brought up in London. He studied History at Cambridge University and Politics at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, before joining the BBC in 1986, for which he has worked, on and off, ever since. In the early 1990s he was the BBC World Service TV and radio correspondent in Delhi, and on his return to the UK in 1993 was the presenter of the BBC ’s current affairs programme, South Asia Report. Later he became the head of the Urdu service and subsequently Managing Editor, South Asia. He was posted back to Delhi in 2002 and has remained there ever since. He is the author of Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity (2009) and Blue Guide: India (2012).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
April 29, 2014
Long resident of India and married to a Parsi, the author is a half insider and his review of how westerners (and Chinese in the main) have imagined India since their first contact is a useful addition to writing on the subject. His main point is that foreigners 'construct' India in the context of their needs at that point. Okay, end of the point, now you don't need to read the book!!
I'm kidding. This is infotainment. The fun is in the anecdote weaving and short trips up the side valleys. Good fun if you are looking for a skilled easy read. Not very good if you are middle aged, reasonably well read, and reasonably perceptive. Even less useful if you are seeking great life transforming revelation.
I'd say take it on a beach vacation and you will not regret the decision.
I'm kidding. This is infotainment. The fun is in the anecdote weaving and short trips up the side valleys. Good fun if you are looking for a skilled easy read. Not very good if you are middle aged, reasonably well read, and reasonably perceptive. Even less useful if you are seeking great life transforming revelation.
I'd say take it on a beach vacation and you will not regret the decision.
July 15, 2017
William Dalrymple called this book a "love letter to India". I fully agree. "A Strange Kind of Paradise" isn't intended as a history text-book, nor a dry list of "facts" (*cough* Romila Thapar *cough*).
What you have in your hands though, is an incomparable collection of selected writings from non-indian writers about India as they experienced it through the ages - from the earliest Greek visitors to the modern American ones. From wondrous tales of fantastical tribes (one rumored to have their face on their chest, another took for its "food" the aromas of fruits and flowers) and animals (some dig up gold!) to modern rants about how this country is all about "shit and filth", it's all here. Megasthenes' amazement the Mauryan palace of Chandragupta to Inman's (oatmeal.com) characterization of India as "a sun-scorched, scabbed asshole of a country", it's all here. From respect to awe to disillusionment to hatred to derision and scorn, you can find it all.
And yet, for all the facts and profusion of narratives Miller puts in his book, it never feels heavy (nor does the book itself despite being 400 pages long. :D). It's a sumptuous feast, a veritable smorgasbord of stories, incidents, anecdotes and experiences. You get a taste of everything that has been said of India through the millennia. And all of this is beautifully interspersed with Miller's own experiences in, and of, India. It is, at the same time, a history and a part autobiography, a discovery of India and of the self. But not once will you want to skip a page of the author's journey to get on with your own. From Tony Mango to BBC-Delhi, Miller's own story is as readable as the foreign narratives, and at times, a lot more pleasant.
You'll find them all here - Fa-Hsien, ibn Batuta, Babur, Macaulay, Twain, Kipling, Rossellini (did you know he made a film on India?) and so many more. From the famous to the almost unknown, from mythical visitors who made India their home to real ones who never even visited, so many peoples voices are presented to us. And India is there, in all its beauty and ugliness, its grandeur and meanness, its simplicity and its convolutedness, its spirituality and its eroticism. You see how people have come to this land searching for their own idea of India, and for the most part they found it, whatever it might have been.
In the end you realize (unlike many narrators) that India is not a single concept a genie to be bottled up in one, well, bottle. It never has been. People who thought they had found India had only found the facet they had come to search for here, nothing more. People who didn't find theirs felt cheated and betrayed. But India was, and is, more than the sum of all that people came here for. From spices to gold to sex to yoga to mysticism to elephants and snake charmers to cheap labour to religion to peace.........you can find pretty much all you want to here (yes, open-air shitters too). But if you attain your goal and go away thinking that you have seen and understood the "real" India, then you are just like those (quite racial) blind mice of Indostan.
And this is the parting message Miller leaves you with. And herein, as he explains, lies the charm and the unsightliness of India. And therein, in that moment of understanding, lies the beauty of Miller's paean.
I would definitely recommend this book. It's gentle, funny, sarcastic, and above all, honest. Read it and get a taste of this mass of contradictions you see as a rhomboidal piece of land "somewhere in Asia", and maybe you will be able to judge it better than Inman.
What you have in your hands though, is an incomparable collection of selected writings from non-indian writers about India as they experienced it through the ages - from the earliest Greek visitors to the modern American ones. From wondrous tales of fantastical tribes (one rumored to have their face on their chest, another took for its "food" the aromas of fruits and flowers) and animals (some dig up gold!) to modern rants about how this country is all about "shit and filth", it's all here. Megasthenes' amazement the Mauryan palace of Chandragupta to Inman's (oatmeal.com) characterization of India as "a sun-scorched, scabbed asshole of a country", it's all here. From respect to awe to disillusionment to hatred to derision and scorn, you can find it all.
And yet, for all the facts and profusion of narratives Miller puts in his book, it never feels heavy (nor does the book itself despite being 400 pages long. :D). It's a sumptuous feast, a veritable smorgasbord of stories, incidents, anecdotes and experiences. You get a taste of everything that has been said of India through the millennia. And all of this is beautifully interspersed with Miller's own experiences in, and of, India. It is, at the same time, a history and a part autobiography, a discovery of India and of the self. But not once will you want to skip a page of the author's journey to get on with your own. From Tony Mango to BBC-Delhi, Miller's own story is as readable as the foreign narratives, and at times, a lot more pleasant.
