Flutterby™! : infections, OO Perl and Verrier Elwin

I got this nasty infection that makes it difficult to sit, and I'm taking some monster horse-pill antibiotics and told to soak the affected area 4-5 times per day in water as hot as I can possibly stand. So I've spent a bit o' time in the bathtub and laying on my stomach. Since typing is pretty much impossible, after I finished Damian Conway's excellent Object Oriented Perl I decided that if I was gonna be sick, I may as well catch up on some long past due pleasure reading. So I picked up Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals, & India by Ramachandra Guha. I'd gotten this book because I'd heard of Elwin in the context of his "philanthropology" (some wag has also called it "philanderanthropology") amongst various tribes in India outside the Hindu mainstream, where he discovered variations on polyamory, promiscuity, and sexual norms unfetterd by the Christian and Hindu restrictions. The book did not live up to my prurient motivations, it covered Elwin's life and left the coverage of those customs to his books, but I got a good overview of India through the first half of the 20th century. From going to India as a Christian missionary, finding common common work within Ghandi's cause, and then finding that Ghandi's intolerance was as distasteful as that of the church he'd left, it's a remarkable story of a man trying to find a home and instead discovering causes. Longer review coming, but if you're into scholarly autobiographies it's an interesting read.