One Hell Of a Life: An Anglo-Indian Wallah's Memoir from the Last Decades of the Raj

This is the heart-warming story of a backward boy coming from a dysfunctional family and a broken home. Unable to talk at age four, he was sent to a boarding school to learn to speak. Branded a moron and dragged through ten schools in seven years, he suddenly "finds his feet" and becomes dux of one of India's most prestigious colleges. Later he becomes an officer in one of the Indian Army's most famous regiments and Adjutant of its premier battalion.

Laugh at his misfortunes and exult in his successes. At age four he barely escapes a kidnap attempt, he travels to boarding school on the world's most famous railway, Darjeeling's toy train, which was once chased by a wild elephant. Accompany the author as he goes to catch a monkey and shoot a panther, and as his Brigade confronts the Russians over possession of the Iranian oilfields; and he reads fairy tales to a blood-thirsty Pathan warrior who asks if the stories are true!

Feel the desperation of millions as murder and mayhem stalk the Indian sub-continent. See the refugee trains, ushered in by the granting of independence to India in 1947 when inter-communal violence spawned ten million refugees overnight and one million hapless men, women and children were slaughtered.