You'll find them all here - Fa-Hsien, ibn Batuta, Babur, Macaulay, Twain, Kipling, Rossellini (did you know he made a film on India?) and so many more. From the famous to the almost unknown, from mythical visitors who made India their home to real ones who never even visited, so many peoples voices are presented to us. And India is there, in all its beauty and ugliness, its grandeur and meanness, its simplicity and its convolutedness, its spirituality and its eroticism. You see how people have come to this land searching for their own idea of India, and for the most part they found it, whatever it might have been.
In the end you realize (unlike many narrators) that India is not a single concept a genie to be bottled up in one, well, bottle. It never has been. People who thought they had found India had only found the facet they had come to search for here, nothing more. People who didn't find theirs felt cheated and betrayed. But India was, and is, more than the sum of all that people came here for. From spices to gold to sex to yoga to mysticism to elephants and snake charmers to cheap labour to religion to peace.........you can find pretty much all you want to here (yes, open-air shitters too). But if you attain your goal and go away thinking that you have seen and understood the "real" India, then you are just like those (quite racial) blind mice of Indostan.
And this is the parting message Miller leaves you with. And herein, as he explains, lies the charm and the unsightliness of India. And therein, in that moment of understanding, lies the beauty of Miller's paean.
I would definitely recommend this book. It's gentle, funny, sarcastic, and above all, honest. Read it and get a taste of this mass of contradictions you see as a rhomboidal piece of land "somewhere in Asia", and maybe you will be able to judge it better than Inman.
February 18, 2019
Indians have been particularly complacent in recording history or putting down their observations to paper, or palm leaves, or whatever. India boasts of early mathematicians and philosophers who were at par with Greek scholars, but the position of Herodotus remains uncontested. Whatever history the modern historians compiled was from the accounts of visitors and invaders who came here. Early Buddhist texts and a rational analysis of the Puranas supported their findings and the modern Indian historiography was born. This book is the tale of a 2500 year-old engagement between foreigners and India that begins with the ancient Greeks. This book is an excellent survey of the writing from Megasthenes onwards to the twenty-first century movies and cultural interactions. Sam Miller is a journalist who worked with the BBC in Delhi for many years. He has married from India and stays here as an adopted son-in-law of the country.
Miller notes a crucial difference of focus on the accounts of ancient and modern visitors to India. The ancient ones were almost universally of the view that it was a land of untold wealth, rich in resources and jewels. Some accounts talk about gold-digging ants and places where diamonds can simply be picked from the ground. In the modern period, a U-turn is seen in the crux of the narrative where almost all of them present horrific tales of grinding, dehumanizing poverty. Did the rich country gradually fall into misery as a result of countless raids of loot and plunder let loose by the invaders? The author tactfully stops short of asking this pertinent question but instead presents the reasons behind the modern perspective. In between the two eras, there appeared a period in which India remained a misty eminence for most mediaeval Europeans while China surged ahead out of the shadows. This happened as a corollary to the Mongol invasions to Europe in which the glimmer of their sword blades reflected off streams of blood as far away as Hungary and Bulgaria. The stamp of poverty was affixed on India's visage in the early eighteenth century when the first sustained identification of it as a land of great poverty, rather than of great wealth came to pass. This image was largely transmitted through the writings of missionaries, who won most of their converts from the poorest of the poor, upon the supply of food and other items of material support. Some of the converts were in fact derisively called ‘Rice Christians’. Missionaries would send letters back home, begging for money to support the new converts. This picture got etched into the European mind during the colonial days.
Of all the visitors mentioned in this book, that of Tripitaka, variously known as Hiuen Tsang or Xuansang is worthy of remark. He was a Chinese monk who made the long and arduous overland journey from his homeland to India in the seventh century CE. The aim of his visit was to call on the holy sites of Buddhism and to find ancient Buddhist texts. He was the source of the greatest contact between the two countries from the third to the seventh centuries CE. Tripitaka made the first description of the giant rock-cut Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan which were blasted away in 2001 in a mad rush of religious bigotry by the Taleban. For some reason, Miller continues to refer to the Chinese pilgrim by his Indian name, Tripitaka. A part of his skull was gifted to India in 1956 as a piece of goodwill measure by the nascent People's Republic of China and personally handed over by the Dalai Lama, who accompanied the official delegation led by the premier, Zhou Enlai. It still remains under lock and key in the Patna Museum. His narrative contains a detailed description of the theological university at Nalanda which housed 10,000 monks in multi-storeyed chambers. This seat of learning was vandalised and burnt down by a Muslim warlord in the twelfth century when he discovered that there was no copy of the Quran in its library (p.69). A Tibetan pilgrim visited the site soon after in 1235 and what he saw was heart-breaking. He found one aged monk teaching pupils among the charred remains of the once magnificent buildings. It soon went into oblivion and was rediscovered only in the nineteenth century with the help of an English translation of Tripitaka’s work.
Miller dwells at some length on the Orientalist and Anglicist dichotomy in the Western viewpoint on India. We come across some westerners who are starry-eyed on Indian ideals and artefacts while another group treats it with disdain and contempt. The Orientalists is of the persuasion that the West has much to learn from India. Their images of the country was born of its pre-colonial past, an ancient civilization waiting to be discovered, its artefacts collected and categorised. The Anglicists’ image of India was adapted from the colonial period with all its attendant ills. The land they were conquering became a testbed where they could experiment with their ideas on Christianity, progress and education. William Jones, who founded the Asiatic Society, belongs to the former and Wilberforce who preached against slavery, the historian James Mill and Thomas Macaulay belong to the latter group. Macaulay went a step further, jeeringly remarking that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. He also wanted to play with the new education system the British was implementing in India that sought to create a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect. Indeed, it was successful in churning out a group of Anglophone people who have lost touch with the country’s mores and were often disparagingly remarked upon as Macaulay's children.
