Finding India

India Calling is an exploration of the development of independent, democratic India over the last fifty years through the eyes of an English doctor. During this journey, which was driven by study and work, not travel or tourism, the author is led into the pressing issues of the day - politics, health, education and the economy and latterly into the fiction, film and fine art inspired by this ancient nation as it re-emerges in the 20th and 21st centuries.

India Calling begins and ends in an isolated mission hospital in an impoverished village in South India as man took his first intrepid steps on the moon and ends as India declares itself as one of the fastest growing world economies, a leader in information technology and manufacturing, and a nuclear power with its own space exploration programme. In India Calling, we meet some remarkable people: dedicated Indian surgeons struggling to do the best they can with limited resources; the temple barbers of Tirupathi; Aunty Doll and her Anglo-Indian family in Bangalore; and Billy Cameron the Scottish tea planter in Kerala.

Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson (their first performance together since the film, Brief Encounter) join us as they film Paul Scott's Staying On for Granada Television and the Maharajas of Jubbal, Patiala, Jodhpur and Dewas Senior make their entrances and their exits. We meet the distinguished Singh family in New Delhi, who over several generations were responsible for the construction of India's new capital city; we indulge a Francophile restauranteur in Pondicherry; we are kept waiting by Ravi Shankar and his sitar in Calcutta; and then at last we return to the mission hospital to note the changes over more than 40 years.

Finding India is a personal story that is more about people than places and aspires to have a veracity and an honesty that arises from a lifetime of direct experience.

About the Author

Michael Farthing trained as a physician in the UK and USA. As a clinical academic he became engaged in the health issues of the resource-poor countries of the world, working in India, Central America and sub-Saharan Africa. Although he has written many scientific papers and co-authored and edited more than 20 medical books, this is one of his first ventures outside science and medicine. In addition to Finding India, he has written Leonardo da Vinci: Under the Skin with his brother Stephen Farthing RA, published in 2019 by the Royal Academy. He is an Honorary Professor at UCL, an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sussex and lives between London and Sussex. He is Chair of the Charleston Trust, the Brighton West Pier Trust and the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund.