I've had comments on the piece covering the trip out to India from a mixed bag of contacts and am quite pleased with its effect. It was an episode not covered in the correspondence of the time, mainly because of censorship; there were scattered references in letters after censorship ended, which I had to piece together and relate, and dimming memories.

Surprisingly, it all came out in a piece after being let to simmer in the subconscious for a while. I've worried it a bit here and there after the class reading [in Jim Burns' writing classes] but feel relatively happy with the final version. Am still a trifle baffled why this period of my life presents itself in more glaring detail than most others, especially the recent past. Vin¢ [Clarke] finds it "particularly astonishing" that I have a recollection of continuous events when his "own memories are of a few high points, interspersed with years of mixed loathing and boredom."

All in all, I'm encouraged to complete the saga of strange doings at Pokhari Ghat as our small band withered away, and closure and the monsoon came nearer. But I must get Vin¢ to follow up outstanding items for the 1938 epic now that he's suddenly digging for me!. ■

© Harry Turner, December 1993.