Book Review: On a Shoestring to Coorg. An Experience of Southern India by Dervla Murphy

On a Shoestring to Coorg. An Experience of Southern India is a travelogue by Dervla Murphy set sometime in the year 1973. Its about an oldish English(?) lady who is infected by the bug of traveling and he travels in the Coorg area of South India with her 5 year old daughter.

As an Indian, I find that some of the statements/assertions in her book are quite sweeping generalizations and almost filthy racist attitudes. Examples

• ‘Through the jostling noisy crowd……….no sign here of Hindu inertia’
  
  
• ‘…….she think nothing of lying down on a filthy deck amidst scores of talking, eating, praying or copulating Indians.’
  
  Indians copulating on the deck???? Now that’s a new insult. Was she on drugs?
  
  
• ‘……..and we have the 5-year old daughter Rachel saying ‘Anyway, I think some of the Indians look more like monkeys.’.Its almost as if the author has put her inner feelings in the mouth of her child thus trying to escape censure. What need prompted the author to include these rantings in the book? Maybe to satisfy her inner racist urges by way of her daughters mouth.
  
• ‘….who were putting away more good food in 15 minutes than the average Indian can lay hands on in a month.’
  
  Talk about exaggerations
  
  
• ‘….to ring the temple bell but I explained that not even Hindu women…….are allowed to do this.’
  
  Huh!!! She is almost taking this as a representative example rather than an exception which it is. Generalizing for 1 billion people. Madam, get yourself a good education
  
  
• ‘Yet the effects of a vegetarian diet show in the lack of stamina, which is said to be one reason why so few South Indian hockey players are picked in the national team, despite their renowned speed and skill’
  
  It’s a marginally better decision of the writer to become a writer and not a doctor. I haven’t come across any scientific studies which point this out. In modern times, the author would have be shunned by the public for such horrid racial profiling
  
  
• ‘A small boy who spoke excellent English (he attends one of the last outposts of intelligible English in India – a convent school)’
  
  
• …….and saliva, phlegm and mucus, which are believed to be ‘spoiled semen’ (even today semen is popularly supposed to be stored in the head)
  
  Duh!!! Which demented characters have you been speaking with?
  
  
• ‘Indians love noise and habitually amplify their degraded cinema pop music to truly diabolic proportions.’
  
  Oh yes, the westerners are the torchbearers of the civilized world. The music of the easterners is cacophony.
  

And you have the high and mighty English press: The Guardian, Observer and Times extolling the virtues of this book on the front and back cover.

Its a pity really. Were it not for the conscious/subconscious racism and sneering attitude, the book is quite delightful in parts. Especially the parts that cover the cute 5-year old daughter