Bought in a chaurch hall in Norfolk while on hoiliday.

This sounds lovely so on to TBR

Synopsis
"An Indian Attachment" tells the story of a love affair between Sarah, a young British woman of adventurous spirit, and Jungli, an impoverished, opium-addicted Sikh temple servant. But this is not just a cross-cultural love story. With totally convincing authority, it immerses the reader in the realities of rural India like no other book, made vivid by a meticulous examination of landscape and a description of the realities of desperate poverty, first in a remote Punjabi village in 1979 and afterwards in a fly-blown, rat- and snake-infested, ramshackle community which grew up around an authoritarian holy man.

While this is primarily a travel book - it reads more like a memoir of an unusual relationship. I found myself wondering - more than once - what Sarah Lloyd thought she was doing - she lived with a poor sikh family - then later moved with her lover to a religious community - with a man who she admits she had no intention of marrying, or having children with. This question is one she asks herself in this honest account of her two year relationship with Jungli - but I didn't feel she ever answered it. I couldn't help but feel - that she a white English woman was simply satisfying her own wants - and when she had finished "expierencing" she left India and Jungli. It is obvious that she often felt that the hut she shared with Jungli was home, that she had all she needed there, and yet there always seemed that there was an ending they were just moving towards. I wondered what he and his family thought of her after she had left them.

RELEASE NOTES:

If you have found this book, thank you for taking the time to look it up on the internet. Now please tell us what you thought of the book and what your plans for it are.

I picked this up in Hudsons during the recent Birmingham BC meetup, and I'm looking forward to reading it in the coming weeks.

Whilst it’s clear that Sarah was busy researching for her book during her stay with Jungli and his family, it does leave you wondering to what extent this was arranged in advance, or whether the book was just an idea that occurred to her once their relationship had taken hold. I was certainly left with the feeling that you hoped the Indian people involved all gained some kind of learning, growth, or awareness from having Sarah with them. It’s clear that Sarah gained (and has shared) some fantastic insights into a different type of lifestyle and landscape currently experienced in the world today, and after reading this you certainly hope that this kind of sharing might have taken place on a fair and even basis, with appropriate rewards for both groups of people.

Donated to my local Oxfam charity shop, in the hope that it may raise funds for an international good cause.