Indian Summer: A Good Man In Asia

While attempting to teach at an inner London comprehensive Will Randall is taken up by an elderly German woman who asks him to accompany her to India. Nothing ventured, he agrees, and so begins a life-changing adventure.

Set down in Puna, three hours from Bombay, Will begins work teaching English at a slum school. Most of the children are orphans or parentless (one lost his parents four years previously when his mother had let go of his hand at a railway station and he'd boarded the wrong train). When zamidars - slum barons - arrive and threaten to pull down the school, Randall has to put on a fund-raising performance of the Indian epic "The Ramayana" in order to help the slum dwellers buy their own land.

Meanwhile he's also been spotted by a Bollywood director who persuades him to take the role of leading man in his new film. Will Randall is "the teacher who travels" and as in 'Solomon Time', this is a heart-warming account of how one man's enthusiasm and old-fashioned desire to do good have helped to preserve a community.