Author: Richard F Burton
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 240
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143031775
Description
First one gentleman chastised his spouse, then another, and then another. To judge by the ear, the fair ones did not receive the discipline with that patience, submission, and long-suffering which Eastern dames are most apocryphally believed to practice.
And so goes this one-of-a-kind travelogue. Victorian explorer Richard Burton is best known for his translation of the Kama Sutra and his writings on Africa and West Asia-but his first book, published in 1851, was Goa, and the Blue Mountains. After he was expelled from Oxford for unruly behaviour, Burton joined the British Indian Army and spent five happy years in Sindh before an attack of cholera sent him south to the Nilgiris. Ever obsessed with discovery, he renounced the comforts of a steamer to amble down the coast in a pattimar.
Burton was no cloistered bara sahib; he was a master linguist who studied Arabic at Oxford and went on to learn Gujarati, Marathi, Persian, Telugu, Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashto, and Portuguese. Yet he was a man of his time, and a curmudgeonly wit in the bargain. No one escapes his nit-picking gaze: the Portuguese or mestizos of Goa, the Hindus or Muslims of Malabar, the Todas or-certainly not-the British of the Nilgiris. His matchless drollery makes his adventures and misadventures a hilarious and transporting read.
With an introduction by Burton expert Dane Kennedy, the escapades of this incorrigible Englishman will have you laughing out loud in your train compartment.
Contents
Introduction
The Voyage
New Goa
Old Goa as it was
Old Goa as it is
Return to Panjim
The Population of Panjim
Seroda
Education, Professions, and Oriental Studies
Adieu to Panjim
Calicut
Malabar
The Hindoos of Malabar
The Moslem and Other Natives of Malabar
The Land Journey
First Glimpse of Ooty
Life at Ooty
The Inhabitants of the Neilgherries
Kotagherry-Adieu to The Blue Mountains