'I travelled with Mrs Trivedi from Madras to Bangalore, overnight on the mail train. "First class this time so that you are not overwhelmed". It was my second night in India and I was already overwhelmed'. Joe Roberts stayed five months with the Trivedis in Bangalore. Using that as a base he travelled all over southern India. Wherever he went he met extraordinary people…Major Trivedi warned him that 'nothing is as fixed as you think'.

In Pondicherry he found Rita, a melancholy divorcee banished to an ashram. He encountered worshippers at the great temple at Madurai and on the holy island of Rameswaram. He mingled with the vociferous crowds at the snakeboat races at Arunmala and in Cochin he was offered heroin in the Jewish cemetery. Funny, empathetic and always entertaining, Three Quarters of a Footprint has established itself as a travel classic about modern India.