The constant refrain of all modern visitors to India had been its dirtiness - not of the land, but of the actions of its inhabitants for which poverty is one of the reasons. The wide practice of open defecation made it a foul place even for those who are impressed by its otherwise impeccable attributes. V S Naipaul notes with disgust in An Area of Darkness that ‘Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate, mostly, beside the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover’ (p.361). In fact, the euphemistic term for defecation in the Malayalam language is ‘going outside’! However, open defecation is in its final laps with the countrywide coverage of the Swachh Bharat initiative. We hope that future visitors won't have a bone of contention at least on this point.
The chapter titles are a pastiche of old travel books in which the author's exploits are displayed in a brief way. The exceeding number of footnotes somewhat repels the readers from the main narrative. Miller has been very open in handling delicate points that offend puritanical readers. There are some ribald quotes from travel lore on which discretion on the part of faint-hearted readers is advised. He also provides a taste of the imperial erotica in a matter-of-fact way. Miller’s vocabulary is amazingly comprehensive and hints of his rich credentials to his career in journalism. The author’s own biography is also presented through a string of intermissions at the end of each chapter. That way, Miller becomes a part of his own narrative stream by which his experiences enrich the abundant material compiled by foreign eyes.
The book is highly recommended.
Miller notes a crucial difference of focus on the accounts of ancient and modern visitors to India. The ancient ones were almost universally of the view that it was a land of untold wealth, rich in resources and jewels. Some accounts talk about gold-digging ants and places where diamonds can simply be picked from the ground. In the modern period, a U-turn is seen in the crux of the narrative where almost all of them present horrific tales of grinding, dehumanizing poverty. Did the rich country gradually fall into misery as a result of countless raids of loot and plunder let loose by the invaders? The author tactfully stops short of asking this pertinent question but instead presents the reasons behind the modern perspective. In between the two eras, there appeared a period in which India remained a misty eminence for most mediaeval Europeans while China surged ahead out of the shadows. This happened as a corollary to the Mongol invasions to Europe in which the glimmer of their sword blades reflected off streams of blood as far away as Hungary and Bulgaria. The stamp of poverty was affixed on India's visage in the early eighteenth century when the first sustained identification of it as a land of great poverty, rather than of great wealth came to pass. This image was largely transmitted through the writings of missionaries, who won most of their converts from the poorest of the poor, upon the supply of food and other items of material support. Some of the converts were in fact derisively called ‘Rice Christians’. Missionaries would send letters back home, begging for money to support the new converts. This picture got etched into the European mind during the colonial days.
Of all the visitors mentioned in this book, that of Tripitaka, variously known as Hiuen Tsang or Xuansang is worthy of remark. He was a Chinese monk who made the long and arduous overland journey from his homeland to India in the seventh century CE. The aim of his visit was to call on the holy sites of Buddhism and to find ancient Buddhist texts. He was the source of the greatest contact between the two countries from the third to the seventh centuries CE. Tripitaka made the first description of the giant rock-cut Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan which were blasted away in 2001 in a mad rush of religious bigotry by the Taleban. For some reason, Miller continues to refer to the Chinese pilgrim by his Indian name, Tripitaka. A part of his skull was gifted to India in 1956 as a piece of goodwill measure by the nascent People's Republic of China and personally handed over by the Dalai Lama, who accompanied the official delegation led by the premier, Zhou Enlai. It still remains under lock and key in the Patna Museum. His narrative contains a detailed description of the theological university at Nalanda which housed 10,000 monks in multi-storeyed chambers. This seat of learning was vandalised and burnt down by a Muslim warlord in the twelfth century when he discovered that there was no copy of the Quran in its library (p.69). A Tibetan pilgrim visited the site soon after in 1235 and what he saw was heart-breaking. He found one aged monk teaching pupils among the charred remains of the once magnificent buildings. It soon went into oblivion and was rediscovered only in the nineteenth century with the help of an English translation of Tripitaka’s work.
Miller dwells at some length on the Orientalist and Anglicist dichotomy in the Western viewpoint on India. We come across some westerners who are starry-eyed on Indian ideals and artefacts while another group treats it with disdain and contempt. The Orientalists is of the persuasion that the West has much to learn from India. Their images of the country was born of its pre-colonial past, an ancient civilization waiting to be discovered, its artefacts collected and categorised. The Anglicists’ image of India was adapted from the colonial period with all its attendant ills. The land they were conquering became a testbed where they could experiment with their ideas on Christianity, progress and education. William Jones, who founded the Asiatic Society, belongs to the former and Wilberforce who preached against slavery, the historian James Mill and Thomas Macaulay belong to the latter group. Macaulay went a step further, jeeringly remarking that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. He also wanted to play with the new education system the British was implementing in India that sought to create a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect. Indeed, it was successful in churning out a group of Anglophone people who have lost touch with the country’s mores and were often disparagingly remarked upon as Macaulay's children.
