The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas

After their mother's death, Mair and her siblings are left to clear out the house that had been her parents home in Wales and where she'd been brought up.  I've been through this process myself and I know what it can be like.  You find all sorts of things that make you wonder and about the story behind them.  And this is what happened to mair.

She found a beautiful Kashmir pashmina shawl with a lock of dark brown hair and these led her to try to discover their story and that of her grandmother.

The story is told both from the perspective of Mair and of her grandmother who had left rural Wales to set off for a life as a missionary's wife in India and then in Kashmir.  Mair attempted to follow in her footsteps and so we see the region both as it was during the time of the British Raj before independence and more recently.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story even though it was a little overly romantic for my taste and the plot a bit contrived, but the descriptions of the area and the mental images they conjured up will stay with me a long time.

An article comparing The Kashmir Shawl and A Carpet Ride to Khiva.

The Kashmir Shawl is available on Amazon.com
and also on Amazon UK

White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

An eye-opening story set in modern India, a country of start contrasts between rich and poor, between the Light and the Darkness, between men with fat bellies and men with thin bellies.  It's a rapid and easy read - cynical, provocative, and entertaining.

The format of the book is a series of emails sent by the narrator to a Chinese head of state due to visit India, to explain the truth about being an Indian entrepreneur.  In essence, it's a very moral tale, it exposes corruption in all its forms, the extraordinary poverty in an upwardly mobile society, the blurred moral boundaries.  In spite of it all, I have a lingering sympathy for Balram.


In India, 76% live below the poverty limit of $2 a day, compared to 73% in Sub-Saharan Africa.  People forget this, probably because there is the "new" India, the world of technology and entrepreneurs, the world that Balram wants to join.  It is this contrast that is brought out so very well in the book.

The dreams of the rich and the dreams of the poor - they never overlap, do they?
See, the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of?  Losing weight and looking like the poor.