“This is India! by Mark Twain, American Author !!

Mark Twain,  American Author (1835-1920):

“This is India!

The land of dreams and romance,

of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty,

of splendour and rags, of palaces and hovels,

of famine and pestilence,

of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps,

of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle,

 the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues,

 of a thousand religions and two million gods,

cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech,

 mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations – the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien persons,

for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor,

bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see,

and having seen once, by even a glimpse,

would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after a lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me and I hope it never will.”