Wednesday, January 10, 2018

The Far Pavilions

I have been reading the biographies and books of M M Kaye on Scribd. So nice to read a story of a happy childhood, albeit as British children of the Raj... (they had good parents, and didn't get shipped off to UK schools at age 8 like a lot of those kids). The second volume has descriptions of pre war China, along with the isolated life of the Anglo community in both countries.

I have been trying to find the miniseries The Far Pavilions on the internet... there is a fuzzy post of it on the Daily Motion.

I did read that there will be a remake of the story, a UK/Bollywood remake of the film, in the near future.

heh. You mean an Indian princess might not be played by a Jewish American princess? That would be different.

but of course, it is a romance, not a political story (although politics are in the background).

In her autobiographies, Kaye says she learned lots of stories of those days, both from her father and her father's Anglo friends, and from their Indian friends. And as children, she often overheard NSFW stories told by the servants about the many wars of India...

(the sins of colonialism are great, but some remind one not to remember the wars of the Mogul conquerers... which is still remembered... and is the backstory of today's revival of Hinduism in that country...)

update: StrategyTalk on the Pakistan/India relationship which discusses a lot of the modern historical background.

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Foreigners living overseas are often clannish and socialize among themselves, although in post colonial days probably not as much.

I was always on the edge: In Zimbabwe, most of my socializing was with the other (mainly European, but some of the sisters were African) missionaries, but when I was in Liberia, the hospital was entirely run by locals, and I was the only white person there, aside from the head doctor's spouse, so I socialized with the other employees: mainly dancing at local discos.

and of course, here I live with my Filipino extended family: there are a few Anglo (and black) expats in this rural area, mainly men married to Filipina women, and some who run businesses. But I don't socialize with any of them...




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