An American in Khadi

Author: Asha SharmaPublisher: PenguinYear: 1999Language: EnglishPages: 426ISBN/UPC (if available): 0140285091 DescriptionA warm and moving portrait of a remarkable American who made India his home.Satyanand (Samuel Evans) Stokes is remembered today chiefly for the manner in which he transformed the economy of the Simla Hills of Himachal Pradesh by introducing the Delicious variety of apples into the region. But this was only one of the many facets of a fascinating life, now almost forgotten outside his adopted village. Stokes arrived in the Simla Hills in 1904, barely twenty-one years of age, to work at the leper home there, having left behind a prosperous family and a promising future in Philadelphia. In his early years he lived a life of absolute poverty, working with the diseased and the dying, and even formed his own order of Franciscan friars. A few years later, though, he chose the life of a householder, marrying a local Pahari girl, and eventually converted to Hinduism. For