Rama Santha Rau

1 Books

Santha Rama Rau, Indian author and journalist (born Jan. 24, 1923, Madras, British India [now Chennai, India]—died April 21, 2009, Armenia, N.Y.), was best known for her travel books, but all of her work was characterized by a strong autobiographical element and the examination of the tension between Western and Indian traditions.

Rama Rau’s father was an English-educated civil servant and diplomat, and her activist mother was a cofounder of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. The family lived abroad for much of her early childhood, and when she was six, they moved to England, where she was educated at St. Paul’s School.

In 1938 her father was named Indian high commissioner of South Africa, and the family transferred to that country, but at the outbreak of World War II, Rama Rau settled in Bombay (now Mumbai) with her mother and sister.

After studying English literature at Wellesley (Mass.) College (B.A., 1944), she returned to India to work on her first novel, Home to India (1945), and write for a local magazine.

In 1947 she joined her father, then stationed in Japan, where she became a teacher and met her first husband, American Faubion Bowers, with whom she traveled extensively in Asia.

The latter experience formed the basis for her second book, East of Home (1950). Following her marriage, Rama Rau accepted a position with Holiday magazine and traveled throughout Africa, Asia, and Russia.

 During this period she published travel essays and short stories in such periodicals as The New Yorker and Vogue; completed her third novel, Remember the House (1956); and wrote a stage adaptation (first produced in London, 1960) of E.M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India.

Rama Rau’s other nonfiction works include This Is India (1954), My Russian Journey (1959), The Cooking of India (1970), and Gifts of Passage (1961).

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