The constant refrain of all modern visitors to India had been its dirtiness - not of the land, but of the actions of its inhabitants for which poverty is one of the reasons. The wide practice of open defecation made it a foul place even for those who are impressed by its otherwise impeccable attributes. V S Naipaul notes with disgust in An Area of Darkness that ‘Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate, mostly, beside the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover’ (p.361). In fact, the euphemistic term for defecation in the Malayalam language is ‘going outside’! However, open defecation is in its final laps with the countrywide coverage of the Swachh Bharat initiative. We hope that future visitors won't have a bone of contention at least on this point.
The chapter titles are a pastiche of old travel books in which the author's exploits are displayed in a brief way. The exceeding number of footnotes somewhat repels the readers from the main narrative. Miller has been very open in handling delicate points that offend puritanical readers. There are some ribald quotes from travel lore on which discretion on the part of faint-hearted readers is advised. He also provides a taste of the imperial erotica in a matter-of-fact way. Miller’s vocabulary is amazingly comprehensive and hints of his rich credentials to his career in journalism. The author’s own biography is also presented through a string of intermissions at the end of each chapter. That way, Miller becomes a part of his own narrative stream by which his experiences enrich the abundant material compiled by foreign eyes.
The book is highly recommended.
July 20, 2021
Firstly, with just 164 ratings on goodreads in 7 years after publication, this is the most under-rated India travelogue. One of my close friends chose this book as the theme when invited to speak at a college's book-club. It caught my attention then or even I might have missed it.
Moving on to the book itself, it is not a conventional travelogue and it could easily be classified as history too. It is divided into 15 chapters and each of them describe a period of Indian history right from Alexander & co. to Beatles & co. in the 20th century - as seen thru foreigners. But, each chapter is also interwoven with a place, contextual information and the author's commentary on modern India which made it engrossing.
The British author married an Indian and chose to settle in India later. And frankly, just like some nationalist Indians, could be defensive about some of our unsavoury aspects. It could have sounded patronising but instead the author's love for India came through.
Again, cant believe that this book "flopped" !
Moving on to the book itself, it is not a conventional travelogue and it could easily be classified as history too. It is divided into 15 chapters and each of them describe a period of Indian history right from Alexander & co. to Beatles & co. in the 20th century - as seen thru foreigners. But, each chapter is also interwoven with a place, contextual information and the author's commentary on modern India which made it engrossing.
The British author married an Indian and chose to settle in India later. And frankly, just like some nationalist Indians, could be defensive about some of our unsavoury aspects. It could have sounded patronising but instead the author's love for India came through.
Again, cant believe that this book "flopped" !
February 9, 2016
A Strange Kind of Paradise is a very entertaining take on Indian history. The unique lens that the book uses is to look at Indian history from the perspective of foreigners who have visited India over the past couple millennia. That lens helps to convey rather effectively why India has always been interesting & different. Further, Sam Miller regales the reader with periodic intermissions in which he shares his own experience moving to and living in India.
While there is no dearth of books on Indian history, what sets this book apart is how entertaining Sam Miller's narrative is. The book is by no means the authoritative book on Indian history but it will make you want to look up that authoritative book to fill in the gaps. In short, this book will make you genuinely curious about Indian history & that is the ultimate litmus test for a mass market history book.
Finally, it's worth noting that the book is not for young readers. Sam is particularly fascinated by sexuality in India and there is no dearth of references to it. On that topic, I was struck by how pre-British India contrasts with today's India. Indian writers (and people in general) seemed comfortable discussing sexuality, writing about it and depicting it in ways that colonial prudes found immensely scandalous. Today's India has acquired that distinctly western morality while the west has changed its mind and move closer to the old Indian approach to sex and sexuality.
My bottomline: The book is no classic but I can't imagine anyone regretting reading this entertaining and unique take on Indian history. It therefore gets my top recommendation.
OTHER NOTES
The book is filled with interesting passages and quotes. I list some of the ones that caught my attention:
Lamartine, poet revolutionary who briefly ruled France on the vedas: "Indian philosophy eclipses all others; it is the ocean, and we are only clouds."
Thomas Macaulay: "A single shelf of European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia."
Karl Marx: "India has no known history … What we call its history is but the history of successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society."
Schopenhauer on Upanishads: "It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death."
On Kipling who was born in india: He is still remembered as the man who invented the phrase ' the White Man's burden', which became a shorthand excuse for the empire.
Orwell (also born in India) on Kipling: 'a gutter patriot' and a 'vulgar flagwaver'
On the visit by several british tourists during the 150th anniversary of 1857 revolt: One of the tourists, the great-great grandson of Henry Havelock [Note: major-general who helped capture many of Nana Sahib's supporters] was quoted as expressing his 'enormous admiration for what … the Brits who fought and lived here did'. To which a Bangalore blogger responded, 'these Britons … are unwilling or unable to come to terms with their gruesome past and the reality that the British Empire was like any other empire in history. It was an enterprise of loot, pillage and oppression.'
EM Forster on Passage to India: he thought of it as 'a little bridge of sympathy between East and West, but this conception had to go … [because] I think that most Indians, like most English people, are shits.'
While there is no dearth of books on Indian history, what sets this book apart is how entertaining Sam Miller's narrative is. The book is by no means the authoritative book on Indian history but it will make you want to look up that authoritative book to fill in the gaps. In short, this book will make you genuinely curious about Indian history & that is the ultimate litmus test for a mass market history book.
Finally, it's worth noting that the book is not for young readers. Sam is particularly fascinated by sexuality in India and there is no dearth of references to it. On that topic, I was struck by how pre-British India contrasts with today's India. Indian writers (and people in general) seemed comfortable discussing sexuality, writing about it and depicting it in ways that colonial prudes found immensely scandalous. Today's India has acquired that distinctly western morality while the west has changed its mind and move closer to the old Indian approach to sex and sexuality.
