MY SUMMER READING : Plain tales from the Raj -edited by Charles Allen -first publishes in 1975

When reading this book - many times I say to myself .Huh ,just like in Qatar !" We were always meeting the same people .Everyone knew rather too much about every one else ;s affairs and it was a staple topic of conversation - what was going on ,who was going out with who so -and so ."

It was also very interesting to read about how they beat the heat without air -conditioning .

""We talked about shutting out the heat .Hurdles of dried straw called kash -kash tatties were put across the open doors and verandah ,and a man would be kept outside to fling water on them now and again .so that such air as did come into the bungalow was mildly cooled ."
WE never slept indoors in the hot weather ."
" Until the advent of air -conditioning the hot weather had to be suffered like toothache .
When the nights became intolerable we used to wrap ourselves in a wet sheet "
"those forced to travel by train did well to secure a large block of ice so that you could sit with your feet on it until it melted away "
" the only sure way of beating the hot weather entirely was to avoid it . The time -honoured custom of taking refuge in the HIlls persisted till the Second World War ."

As an army brat myself I was giggling when reading that :" wives tended to acquire the rank of their husbands " My mother used to be annoyed by that very much tough it was not in India but in Hungary - but human nature seems to be very similar .

The thing that I really liked in Doha when we moved here was that it gave me so much information about the Indian art and culture .India was a great dream for me and I could see it here more or less without having to face the shady sides of that country .
I was happy to discover some words similar in Hungarian , the similiraty in cooking , and in the names. my grandmother s last name happens to be"ranga " , which is the name of millions of Indian as well .
It means colors in Hindi .
Kutta means dog in hindi , in Hungarian it is kutya .There is a state in India called
Bihar . There is a county in Hungary , it is also called Bihar .
The other day I found myself in a Kashmiri souvenir shop :Reshmi . I was shocked to see how the embroidery of that area is similar to the one of South Hungary .
A new mystery to be solved .
In the first pictures you can see the embroidery of Kashmir .In the last one you can see a local artist from South Hungary with her artwork at the background .