Why a Booktrail?
1940s: The other side of British India. A dizzying, scandalous, dangerous world, where race, class and gender divide and rule.
Eden Gardens
What you need to know before your trail
In a ramshackle house, streets away from the grand colonial mansions of the British, live Maisy, her Mam and their ayah, Pushpa.
Mam entertains officers during the night -which is a disgrace to British India. Many hope that Maisy will not fall into the same drunken trap. She is more at home in the city’s forbidden alleyways, eating bazaar food and speaking Bengali with Pushpa, than dancing in glittering ballrooms with potential husbands.
Then one day Maisy’s tutor falls ill so his son Sunil Banerjee stands in. He stands for an independent India, and Maisy is drawn to him
So begins a love affair that will cast her future, for better and for worse. Just as the Second World War strikes and the empire begins to crumble…
Travel Guide
India – Calcutta
The Raj era
Maisy and her mother are white women in an India where white is the colour of the occupiers or the rich. But there are many white people who form the community who never see such wealth and who live in the same conditions or worse than the native population. They are able to have a local servant as is the norm but for employment, only working the streets is deemed a possible way to gain money. Survival is the only way.
Calcutta is a city of chaos and upheaval where everything is changing with the face of the invaders, the occupying British and their armies. The rebels and their lot illustrated by Banerjee and wishes and belief systems.
Calcutta is also a city divided into sections and not just residential ones but ones like a pie, where some have more goodness and wealth within which make for greater spoils for the winner. The English North where the streets and homes are stronger and wider than the rest where the Indian workers come to serve them.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Eden Gardens
Destination: Kolkata (Calcutta) Author/Guide: Louise Brown Departure Time: 1940s
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