My bottomline: The book is no classic but I can't imagine anyone regretting reading this entertaining and unique take on Indian history. It therefore gets my top recommendation.
OTHER NOTES
The book is filled with interesting passages and quotes. I list some of the ones that caught my attention:
Lamartine, poet revolutionary who briefly ruled France on the vedas: "Indian philosophy eclipses all others; it is the ocean, and we are only clouds."
Thomas Macaulay: "A single shelf of European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia."
Karl Marx: "India has no known history … What we call its history is but the history of successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society."
Schopenhauer on Upanishads: "It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death."
On Kipling who was born in india: He is still remembered as the man who invented the phrase ' the White Man's burden', which became a shorthand excuse for the empire.
Orwell (also born in India) on Kipling: 'a gutter patriot' and a 'vulgar flagwaver'
On the visit by several british tourists during the 150th anniversary of 1857 revolt: One of the tourists, the great-great grandson of Henry Havelock [Note: major-general who helped capture many of Nana Sahib's supporters] was quoted as expressing his 'enormous admiration for what … the Brits who fought and lived here did'. To which a Bangalore blogger responded, 'these Britons … are unwilling or unable to come to terms with their gruesome past and the reality that the British Empire was like any other empire in history. It was an enterprise of loot, pillage and oppression.'
EM Forster on Passage to India: he thought of it as 'a little bridge of sympathy between East and West, but this conception had to go … [because] I think that most Indians, like most English people, are shits.'
October 14, 2014
The book is part history, part travelogue and part memoir. Oh, and also a love letter to India.
The author, Sam Miller was the BBC regional South Asia head, and this is his second book. His first was a similarly written book on the city of Delhi.
A Strange Kind of Paradise is a rambling account of what foreigners (although who these people are in context to India is not very clear in the first place) thought right from Greek visitors to the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims and Arab visitors to the most recent influx of Westerners from Brits, to Germans to Americans.
Miller interweaves history with his travels across usual suspects like Mumbai and Delhi to the off-beat places such as in Central India where a certain Heliodorus the Bactrian Greek set up a victory pillar to Vishnu. Also, there are regular intermissions where Miller discusses his personal life where he married a Parsi woman from Mumbai and his subsequent move to India from Britain.
Overall, Paradise was very light reading and was downright funny on many occasions. Miller takes great pleasure in finding connections between places, events and characters spread across something like 3 millennia of Indian history. His footnotes were easily the most interesting bits to read about.
If you aren't into esoteric connections though, this book is not something that I'd recommend to people to actually learn anything about Indian history or culture.
The author, Sam Miller was the BBC regional South Asia head, and this is his second book. His first was a similarly written book on the city of Delhi.
A Strange Kind of Paradise is a rambling account of what foreigners (although who these people are in context to India is not very clear in the first place) thought right from Greek visitors to the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims and Arab visitors to the most recent influx of Westerners from Brits, to Germans to Americans.
Miller interweaves history with his travels across usual suspects like Mumbai and Delhi to the off-beat places such as in Central India where a certain Heliodorus the Bactrian Greek set up a victory pillar to Vishnu. Also, there are regular intermissions where Miller discusses his personal life where he married a Parsi woman from Mumbai and his subsequent move to India from Britain.
Overall, Paradise was very light reading and was downright funny on many occasions. Miller takes great pleasure in finding connections between places, events and characters spread across something like 3 millennia of Indian history. His footnotes were easily the most interesting bits to read about.
If you aren't into esoteric connections though, this book is not something that I'd recommend to people to actually learn anything about Indian history or culture.
December 20, 2017
This is one of the best books I have read about India. It is: informative, inciteful, entertaining, unobtrusively scholarly, and accurate. As its title suggests, it considers India through the eyes of people who have visited it for any of many reasons, and how it affected them and their opinions about the country. Interspersed amongst the chapters, there is a series of 'interludes' in which the author describes how he gradually adapted to India over the years.
Like me, Miller had no particular interest in India until a romantic connection resulted in him visiting the place. Miller's comments about India, Indian life, visitors' reactions to India, and the impossibility of summing up the country 'in a nutshell' (like atomic particles, the vast country of India can be many things to many people simultaneously a Heissenberg Uncertainy situation on an immense scale), largely concur with my ideas on these matters. Maybe, that is one of the reasons that the book appeals to me so much. But, that is not all: the book is a really good read!
Like me, Miller had no particular interest in India until a romantic connection resulted in him visiting the place. Miller's comments about India, Indian life, visitors' reactions to India, and the impossibility of summing up the country 'in a nutshell' (like atomic particles, the vast country of India can be many things to many people simultaneously a Heissenberg Uncertainy situation on an immense scale), largely concur with my ideas on these matters. Maybe, that is one of the reasons that the book appeals to me so much. But, that is not all: the book is a really good read!
May 11, 2014
“What is India?” A great many people of yore, mostly Europeans, who had only a faint idea about a distant land they thought, for a long time, incorrectly, to be located at the end of the world, must have wondered this. Even Alexander the Great was ignorant–he assumed that after conquering this land beyond the Indus, he would win the whole world. Back then, people didn’t have the comfort of quick modes of transportation like aeroplanes and trains. And of course, the maps were incomplete and inaccurate… that is, if there were any. When a sailor wanted to sail to the hitherto unknown parts of the world, he had little chance of success due to poor navigation facilities and difficulties in procuring shipmates because of a general reluctance to visit an alien land.
