"We like Western society, its liberalism, its opportunity structures for upward and horizontal mobility. But on the other hand, most of us miss India, its people and the cultural aspects of Indian life style". So says Urmila Mohapatra in her book "With love, from Britain". Therein lies the essence of this book. That is also the quintessential
dilemma that grips each of us, expatriates in some measure. In some sense we all make that journey to find our Indian identity and to tie it firmly with our Indian roots lest it escape. 

The author sets out to "soak herself into the Indian subculture" in Leicester, a small British town. She finds the Indianness she is looking for, delights in it and reports it in such minuscule detail that we watch a "little India" unfold under her pen. The mouthwatering fragrance of motichoor laddus, glitzy jewellery shops, sales ladies carrying familiar childhood names, diwali celebrations, an "engagement party" --- everything that we believe is India and Indian, is as intact even outside India as it was in India when I left "home" a decade and a half back. Yes, the mood of a place, its people despite geographic distance is well captured.

And there is more. Mrs. Mohapatra goes on to explore the humanity that extends beyond the confines of  "ethnicity" . The artificial boundaries that separate one people from another disintegrate as her preoccupation with Indianness fades away and we revel in the hustle and bustle of academia, the world of papers and conferences, the heady intellectual ambiance of campus life and all things cerebral. 

The kindness of strangers, their curiosities about the ways of a people, their quaint notions about people from an alien culture, Mrs. Sandra Prior, her bed and breakfast operation and her naive assumptions about the sophestication or lack thereof of Indians --- Mrs. Mohapatra captures it all in this narrative of her sojourn in England. Her biggest gift is the gentleness with which she describes the people she meets during her stay.

Having read her book, I have my own wish list of what I wanted from the book. I wish I knew more about the interesting people that Urmila Mohapatra met while staying at the Indian YMCA. I wish I knew why the girl in the bus wanted to get out of
Leicester and Britain at the first opportunity. I wish I knew more about the realities of Carribean Africans in England, their problems, their unique battles against racism. And above all, assuming that Mrs. Mohapatra revised her letters for a more general audience, I wish they were left untouched. Those special passages that give glimpses of the most intimate vignettes in an author's life, those moments that connect an author's humanity with that of her audience, the substance that makes a book like this a personal narrative, all that is sadly absent from this book.Therein lies the charm of letterwriting. I missed that the most in this book of letters, from a mother to her children.