'In everything he writes, Tully's sympathy for and knowledge of India shines through.. he is, indeed, incomparable among foreign observers of that bewildering maddening utterly enchanting medley of peoples-Geoffrey Moorhouse in the Guordian

India's Westernized elite, cut off from local traditions, want to wite a full stop in a land where there are no full stops From that striking insight Mark Tully has woven a superb series of stories which explore everything from communal conflict in Ahmedabad to communism in Kolkata, from the Kumbh Mela in Alahabad (probably the biggest religious festival in the world) to the televising of a Hindu epic Throughout he combines analysis of major issues with a feel or the fine texture and human realities of Indian life. The result is a reveleution .

'An unsentimental tribute to India by its best-loved Engishman .A lifetime's travels by the BBC's India correspondent are crystallized into a series of essays that throw more light on this vast tragi-comic country than anything since V.S. Naipaul's Area of Darkness'-Paul Gogarty in the Sunday Telegraph