In those days, India had a reputation of something akin to a fantasy world. Even when it was largely uncharted and unexplored, it impressed itself deeply upon the minds of the foreigners as a land of wonder, of unimaginable wealth (sigh!) magic, snake-charmers, and really strange inhabitants. Most of these, as we know, impressions were hyperbolic hogwash. Although, nothing like the exaggerated impressions regarding ancient and medieval India, which mythified it into a place somewhere in the Middle-earth, even today, the picture most outsiders create of India is pretty ridiculous, ill-informed and coloured by prejudices.
In his new book, A Strange kind of Paradise, BBC journalist Sam Miller tells us about what outsiders thought of India starting from the antiquity to the present. He demystifies this country for foreigners, debunks their prejudices, and writes a charmingly funny tale about his personal relationship with India. Miller, I came to know, has spent about twenty years in India (Delhi) and even has an Indian wife. Apart from his considerable experience with the Indian people and lifestyle, he is a discerning observer–a nice attribute for a journalist, of course, but it also helps him to have a profound understanding of India. Indeed, I have never encountered any other foreign writer who comprehends the tangled web that is India so well, and without any preconceptions and ready-made opinions. A telling passage:
"We all have our patchwork ideas of India, our notions and opinions and prejudices–often fallacious and absurd–of this enormous, disparate country, which, as I take pleasure in reminding newcomers, bigger in population than all but its own continent: Asia. It is a place onto which foreigners have projected their own exotic fantasies and fears, their explanatory and simplifying schemata. And they never seem quite to make up their minds–as they swing from one extreme to the other–whether this country is of great wealth or of appalling poverty, of spiritual renunciation or of unabashed materialism, of fasting or of gluttony, of erotic sophistication or of sexual puritanism, of corruption or of moral superiority. They probably fail to admit that it might be all these things, and even more so, everything in between."
The book is very well-written, well-researched, imbued with a lot of humour and is ultimately very readable due to the simple fact that it is written by somebody who really knows India (to give you an idea, I finished it in a single sitting, and I’m usually a fairly slow reader). As much as a scholar born and brought up in the streets of Delhi or Mumbai. And also, the author has a genuine love for the country he has adopted. This is quite clear from this passage:
"The enormous scale of India is important. It seems both large enough and varied enough for most things imaginable on this earth to be possible in just one country. Whatever you are searching for: great food, spiritual learning, a good holiday, narcotic experiences, snowy mountains, a job, tropical jungle, love of any kind, or even the happy and not-so-happy poor. And it’s because (almost) everything is possible, that visitors continue to have such idiosyncratic fantasies and opinions and nightmares about India as a country, as if one tiny part stood for the whole. And this notion of scale and variety, turned about, helps me to understand why I love living here so much. For India makes the rest of the world feel small and tame and uniform and peripheral by comparison. India has everything that is old, everything that is modern, and everything in between. It has quite enough to challenge and surprise me intellectually, aesthetically and existentially for so many lifetimes. I have never been bored in India."
But keep in mind, this is not a fairy-tale. Miller, as much as he loves the country, doesn’t skimp over the ugly side of the country. The filth, bigotry, poverty, illiteracy, carelessness, ignorance. But he tells all of that in a passive way. He doesn’t judge. That is when you realise that he is as much an Indian as you are.
A bit of warning: this book has a good deal of sexual and, um, scatological references. So as fun and informative this book is, I certainly do not recommend it for children. And prudes too, please stay away.
In those days, India had a reputation of something akin to a fantasy world. Even when it was largely uncharted and unexplored, it impressed itself deeply upon the minds of the foreigners as a land of wonder, of unimaginable wealth (sigh!) magic, snake-charmers, and really strange inhabitants. Most of these, as we know, impressions were hyperbolic hogwash. Although, nothing like the exaggerated impressions regarding ancient and medieval India, which mythified it into a place somewhere in the Middle-earth, even today, the picture most outsiders create of India is pretty ridiculous, ill-informed and coloured by prejudices.
In his new book, A Strange kind of Paradise, BBC journalist Sam Miller tells us about what outsiders thought of India starting from the antiquity to the present. He demystifies this country for foreigners, debunks their prejudices, and writes a charmingly funny tale about his personal relationship with India. Miller, I came to know, has spent about twenty years in India (Delhi) and even has an Indian wife. Apart from his considerable experience with the Indian people and lifestyle, he is a discerning observer–a nice attribute for a journalist, of course, but it also helps him to have a profound understanding of India. Indeed, I have never encountered any other foreign writer who comprehends the tangled web that is India so well, and without any preconceptions and ready-made opinions. A telling passage:
"We all have our patchwork ideas of India, our notions and opinions and prejudices–often fallacious and absurd–of this enormous, disparate country, which, as I take pleasure in reminding newcomers, bigger in population than all but its own continent: Asia. It is a place onto which foreigners have projected their own exotic fantasies and fears, their explanatory and simplifying schemata. And they never seem quite to make up their minds–as they swing from one extreme to the other–whether this country is of great wealth or of appalling poverty, of spiritual renunciation or of unabashed materialism, of fasting or of gluttony, of erotic sophistication or of sexual puritanism, of corruption or of moral superiority. They probably fail to admit that it might be all these things, and even more so, everything in between."
