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Travels With The Sahib: Diary of a Not-Quite-Mad-Enough Foreign Service Wife

by Winifred Denny, illustrated by Carolyn M. Nicholson

385 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); illustrated; catalogue #04-1832; ISBN 1-4120-4025-6; US$31.50, C$36.08, EUR26.00, £18.50

Uprooted from a quiet existence in suburbia, the author takes us through the shocks and challenges of her new life in India as a Foreign Service wife.

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About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

This readable and highly diverting tale describes the life of a quite ordinary housewife suddenly finding herself thrust into Le Corps Diplomatique, with a posting in India. Her struggles to come to terms with life on the subcontinent and her frequent fallings from grace are described with a disarming candour.

Through it all, the reader discovers a strangely intimate view of this ancient, vast and diverse country as the author leads us from the Himalayas eternal snows to the tropical beaches of Trivandrum.

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About the Author

Winifred Denny has spent a large part of her life on the fringes of authorship. An early career as a journalist and advertising copywriter was interrupted by marriage and the arrival of five children. Despite the demands of a full-time mother, she still managed to edit a book, and write innumerable newsletters, as a volunteer for various organizations. She now lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with her husband, Douglas, and an engaging multi-poo called Edward.

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Excerpts

Prologue: "Isn't that just like Dr. Denny to go off to India to help all those starving people, and those poor, poor lepers."

I just about choked on my macaroon. The thought of my husband, that quintessential bon vivant, as a combination of Albert Schweitzer and Mother Theresa was too great a stretch of the imagination, even for me. Nonetheless all the ladies gathered for a farewell tea murmured polite assent. I did make some attempt to say that wasn't actually the sort of thing he would be doing, but nobody paid much attention. If they but knew the driving force behind this life-changing overseas caper on which we were about to embark. Ulysses had heard the siren's call.

Chapter 3: When they had all left, the bearer returned with another servant, who carried a forked stick and a Nepalese kukri knife. During the dinner, a cobra had twined itself around the lady's ankle. As she had not moved a muscle, it was now crawling across her shoe, and soon emerged from under the tablecloth. The execution was swift and silent. The lady rejoined her guests and drank her coffee. No one noticed that her cup shook slightly.

Chapter 7: Remembering my own rescue, and thinking about "doing unto others", I decide to try diversionary tactics. All ingratiating smiles, I tell her that someone in the farthest corner of the garden has been asking after her. No, I didn't get her name. What did she look like? Well, it's a little hard to say. She is wearing sort of a flowered voile... And from here on, it's every flowered voile for itself, I think, as she dashes off.

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Catalogue Information

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