Karma, Cola; by Gita Mehta.

In some sense this was written when the meeting of east and west, especially of India and west (Europe and US) was in its third stage, second being of the colonial era and first that before.

At this stage there was much renewed charm in each for other, much that was new, and some truly interesting encounters. The value of this work is in writing up the very well chosen ones where something new came through such an encounter every time.

There is the old percussionist from India used only to classical music of India who went to a club in New York and had them play to his rhythm - and he spoke no English at all.

There is the westerner who learned to his surprise that the old bike of the Indian in Goa taunting him was in fact far more powerful than his own brand new shiny one - because it had an engine he could not have imagined existed, a royal Enfield, and that the Indian did know what he was talking about.

There is much along these lines, and some interesting information as well. The French official informed the author at a casual encounter that there were as of that date some twenty thousand French nationals "lost" in India, and the only way the officials would know is when they wished to return and contacted the French authorities.

It was a standard practice for those of the west that were not only charmed with a touristic view of India as strangers but moreover completely comfortable with living a life in India, to throw away the passports or sell them, or even simply vanish in the huge country. If they were into meditation, often they even were fed by the poor of the rural areas of India who would feed any such meditating person traditionally.

Ravishankar and Ray, Beatles and Maharshi Mahesh Yogi were the stars of these east west encounters - distant and shiny - as were Nehru and Kennedys in some sense, but that was only a very tiny part of the whole picture, which consisted of thousands and thousands of such people. By the time this was written hippies were not news in the west, but they were just turning from a trickle to a stream in India. So were probably the NRI in US and elsewhere.

A very interesting book, evocative of much more than it mentions explicitly.