Pat Buffardi

Hearts Divided in the Raj Pat Buffardi

From the barren plains of CentralIndia, living hard-by the railway tracks in her stationmaster grandfather'shome, along the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, to an island home in SouthernIndia with her naval officer father, Patricia McGready-Buffardipresents a colourful kaleidoscope of her"mixed-breed" family, before and after The Raj; the turbulence within theAnglo-Indian community; her father's career in the fledgling Indian Navy andhis agony over the division of it at Independence; and the division ofAnglo-Indian hearts throughout the subcontinent. Moving from port to port withher family, she provides comic relief in the form of an old English Vauxhall,their travels across the vast subcontinent frustrating but wondrous. Spanning fourgenerations of the McGready family her memoir, although intensely personal, isa historical tour de force. Growing up in India for twodecades she jumped the prickly fences of two societies, British and Indian. Like"pish-pash," a mushy but tasty mix of over-cooked rice, lentils and left-overs, popular with Anglo-Indian children across the country,she enjoyed a delicious concoction of both cultures. As a child, hergrandfather told stories of his boyhood and his own father's passion for therailways, an intimate portrait of a simple pioneering family. Rich in detail,the memoir is a prism of days lost forever on the subcontinent, since theAnglo-Indian race is fast dwindling...with the inter-marriages of the newgeneration around the globe. In short, a race that is almost extinct.