HINDOO HOLIDAY An Indian Journal <i> by J.R. Ackerly (Poseidon: $8.95)</i>

The object of a minor cult following, “Hindoo Holiday” is a memoir of the months J.R. Ackerly spent as secretary/confidant to the morose, homosexual maharajah of the Indian state he calls Chhokrapur. A brooding, lonely man, the “Maharajah Sahib” looked beyond his country for a sympathetic listener and found a understanding companion in Ackerly. The image of the two of them languidly sighing over handsome young men may have been considered scandalous in 1932, but it seems almost comically tame 60 years later. The more interesting sections of the book offer vignettes of the last days of the crumbling British Raj: An imperious woman dismisses a native servant for daring to touch her--even though his breach of etiquette prevented her from being bitten a venomous serpent. A curious souvenir of a vanished world.