Chain Reading

A Journey with Elsa Cloud was a present to me from my mother on my thirteenth birthday. Oddly enough, I didn't get down to reading it cover-to-cover until a few years later, which is when I realised what a fabulously appropriate present it had made at that juncture of our lives. It is a travelogue-cum-partial autobiography that chronicles Hadley's journey to India in an attempt to share in her estranged daughter Veronica's new life -- the girl has moved to the Himalayas where she is studying Buddhism, and has all but renounced the American lifestyle she once knew so well. Teenage years seeped in drugs, sex, and rebellion have dissolved into a search for spirituality and an overwhelming desire to overhaul the way she lives. Hadley writes about her heartache at the estrangement and her hope that this journey through India will prove to be their long-sought common ground, and an experience filled with healing and rediscovering each other. I found Veronica's character to be, on the whole, rather unsympathisch -- her overtly spiritual, holier-than-thou attitude annoyed me and made me wonder whether her mother would not be better off leaving such a cold soul to deal with itself. However, motherhood runs much deeper than just that, and Hadley perseveres in her efforts to understand her daughter better and accept her new lifestyle, whether or not she completely fathoms it.

That being said, A Journey with Elsa Cloud is first and foremost, a travel narrative, an account of India as seen through the eyes of two Western women in the 1970s -- a non-hippy, non-rebellious account of New Delhi, Dharamsala, and other parts of Northern India, culminating in a meeting with the Dalai Lama himself. Hadley's powers of narration and description are magnificent - she evokes an exotic and culturally magnificent world and gradually converts the alien to the familiar. Shopping in the streets of India, interacting with its people, and discovering the delights and pitfalls of the East are brilliantly shared through an exquisite choice of words and loops and links back to her Western upbringing. Not to be missed by those who enjoy good travel writing, aspiring travel writers, and perhaps even just mothers and daughters looking to forge a lasting bond.