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Santha Rama Rau was an Indian-born writer whose memoirs, travel books, journalism, fiction and stage adaptation drew on a life lived across India, Britain, Japan, the United States and other parts of Asia. The New Yorker’s archive documents her contributions from 1951 onward. The story that mob figure Frank Costello courted her comes from a later family recollection, not from independently established contemporary records.
Who was Santha Rama Rau?
Rau was born Vasanthi Rama Rau in Madras on January 24, 1923. Her father, Benegal Rama Rau, was a senior civil servant who later held several major public posts, including governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Her mother, Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, advocated for women’s reproductive rights and became a prominent figure in family planning.
Rau’s childhood involved frequent moves between countries with her family. In South Africa, she encountered racial prejudice—an early experience of how identity and social expectations changed across borders. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1944.
What did Santha Rama Rau write?
Rau’s first book, Home to India (1945), reflects on returning to India in 1940 after years abroad. It considers family, belonging and political change through the perspective of someone negotiating more than one cultural world. Her later work crossed genres rather than settling into a single lane.
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- Memoir and travel writing: East of Home (1950), This Is India (1951; a 2021 account says her Holiday articles were collected in a volume in 1955), A View of the Southeast (1955), and A Russian Journey (1957).
- Fiction and personal writing: Remember the House, described in a 2021 profile as her first novel and dated there to 1955, and Gifts of Passage.
- Journalism and essays: Work for The New Yorker, Harper’s and Holiday, including reporting on India’s first general election and writing about the dacoit Bhupat.
- Adaptation and collaboration: A stage version of E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India and, later, the Time-Life book The Cooking of India.
Publication dates can vary between accounts and editions, so the dates above follow the cited biographical profile rather than asserting a definitive catalogue record for every title.
What did she write for The New Yorker?
The New Yorker contributor archive lists Rau’s work in fiction, reportage and other genres from 1951 onward. Among the documented pieces are “By Any Other Name,” “Letter from Bombay” and “Epiphany.” Her reporting included coverage of India’s first general election.
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“By Any Other Name,” published in 1951, offers a direct account of how colonial schooling could impose cultural authority through something as ordinary as a name. Rau recalls that an Anglo-Indian school assigned her and her sister English names: Pamela for Premila and Cynthia for Santha. The essay is valuable not only as an anecdote, but as Rau’s first-person reflection on who gets to define identity.
In a 1950 conversation recorded by Daniel Lang and Geoffrey T. Hellman for The New Yorker, Rau challenged the unequal expectations placed on Indians and Western visitors in each other’s countries: “An Indian in America is always expected to learn English and to wear American clothes, but Westerners in Asia don’t adapt themselves in these regards. They often scorn native customs.”
That concern also appears in This Is India, where Rau wrote, as quoted by Anu Kumar: “A formidable screen of fantasy and half-truths has grown up between India and the western world.” Her writing interpreted India for Western audiences while questioning the stereotypes and one-sided demands that could shape that encounter.
Did Frank Costello court Santha Rama Rau?
A 2021 Scroll.in profile by Anu Kumar reports that Rau attracted the attention of singer Nat King Cole and Frank Costello, the New York mob figure, and that Costello courted her for a time. The account attributes the Costello story to Rau’s nephew, Nikhil Wagle. Wagle recalled that Costello’s men filled tables at the restaurant where Costello and Rau met for dinner.
This is a family recollection reported decades later, not an episode independently established by contemporary police, press or personal records in the sources cited here. It is reasonable to describe the story as reported, but not to present it as a verified account of Costello’s courtship.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How did Rau’s travels shape her work?
In 1947, Rau accompanied her father to Japan after he became ambassador. She later traveled through Southeast Asia with Marguerite Brown, Faubion Bowers and Jean de Selancy; those experiences informed East of Home. Her books and essays often turn travel into a way of examining perspective: how people read one another, what they assume, and whose customs are treated as the norm.
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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallRau and Bowers married in 1951, and their son, Jai Peter Bowers, was born in India in 1952. After their divorce in 1966, she worked on The Cooking of India with others. She married Gurdon Wattles in 1970.
What was her connection to A Passage to India?
In 1960, Rau adapted E. M. Forster’s novel for the stage. The 2021 profile says Forster accepted her adaptation with only a few suggested changes, and that the production moved from Oxford to London’s West End and Broadway. David Lean’s 1984 film drew on Rau’s script, extending the reach of her work beyond books and magazine pages.
Rau died in New York on April 21, 2009, aged 86. In Gifts of Passage, she captured the difficulty of expressing feeling without sounding self-conscious: “Well, it never fails: one always sounds sentimental in trying to say things like this.”
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