Beware Falling Coconuts: Perspectives of India

by Adam Clapham

A documentary maker can never be off duty in India because there are too many terrific stories waiting to be told. So says the author Adam Clapham, a BBC producer who has worked and played in India all his professional life. Along the way Adam has kept his eye open for the off-beat, the bizarre and the British angle. This book is a kaleidoscope of his experiences, stories from the political hard edge to the downright whimsical.

• The 400-croe diamond that cost 400 rupees
• Mark Tully, the human face of the BBC
• The evil British Traffic in Indian opium
• High jinks and white mischief at Viceregal Lodge
• The day America put India at risk of nuclear attack

The foreword is written by the author’s friend and one-time BBC colleague Sir Mark Tully, and the illustrations are from the pen of one of India’s best-loved cartoonists Mario Miranda.

Beware Falling Coconuts is a funny, perceptive look at the fabric of Indian life written for an Indian readership by an affectionate outsider.

Contents:

• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction

1. A Place in the Sun
2. Coffee Dogs
3. BBC Spells Trouble
4. Tully Sahib
5. The God Man
6. Staying On
7. Bus Stop
8. Cloak and Dagger
9. Licence to Drive
10. Diamonds are Forever
11. Jewel in the Crown
12. Chota Peg
13. The Vale of Tears
14. Car Crash
15. Paradise Lost
16. On My Way to the Club
17. Birth of a Nation
18. Casualty
19. Summer for the Viceroy
20. Half Way to China
21. American Roulette

About the Author:

Adam Clapham worked at BBC Television for nearly twenty years as a director, becoming the senior executive producer in its documentaries department. He was awarded an Imperial Relations Trust bursary to study media in India and a Leverhulme scholarship for research in Sri Lanka. He has written As Nature Intended, a pictorial History of the nudists. Adam lives in a beach house near Mangalore visiting Britain to escape the monsoon.