The book is very well-written, well-researched, imbued with a lot of humour and is ultimately very readable due to the simple fact that it is written by somebody who really knows India (to give you an idea, I finished it in a single sitting, and I’m usually a fairly slow reader). As much as a scholar born and brought up in the streets of Delhi or Mumbai. And also, the author has a genuine love for the country he has adopted. This is quite clear from this passage:
"The enormous scale of India is important. It seems both large enough and varied enough for most things imaginable on this earth to be possible in just one country. Whatever you are searching for: great food, spiritual learning, a good holiday, narcotic experiences, snowy mountains, a job, tropical jungle, love of any kind, or even the happy and not-so-happy poor. And it’s because (almost) everything is possible, that visitors continue to have such idiosyncratic fantasies and opinions and nightmares about India as a country, as if one tiny part stood for the whole. And this notion of scale and variety, turned about, helps me to understand why I love living here so much. For India makes the rest of the world feel small and tame and uniform and peripheral by comparison. India has everything that is old, everything that is modern, and everything in between. It has quite enough to challenge and surprise me intellectually, aesthetically and existentially for so many lifetimes. I have never been bored in India."
But keep in mind, this is not a fairy-tale. Miller, as much as he loves the country, doesn’t skimp over the ugly side of the country. The filth, bigotry, poverty, illiteracy, carelessness, ignorance. But he tells all of that in a passive way. He doesn’t judge. That is when you realise that he is as much an Indian as you are.
A bit of warning: this book has a good deal of sexual and, um, scatological references. So as fun and informative this book is, I certainly do not recommend it for children. And prudes too, please stay away.
May 13, 2018
The author of this book is a British correspondent, who lived in India for many years, and is married to an Indian woman. He focuses on how India is portrayed by foreigners. The book intersperses one chapter of his narrative about his experiences in India with another on a foreign power in India's history, for example, the Mughals, Portuguese, and eventually the British. It is a very interesting idea, and I liked the chapters on history, but I thought the author sounded rather pretentious in the chapters that he wrote about his own experience.
January 13, 2022
🔥The book is full of details about fanatical Indian tribes, the myths associated with this region among foreigners as well as a profound description of the exotic animals present in India like elephants and rhinoceros!
🔥It describes the way ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans and Americans interacted with Subcontinent as well as the details of Thomas the Apostle's visit of India, the Chinese monk Xuanzang aka Tripatika, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Vasco da Gama the notorious Portuguese trader, Babur first Mughal emperor and also an Indiophobe, Clive of India, numerous Victorian pornographers, and famous authors like Mark Twain, EM Forster, & Allen Ginsberg.
🔥This is a book that is very well-written, well-researched, with a lot of humour. it is one of the best books about India and Subcontinent. i was mesmerized by the way in which so much details have been conveyed through this book in such an interesting manner!!
🔥It's a must read for all those who are interested in history of Subcontinent especially by all Pakistanis and Indians
🔥It describes the way ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans and Americans interacted with Subcontinent as well as the details of Thomas the Apostle's visit of India, the Chinese monk Xuanzang aka Tripatika, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Vasco da Gama the notorious Portuguese trader, Babur first Mughal emperor and also an Indiophobe, Clive of India, numerous Victorian pornographers, and famous authors like Mark Twain, EM Forster, & Allen Ginsberg.
🔥This is a book that is very well-written, well-researched, with a lot of humour. it is one of the best books about India and Subcontinent. i was mesmerized by the way in which so much details have been conveyed through this book in such an interesting manner!!
🔥It's a must read for all those who are interested in history of Subcontinent especially by all Pakistanis and Indians
June 11, 2020
I really enjoy Sam Miller's work and I find his writing fascinating. As someone who never tires of learning more about India, this book has provided an incredible and broad source of information, which I have then gone on to supplement by doing further research into some of the many things mentioned including an alternative Mughal history and Tipu's Tiger, to name but a few.
September 5, 2021
What a delightful book! History has never been this fun. This is Indian history interspersed with anecdotes, personal experiences, and funny stories. Scholarly, literary, irreverent and very, very entertaining.
May 26, 2017
Nice read but it has some glaring loopholes but I wouldn't like to dwell on them here!
February 6, 2018
Entertaining and informative at the same time, I would recommend it to anybody that enjoys non-fiction, travel and history.
September 16, 2020
It took me almost a year but I finally finished - and I’ve no idea why it took so long as I loved it. A mix of history, anecdotes and musings on India.
July 29, 2014
Wasn't as much fun as I expected it to be. There are some very interesting facts - I found the footnotes to be the most fun, where the author, as if in a quiz contest where one has to connect random events and people. For example, while talking about Rosselini, Fritz Lang etc, the footnotes gets into Lang's marriage and how it ended when he found his wife in bed with an Indian journalist and Gandhian. Or when while talking about the great Indian rope trick, the footnotes describe how it was the invention of a Chicago based journalist who went on to head the US secret service, within a few years of which the American president McKinley was assassinated.
Where it is a bit boring is in the frequent intermission, where the author talks about his life and experiences in India, his falling in love with a Parsi lady and how he now can't consider staying away from the country. All very interesting if he were the first foreigner to have these feelings and experiences or if the experiences were particularly unique (which with the exception of moments like one where his future wife climbs through the window of the author's guest house to reach him. More such filmy moments might have made it a bit more engrossing). Oh and sadly, the author has none of the understated humor that one associates with British writers. The few jokes are (by his admission) examples of popular poor jokes.
