Shiva’s Pigeons: an Experience of India

“We can only try,” say the authors, “to interpret our pooled experience: what we have seen, heard, touched, smelled and tasted since our babyhood days, learned since-there was so much to learn-and always remembered be-cause, like the pigeons of Shiva, our spirits haunt the places we have loved.”

Jon and Rumer Godden spent most of their childhood, and have spent much of their lives, in India; Stella Snead lived there for many years. It is their pooled experience which has gone to make this superb book. Photographs and descriptive text are perfectly married, giving the reader the most evocative pictures of India’s many-sided beauty, its history, its religious beliefs, the life and character of its peoples.

Through the book there runs the thread of one man’s life, from his birth to his student days, manhood and old age; we are carried over wide ranges of the country and shown the wonderful variety of its traditions and customs. There have been many books about India, but never a book quite like Shiva’s Pigeons.