Reprint of the original, first published in 1869.

In the 1920s, the young J. R. Ackerley spent several months in India as the personal secretary to the maharajah of a small Indian principality. In his journals, Ackerley recorded the Maharajah’s fantastically eccentric habits and riddling conversations, and the odd shambling day-to-day life of his court. Hindoo Holiday is an intimate and very funny account of an exceedingly strange place, and one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century travel literature.

Located At The Confluence Of The Ganga, Yamuna And The Invisible Saraswati, Allahabad, Or Godville The Babu Translation Of The Name That Mark Twain Came Across Has Been Frequented By Pilgrims For Two Thousand Years. However, It Was Only Towards The Latter Half Of The Nineteenth Century That Allahabad Shed Its Identity As Another Dusty North Indian Town And Emerged As One Of The Premier Cities Of The Raj And The Capital Of The North-West Provinces. This Metamorphosis, Ironically, Was Brought About By Colonial Rule, Whose Beginnings Fanny Parkes Has Described At Great Length. Allahabad Was The Home Not Only Of The Pioneer Newspaper, Where Kipling Was Employed, But Also Of Literary Figures Like Harivansh Rai Bachchan And Suryakant Tripathi Nirala . Its University, One Of The Oldest In The Country, Attracted Students From Far And Wide. Visited By The Buddhist Scholar Hsiuan Tsang In The Seventh Century, The City Is Today Visited By Spiritual Con Men And Con Women, As Well As Ordinary Pilgrims, Who Come To Attend The Magh And Kumbh Melas. As Kama Maclean S Essay Shows, Far From Being An Ancient Religious Festival, The Kumbh Mela, Which Is Held Every Twelve Years, Originated As Recently As The 1860S. Colonial Allahabad, Along With The Intellectual Energy That Colonialism Generated, Has All But Disappeared. The Bungalows Have Gone, And So Have The Last Of Those Who Inhabited Them. Their Descendants Can Only Recall A Lost Time. In 1824, Bishop Heber Wrote That Allahabad Was A Desolate And Ruinous Place. Three Years Later, Mirza Ghalib Compared It To Hell, Only Hell Was Better. But For Jawaharlal Nehru, Allahabad Was Where He Was Born And Where He Cut His Political Teeth; For Nayantara Sehgal, It Was A Model For Civilized Living; For Ved Mehta, It Was, Like Other Indian Cities, A Jumble Of British, Muslim, And Hindu Influences ; For Saeed Jaffrey, It Was A Place Where A Good Time Could Be Had, While One Picked Up A Decent Education; For Gyanranjan, It Was A City One Could Fall In Love With In One S Youth; And For I. Allan Sealy, It Was His Parents Home Town, A Reservoir Of Family Lore. The Last Bungalow: Writings On Allahabad Is A Memorial To A Now Forgotten City, Whose Rise Was As Meteoric As Its Fall.

A weekly review of politics, literature, theology, and art.

This book explores historical and cultural aspects of modern and contemporary Bengal through the performance-centred study of a particular repertoire: the songs of the saint-composer Bhaba Pagla (1902-1984), who is particularly revered among Baul and Fakir singers. The author shows how songs, if examined as 'sacred scriptures', represent multi-dimensional texts for the study of South Asian religions. Revealing how previous studies about Bauls mirror the history of folkloristics in Bengal, this book presents sacred songs as a precious symbolic capital for a marginalized community of dislocated and unorthodox Hindus, who consider the practice of singing in itself an integral part of the path towards self-realization.