Christopher Kremmer first set foot in India in 1990, as a young Australian reporter. In 1993, he married an Indian journalist, Janaki Bahadur. And in 2006 he published a sprawling portrait of India – Inhaling the Mahatma. Combining an objective, journalistic approach with a perspective influenced by living with an Indian family, Kremmer introduces the reader to an operatic cast of political Brahmins, Prime Ministers, cyber coolies, so-called messiahs of low castes, architects, missionaries, pandas, lawyers, marriage registrars, domestic helps and even naive hijackers of planes, all brilliantly nuanced.

Though Kremmer specifies that his portrayal of India’s momentous struggles focusses mainly on the past 15 years, which marked a decisive stage in the nation’s progress, his book, in fact, goes much beyond these years. From the epic age of the Ramayana, through the Mohenjodaro civilisation, Rajput and Mughal rules and colonial period to March 7, 2006, when the Sankat Mochan temple in Varanasi was rocked by powerful bombs, Kremmer encapsulates the entire history of the complex nation, moving from the micro to the macro with effortless ease.

What makes Inhaling… eminently readable are anecdotes from the writer’s carefully recorded notebook (he even jots down arguments his parents-in-law have on current events!). Whether it is his encounters with politicians like V.P. Singh and Amar Singh, who stand delightfully stripped of their pretensions, his coverage of a Rajiv Gandhi election campaign when the latter charmingly offers him an ice mint while popping lozenges himself, to keep him going through the rigours of campaigning in the heat of summer, or his neurotic hunt for the marriage registrar in the betel-stained, urine-stenched corridors of the Tis Hazari court, Kremmer captures the quirks and oddities of a difficult-to-define country in an amusing, entertaining manner. “Rather than rendering it in dry, historical terms, I have chosen to tell India’s story in the context of my own changing life there,” he explains in the preface to his book. “The experience of living within a Hindu family on the fringes of Old Delhi, more than anything else, allowed me to discern the fundamental difference between the tolerant Hinduism of the majority and the less appealing kind practised by power-hungry politicians.”

Inhaling... is therefore pleasantly devoid of pre-conceived ideas, pedagogical theories or rosy-eyed notions of Indian spirituality. Yes, he does seem to convert to Hinduism towards the end of the book, but he does so after a long-drawn search of his essential self. Dunking himself in the muddy waters of the Ganga, in Varanasi, clasping his hands together tight in front of a lowered forehead, he concludes profoundly, ‘Ishwar ek hain.’ Next moment, as he climbs the ghat towards his bundle of clothes, he hopes no thief has stolen his sandals. The ‘global gypsy’, who lives in Australia for the major part of the year, talks about his India experience.

Your first impression of India...
Most foreign visitors just want a first taste of India before deciding how long they’ll stay. I’d taken a job based in New Delhi without ever having visited it, so it was a bit of a gamble. Like it or not, I was coming for at least two years! It was eerie looking out over Delhi at night, from the plane window, at this vast city, which even then had a population almost twice that of my own country. I scribbled a note to myself promising to do my best to be fair in my reporting for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I’ll never forget the date – July 11, 1990. Every year I mark the anniversary. It was one of those turning points in my life.