conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Riveting, Times, India with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Impressionist'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a plot for a book titled The Impressionist
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Impressionist: The novel concerns Pran Nath (known throughout the book by several other names), the child of a one-time affair between an English father and an Indian mother, and his life from birth to roughly the age of twenty-two, as he travels from India to England to Africa while colonialism begins to come to a close.\nAs the narrative evolves, Pran takes on different personalities—some given to him by others, some willingly picked up to his advantage—as he seeks a permanent identity.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a plot for a book about Riveting, Times, India with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Impressionist: The novel concerns Pran Nath (known throughout the book by several other names), the child of a one-time affair between an English father and an Indian mother, and his life from birth to roughly the age of twenty-two, as he travels from India to England to Africa while colonialism begins to come to a close.\nAs the narrative evolves, Pran takes on different personalities—some given to him by others, some willingly picked up to his advantage—as he seeks a permanent identity.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first paragraph for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Impressionist
  ONE AFTERNOON, THREE YEARS AFTER THE BEGINNING of the new century, red dust that was once rich mountain soil quivers in the air. It falls on a rider who is making slow progress through the ravines that score the plains south of the mountains, drying his throat, filming his clothes, clogging the pores of his pink perspiring English face.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: four more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Duncan's birth was difficult. She almost died in the stifling ward at the women's hospital, and though Andrew was keen for her to get back to her work at the mission, she spent two months recuperating, lying in a cot by an upstairs window, weakly nursing her baby and watching the street life unfold below her. Perhaps it was this angelic distance, this sense of floating above the world she watched, that first allowed her to love India. She watched the people go about their business, buying and selling, cooking their food, begging for alms, washing their clothes, squatting to brush their teeth over the gutter, and finally found something more complex in Falkland Road than a mass of unsaved humanity. Day by day she watched more carefully, saw the figures carrying racks of tea glasses, hods of bricks, bales of cotton, papier-mâché idols, and flower-strewn corpses, and started to marvel at how full this world was, how full of things she understood nothing about.
  Andrew was overjoyed at her return to health. She threw herself into mission work with new vigor, and attempted, for the first time, to make friends with the people among whom she lived. She now felt she truly loved Andrew for bringing her here, and he responded by taking her with him as he roamed the slums, seeking converts.
  Sometimes passersby would stop and listen. More often they would walk past. Because Andrew spoke in English, his message went unheeded by most of the people he was trying to reach. Though Elspeth pointed this out to him, he seemed reluctant to learn the language, let alone preach in it. He explained this by saying that the English language had an innately moral character, that it was in itself a route to God. She asked what he had done among the tribesmen in Assam, and he told her he had learned some of their tongue, of course, but had concentrated on teaching them his own. English and Christ, Christ and English. Inseparable.
  To Elspeth it did not seem a very satisfactory method. Something else about it nagged her as well. She had thought Andrew was the open one in the marriage, the one really living in the India she tried to push away. Now she began to see a different figure, arrogant and closed. Because of the strength of its religious traditions, missionaries had always had a hard task in India. It was not like Africa, where, she had heard, they would prostrate themselves in the hundreds after a single sermon. Yet Andrew seemed to have so very little success. When Elspeth fell pregnant again, after almost three years in country, the Independent Scottish Mission Among the Heathen had only two converts, both untouchable men who did odd jobs around the compound in return for food, and on Sunday often had to be dragged out of the paan shop on the corner to attend service.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: When Elspeth fell pregnant again, after almost three years in country, the Independent Scottish Mission Among the Heathen had only two converts, both untouchable men who did odd jobs around the compound in return for food, and on Sunday often had to be dragged out of the paan shop on the corner to attend service.. Yet Andrew seemed to have so very little success. It was not like Africa, where, she had heard, they would prostrate themselves in the hundreds after a single sermon. Because of the strength of its religious traditions, missionaries had always had a hard task in India. Now she began to see a different figure, arrogant and closed. She had thought Andrew was the open one in the marriage, the one really living in the India she tried to push away. Something else about it nagged her as well.
  To Elspeth it did not seem a very satisfactory method. Inseparable. English and Christ, Christ and English. She asked what he had done among the tribesmen in Assam, and he told her he had learned some of their tongue, of course, but had concentrated on teaching them his own. He explained this by saying that the English language had an innately moral character, that it was in itself a route to God. Though Elspeth pointed this out to him, he seemed reluctant to learn the language, let alone preach in it. Because Andrew spoke in English, his message went unheeded by most of the people he was trying to reach. More often they would walk past.
  Sometimes passersby would stop and listen. She now felt she truly loved Andrew for bringing her here, and he responded by taking her with him as he roamed the slums, seeking converts. She threw herself into mission work with new vigor, and attempted, for the first time, to make friends with the people among whom she lived.
  Andrew was overjoyed at her return to health. Day by day she watched more carefully, saw the figures carrying racks of tea glasses, hods of bricks, bales of cotton, papier-mâché idols, and flower-strewn corpses, and started to marvel at how full this world was, how full of things she understood nothing about. She watched the people go about their business, buying and selling, cooking their food, begging for alms, washing their clothes, squatting to brush their teeth over the gutter, and finally found something more complex in Falkland Road than a mass of unsaved humanity. Perhaps it was this angelic distance, this sense of floating above the world she watched, that first allowed her to love India. She almost died in the stifling ward at the women's hospital, and though Andrew was keen for her to get back to her work at the mission, she spent two months recuperating, lying in a cot by an upstairs window, weakly nursing her baby and watching the street life unfold below her.Duncan's birth was difficult
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last five paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A BROKEN POCKET WATCH IS CAREFULLY WRAPPED IN TISSUE paper and dispatched to Miss A Chapel, c/o British Embassy, Paris, its arrival disrupting the announcement of her engagement to the new nawab of Fatehpur, whom she met at a yacht party in Nice. A steamer packed with infantry chugs upriver, its human cargo dozing and listlessly gambling their pay away, until they are disgorged onto the jetty of the township now known as Short's Landing. The place is bustling, filled with new arrivals from the countryside, drawn by bright lights and government pay. On a corner a barber shaves customers, and drunks sit on the steps of a new wooden courthouse.
  A line of telegraph poles follows the course of the main road, which stretches away out of town to the north. By its side a resting road gang watches artillery being moved along it, mules straining at their harnesses, the wheels of the limbers throwing up a cloud of red dust.
  HIS CAMEL CASTS A JAUNDICED EYE ON HIM, AND AS HE walks beside it he is careful to keep out of the way of its legs. Together they trudge up the gentle windward slopes of the dunes, sliding down each leeward face in an ankle-deep cascade of sand.
  Ahead of him plods a long line of camels, each tied to the one in front. Their haunches roll from side to side, the movement obscenely exaggerated by the bundles of trade goods tied to their backs. Their drovers tug on their halters and urge them on with songs and snatches of banter.
  Every so often, as he adjusts the hood of his burnous to shield his eyes from the sun, he slips his hand inside it and runs his fingers over the braille of scar tissue on his neck. For now the journey is everything. He has no thoughts of arriving anywhere. Tonight he will sleep under the enormous bowl of the sky. Tomorrow he will travel on.