A workmanlike account of the author's journey through India's Christian institutions. I knew the writer through his book on India's wildlife, so this book on a totally different subject shows his versatility and 'catholicity' of interests. The book serves as well as a travelogue of places and people you wouldn't get to visit yourself, giving an intimate view of India at the end of the 20th century, linking the present with the past in a competent manner. Apart from the fact that Christianity has had a pretty long presence in the country, there is a recurrent acknowledgement of the religious tolerance and breadth of inclusion in the general Indian outlook to religious matters, among both the Christians and the Hindus, so that there does seem to be something special and different in the Indian social psychology. ( )