Sagar Saga

Volume 2 of a personal memoir illustrated with original photographs. In 1967, fresh from University, the author went to teach at a remote University in Central India. Volume 1 recounted his first academic year: his discovery of that recently independent nation, his integration into a society very different from his own and the pleasures and frustrations of working in a new university. Initially stereotyped as a white "sahib", he found this a role which did not correspond to his North of England working class background. This second volume deals with the long summer holiday of 1968 during which he set off South to try to fit his Sagar experience into a wider context. This involved staying with middle-class Indian families - some those of his Sagar students, others relatives and friends of his Sagar colleagues - in non-Hindi speaking states. It also meant an opportunity to visit and interact with other European volunteers, observe their projects and try to form an idea of their contribution to India's "development". Royalties from this volume will be donated to Village Service Trust - which supports Seva Nilayam, a village development centre in Tamilnadu where the author helped out for a week in 1968.
About the Author: Mick Howarth Mick was born and brought up in the North of England and now lives in the South of France. In between, he has lived, worked and studied in India, the USA and Barbados. He has dual French and British nationality and his current status is that of a retired French Civil Servant - which finally gives him the time to write the books he was always planning to write! He grew up in working class districts of Manchester and Liverpool, attended a Lancashire Grammar School, then King's College London, where he studied English and was active in student drama and journalism. He went to India in 1967 with Voluntary Service Overseas (the British organization which gave JFK the idea for the Peace Corps) and spent two years teaching at Sagar University - a remote institution deep in the interior. One of only two Europeans in the University, he went through a rapid process of Indianization. This is the subject of his memoir "Sagar Saga" of which volumes 1 and 2 are now available in paperback and as e-books. After India, he did a Master's in South Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, then trained Peace Corps volunteers in Oklahoma and travelled in Mexico, before returning to Europe and working for several years at VSO headquarters in London. Most of his career has been in teaching - a rough high school in North London, a rural secondary school in Barbados, secondary schools and university in France, freelance work as a language consultant and translator... With his wife Carole and a 15-month old daughter, he moved from UK to France in 1986. They bought a semi-ruined stage-coach inn in a village near the Mediterranean and restored it to holiday apartments and language school. This was very hard work and should make another book! They now live near the Spanish border in Perpignan, France's most southern city. In his spare time, Mick cycles, swims and plays saxophone. He has two grown up children.