The Past Has To Be Seen To

A Civilization Which Has Taken Over The World Cannot Be Said To Be Dying.

In Trinidad, Where As New Arrivals We Were A Disadvantaged Community, That Excluding Idea Was A Kind Of Protection; It Enabled Us - For The Time Being, And Only For The Time Being - To Live In Our Own Way And According To Our Own Rules, To Live In Our Own Fading India.

Out Of Its Squalor And Human Decay, Its Eruptions Of Butchery, India Produced So Many People Of Grace And Beauty, Ruled By Elaborate Courtesy. Producing Too Much Life, It Denied The Value Of Life; Yet It Permitted A Unique Human Development To So Many. Nowhere Were People So Heightened, Rounded And Individualistic; Nowhere Did They Offer Themselves So Fully And With Such Assurance. To Know Indians Was To Take A Delight In People As People; Every Encounter Was An Adventure. I Did Not Want India To Sink [out Of My Memory]; The Mere Thought Was Painful.

I've Never Abandoned The Novel.

All The Details Of The Life And The Quirks And The Friendships Can Be Laid Out For Us, But The Mystery Of The Writing Will Remain. No Amount Of Documentation, However Fascinating, Can Take Us There.