From New Delhi, TIME Correspond ent Joe David Brown recently wrote me about his experiences covering the news of India. "One time I should look back on. I suppose," wrote Brown, "is the week I spent in the wilds of Bihar while doing the research for the cover story on Vinoba Bhave [TIME, May 11];. Much of the time was spent trekking through the tiger-and the elephant-infested jungles. Since Bhave and his followers are strict practition ers of ahimsa (nonviolence), and are not even supposed to resist a man-eat ing tiger or a rogue elephant, each vil lage we passed through furnished us with a corps of drummers to scare off the wild beasts. Before dawn every morning, as we walked through the narrow-jungle paths with the native party chanting the names of Hindu deities and the drums rolling, there would be occasional noises in the underbrush. But some how the only thing that worried me was a blister on my heel. I guess I'm getting blase -- or just old."

Actually, Brown, who was formerly a National Affairs writer in New York, is only 38, and my guess is that what really distracted him from the tigers was the perennial worry of TIME'S three correspondents in India (Bureau Chief James Burke and Achal Rangaswami are the other two). Their worry: how to get around quickly enough to cover their immense beat--not only India and Pakistan, but also Burma, Ceylon and Nepal. Burke, Brown and Rangaswami must track down news in a territory that is eight times as big as Texas: some 2,000,000 square miles. It includes more than 400 million people (one-fifth of all the people on earth), and the number of dialects spoken in this area--India alone has 225--makes telephoning for information more than just difficult. As a result, these three reporters last year ticked off 21,825 miles by air and nobody knows how many miles by train, car, bullock cart and on foot.

Born and raised in China. James Burke is an old hand at Asiatic news. He has been chief of the New Delhi bureau since 1951. and before that he was TIME correspondent in Peking until the Communists took news coverage into their own hands. He was one of three foreign correspondents who eyewitnessed the recent riots in Kashmir after the overthrow of Sheik Abdullah. When Mt. Everest was climbed and expedition members were on their way down to the Nepalese capital, Burke's interest in Tenzing, the expedition's now famous guide, so pleased Nepalese Embassy officials in New Delhi that they transmitted his visa application via the embassy's own radio station. Burke was in Katmandu, the capital city, in plenty of time to get a first-rate story on the expedition.

But by Burke's own reckoning, his most memorable assignment in India was his 1951 pursuit of a monsoon. New York wanted a photograph of a violent Asiatic downpour. Unfortunately, it was the driest season in a quarter of a century, and with New Delhi wrapped in a drought, Burke pushed on to the Khasi Hills at Cherrapunji. reputed to have the world's heaviest rainfalls. The moment he arrived, the rains ceased. Just after he left, 30 inches fell. As a final blow, he was arrested for taking surreptitious pictures of a perfect formation of monsoon clouds from a Calcutta-bound plane. Indian law prohibits taking pictures from an airplane. "They just couldn't believe," Burke relates, "that all I wanted to do was photograph a few of their clouds."

A great help to TIME'S coverage of the vast Indian territory is Achal Rangaswami's intimate knowledge of the country. A 27-year-old Brahman, son of a prominent Madras lawyer who was a leader in the Congress movement, Rangaswami joined the New Delhi bureau seven years ago as a stenographer and interpreter, gradually became indispensable and was raised to full-correspondent status two years ago. Much in demand as guide and interpreter for traveling U.S. correspondents and authors, he has shepherded such visitors as John Gunther, Vincent Sheean. Margaret Bourke-White and David Douglas Duncan, who knew him by reputation and looked him up on their brief passages through India. These diverse and highly individualistic types have failed to give him a clear idea of the "typical American." In fact, says Rangaswami, those mysterious Westerners still leave him confused.

Cordially yours,

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