However, in the end, for the reasons outlined above, the book is eminently readable and informative. Just don't expect a lot of fun
Where it is a bit boring is in the frequent intermission, where the author talks about his life and experiences in India, his falling in love with a Parsi lady and how he now can't consider staying away from the country. All very interesting if he were the first foreigner to have these feelings and experiences or if the experiences were particularly unique (which with the exception of moments like one where his future wife climbs through the window of the author's guest house to reach him. More such filmy moments might have made it a bit more engrossing). Oh and sadly, the author has none of the understated humor that one associates with British writers. The few jokes are (by his admission) examples of popular poor jokes.
However, in the end, for the reasons outlined above, the book is eminently readable and informative. Just don't expect a lot of fun
December 4, 2014
I read both the Sam Miller books, Adventures in a Mega City and A Strange Kind of Paradise, together. The first book was long overdue, and the second book was just out. I think I liked the second book better.
The first book sounds a little contrived; the author circling the city on foot. And, somehow, in the last few years, it has aged badly. The Delhi that Miller describes in the book has changed considerably. The Delhi I know is more complicated than described by Miller.
A Strange Kind of Paradise is, on the other hand, about foreigners’ love affair with India, right from Alexander to Chinese monks to Roberto Rossellini and Allan Ginsberg. There may not be much original research, but the book is a work of great scholarship, as Miller digs deep into the historical personas and events. For example, the portion on Nana Saheb, and how this hero of the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ caught the fancy of the Europe (and became the model for Wells’ Captain Nemo). It’s well-researched and eminently readable.
However, what is the most interesting aspect of the book is how the author fuses his own life story with the stories of other Indophiles (I am not sure Indophile would be the right moniker.). There are traces of William Dalrymple here and there (Like Dalrymple, Miller too is a British, who has since made India his home), but I am sure that cannot be avoided when you are writing a book about India.
The first book sounds a little contrived; the author circling the city on foot. And, somehow, in the last few years, it has aged badly. The Delhi that Miller describes in the book has changed considerably. The Delhi I know is more complicated than described by Miller.
A Strange Kind of Paradise is, on the other hand, about foreigners’ love affair with India, right from Alexander to Chinese monks to Roberto Rossellini and Allan Ginsberg. There may not be much original research, but the book is a work of great scholarship, as Miller digs deep into the historical personas and events. For example, the portion on Nana Saheb, and how this hero of the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ caught the fancy of the Europe (and became the model for Wells’ Captain Nemo). It’s well-researched and eminently readable.
However, what is the most interesting aspect of the book is how the author fuses his own life story with the stories of other Indophiles (I am not sure Indophile would be the right moniker.). There are traces of William Dalrymple here and there (Like Dalrymple, Miller too is a British, who has since made India his home), but I am sure that cannot be avoided when you are writing a book about India.
September 18, 2017
Fascinating topic - what do foreigners think of your country? After marrying the sister of his Indian brother-in-law, the author moves to what is then Bombay. His love story with India, having started with his wife, starts extending to what he calls "A Strange Kind of Paradise", that is 'India through Foreign Eyes".
It begins with his own views, and then he starts researching what other foreigners thought about it. The Portuguese, Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, the Chinese, the French, and of course what the British thought of India figure prominently.
A wonderful book.
It begins with his own views, and then he starts researching what other foreigners thought about it. The Portuguese, Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, the Chinese, the French, and of course what the British thought of India figure prominently.
A wonderful book.
December 27, 2016
I chose to read this book because it was recommended as "A must read before you visit India". Not quite a descriptive book about what to expect from Indian culture, people and places. In my opinion the only good part of it were spicy details and small stories from Indian history and everyday modern life. The author is a good foreign insider giving you a warm welcome to his Indian reality. A reality of the hardships of a foreigner living in a foreign country - the same reality for expats all over the world. Nothing new under the sun. I wouldn't recommend it for the purpose that I read it for.
October 28, 2014
This book is encyclopaedic in its coverage yet it is an easy enjoyable read, with plenty of passages that made me smile, or want to share. I liked the progress through time, as Miller reviewed foreigners' views of India since Alexander. Alongside this is this description of his own discovery of India - where he continues to reside. I like Miller's self-effacing style. This is a refreshing review of all things Indian.
February 2, 2017
The book is an eye opener in how the others viewed India, more often than not, it was with contempt, prejudice and disdain.. nevertheless, the land was charmed in the minds of the entire world.
Sam gives interesting titbits about so many of his connections and interpersed with his own story of unravelling this marvellous country. However there is no central theme across the book.. may be that would have helped attract this book more to this Indian reader.
Sam gives interesting titbits about so many of his connections and interpersed with his own story of unravelling this marvellous country. However there is no central theme across the book.. may be that would have helped attract this book more to this Indian reader.
June 8, 2015
A much better read than Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity. Thoroughly enjoyed it, particularly finding out the name of the Japanese actress Masako Natsume, who played the male part of Tripitaka in Monkey. It's facts like this, combined with a sound historical narrative, that make the book so fun.
April 28, 2014
A Travelogue, a lesson in history, and a personal ode to India...interesting read!
September 11, 2016
Detailed review here: http://www.anureviews.com/a-strange-k...
June 29, 2014
Beautifully written. A memoir interlinked with History. A must read for all those interested in knowing more about my home-India. A page turner for sure.
February 19, 2015
Easy read, and full of nice anecdotes.
Read
January 5, 2016An interesting wander through someone else's thoughts about India. Mildly amusing and a pleasant read.
November 10, 2017
Whaaaa?
Captain Nemo is Nana Sahib?
Captain Nemo is Nana Sahib?
March 13, 2016
Witty and informative - tells India as viewed by visitors over the centuries.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews