Garden of Fools by Robert Hutchison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The British, especially the rapacious East India Company, may be criticized for looting India but they must be lauded for three contributions they bequeathed to the country viz., the administrative service, the vast rail network and, most importantly, the irrigation canal grid they set up to ward off the cyclical famines that decimated the population. The aim of the latter was not really altruistic – farmers paid for the irrigation water and were taxed accordingly.
This fictionalized biography of the main mover of the idea of the Ganges Canal Proby Cautley makes gripping reading. The gratuitous sexy bits were superfluous as was the detailed Afghan conflict.
What is smoothly skipped over is the rampant felling of trees in the Himalayas to fire the brick kilns meant for churning out millions of bricks to line the Canal.
However, credit must be given to Cautley and his team of engineers, need I add, to the thousands of native labourers and craftsmen, for their technical skills. The canal functions perfectly and the arched bridges still stand rock solid after 170 years. Unfortunately, the canal roads have become clogged with traffic and the trees that were lovingly planted are slowly dying off and not being replaced.
The whimsical anglicised spellings of Indian names make delightlful reading e.g., Alligurh, Mynpoorie, Kankhul, Cawnpore, Jumna, Mozuffurnuggur, Furruckabad, Oudh. Bobbachee and pawnee keep recurring.

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