An Old India Hand

British novelist, columnist, and persistent humorist Mike Ripley has a fine piece up in the e-zine Shots right now, an “appreciation” of renowned author H.R.F. Keating. The most enjoyable segment of Ripley’s profile might be his explanation of how Keating finally got to India, after sitting in his London home for many years and happily writing about a policeman, Inspector Ghote, who worked in Bombay--a city he’d never ventured near.

It may seem that Harry was defying the old maxim that you should write about what you know and he cheerfully admits that “it was all going quite nicely without having to face the actuality,” but then one morning the actuality came calling. It was at the breakfast table with the morning post (those were the days!) that Harry opened a letter from Air India, which basically said: You’ve been writing about India, now come and see it and offered him a ticket, thankfully [also a] return one, on one of their flights to Bombay, as it was then. It was an offer Harry, in all conscience, could not afford to refuse.

The Ghote books were known and read in India but still, the prospect of confronting the “actuality” of a world he had created in the safety of Notting Hill several thousand miles away, must have been daunting if not nerve-wracking. Harry spent the entire Air India flight there calming his nerves and rehearsing an appropriate speech for that dramatic moment when he landed and stepped for the first time on to Indian soil. It went, as he recalls, “Something along the lines of ‘One small step for Inspector Ghote …’” but in reality the speech was never delivered. As the Air India jet landed and Harry stepped on to the tarmac of Bombay airport, his first historic words were: “My God, it’s hot!”

You can find Ripley’s full story here.