Quirky tales from Corfu, Kirrin and beyond
Shreya Sen-Handley’s Handle With Care is a delicious documentation of her offbeat travels and culinary exploits around the world with her British husband, two children, and their dog. Her adventures, which are “dished up with love and mischief”, span international capitals from New York to Paris. But what really sets this travelogue apart are her quirky tales from locales like the Greek island of Corfu, home to Gerald Durrell, the author of My Family & Other Animals.
She includes her journeys from childhood, the trips from her home town Kolkata to touristy destinations in India, which will tickle the funny bone of those who have travelled in the India of the 1980s and 1990s. She fondly recalls a trip to Delhi and Rajasthan, when she played chess on the train with her quintessential Bengali uncle: “I was the college champion at chesh? Presidency College, no lesh!”
The travel stories that take the reader’s breath away are the ones prompted by the author’s love for literature. Traversing Britain in search of Sherlock Holmes, she visits Baskerville Hall, where Arthur Conan Doyle set The Hound of Baskervilles. Much to the family’s delight they are invited to have tea on the private property and can hear a hound in the background. SenHandley writes that Conan Doyle was a frequent guest of the Baskervilles, but at the family’s request, set the story in faraway
Devon “to ward off tourists”.
In the pretty village of Haworth, where the Brontes – Emily, Charlotte, Anne and their brother Branwell – spent much of their lives, Sen-Handley can feel their presence: “They would likely have dropped into the same upbeat bakery, the same cheerful post office, and the park full of flowers in full bloom on their daily rounds.”
The family’s visit to Corfu is particularly special. Gerald Durrell’s mother Louisa decided to make Corfu her home after her husband died in India. The Sen-Handleys, who travel on a tight budget and often wonder in jest if they should start a literary tour company after they retire, saw an “amorous connection” with this “posh but penniless, globetrotting English family”.
The author’s preteens Syon and Ayana, both avid readers of Enid Blyton, are thrilled to visit Corfe Castle in Dorset, which, transformed into the castle on the imaginary Kirrin island, is the setting for Five On A Treasure Island.
Shreya Sen-Handley 258pp, ~399 HarperCollins
After Luna, their dog, becomes a part of the family, they are suddenly short of travel ideas. “How does one go on holiday with a pup?” The Sen-Handleys decide to go to Whitby and Wye Valley – the former has “cheerful dog bakeries and boutiques”, and the latter is home to the Hay Book Festival. Since dogs are not allowed at the festival, Sen-Handley and her husband take turns to explore the town with Luna and sift through books with their children.
Some of the chapters have been featured in various publications. “My aim was to tell you stories you could relate to... So, there is little striving after scholarly verisimilitude, though the occasional fact may have crept in.” Sen-Handley, who is the author of Memoirs of My Body (2017) and Strange (2019), is being modest. Facts are obviously not occasional. The resident of Sherwood Forest, Nottingham, the legendary town of Robin Hood, says she wrote this book “through a transformative phase of her life when she discovered she is autistic”. She also reflects on her violent first marriage.
Her travels haven’t been without trouble. She recalls with humour her lifelong “trouble during transit”. This includes getting locked up in a washroom in Oman, with her flight about to take off, thorough body-checks in New York post-9/11 (while her English husband is spared), and a Greek immigration official declaring he has never seen an Indian passport – “my little blue book of horrors”. Sen-Handley’s
The azure waters of Corfu in Greece.
account of travelling to Bangkok in the 1980s with jaggery and getting stuck at passport control is hilarious as is her description of landing at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport back in the day when it seemed as if it was “designed for cinematic exploits than safe travel”.
Which brings me to my little
own adventure while reading this page turner. I was so engrossed that I didn’t realise that my house was on fire. But as in Sen-Handley’s often chaotic tales, everything ended well and I lived to tell the tale.