Word: sahib
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...late Lord Tweedsmuir, more widely known as John (The 39 Steps') Buchan, takes his own first fictional step. Buchan fils proves that like Buchan pere he can turn a marsh-mallow-weight tale until it is neatly toasted. The setting is India; the set is buna sahib; the time is mainly the '30s; the season is boredom. But at least two men and one woman think there is more to India than what can be seen through the bottom of a gin-sling glass...
Clive Brook plays this pukka sahib version of Marlon Brando with a skill that makes "stiff upper-lip" an entire facial expression...
...seemed distant, tired, and ineffectual. Speaking from a platform 15 feet above the crowds of illiterate peasants, he projected his own confusion. He is against "the Communists," but not against "Communism." He does not approve of Communist "methods," but as for Communist objectives, "I like them." "Does Nehru Sahib wish us to vote for the Communists or not?" asked one of the bewildered peasants...
Author Lewis is an old hand at describing Southeast Asia to stay-at-homes (A Dragon Apparent, Golden Earth). His novel is not just the somber story of a so-so sahib, but a report on a theater of change and conflict. Moreover, in sharp vignettes, Author Lewis shows that the crackle of change in Southeast Asia comes not only from firebrand nationalists and Red fanatics but also from the intellectual bubble gum that the East borrows from the West. At Luang Nakon's leading cabaret, the local version of the Radio City Rockettes wear drum-majorette boots, hussars...
...major's answer sets the underlying mood of Briton Norman Lewis' knowledgeable novel about one sahib's last stand in the Far East. Framing his reply as "what others are saying," Major Chai says: "The white man by his teaching created a demand for justice, and as soon as the demand was existing, removed this product from the market...