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Leslie de Noronha. The Dew Drop Inn. Calcutta. Writers Workshop. 1994. 297 pages.
The Dew Drop Inn is a sequel to The Mango and the Tamarind Tree, published in 1970 though completed a decade earlier. The protagonist of Leslie de Noronha's first novel, a journalist living in England and reporting on events such as the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi, the Bhopal tragedy, and AIDS in India, reappears in "The Book of Raoul Albuquerque," which summarizes what happened earlier, including the breakup of the love of Raoul and Estelle, born in Nairobi.
The designation "sequel" is misleading: the novel has new characters too, brought to the Dew Drop Inn in Shantimarga ("The Way of Peace") in the Himalayas, all with "books" in their name, beginning with Tim and Megan Morris, who open the inn. Managing Director of Britts Pharmaceuticals in Bombay, Tim was born in England, his father an apothecary in the Cotswalds; Megan is Welsh. Next is Charlotte Merrywood; born to an English couple managing a tea estate in the Nilgiri Hills, she grew up in England, became a successful writer of romantic historical novels about India, got nostalgic, and came to live in Shantimarga. Then there is Lily Das: a working-class Englishwoman who married a Bengali...