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10 books about India that are better than Shantaram

Mariellen — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:44:12 +0000

Shantaram and Eat, Pray, Love are not the only books about India: Here are 10 of my favourites

There are two types of people in the world: those who think Shantaram is a great book; and those who think it is a spew of virulent air, driven by the criminal mind and maniacal ego of its Australian pseudo-writer. I guess you can tell which type of person I am. This post is 10 suggestions for books about India that are better than Shantaram.

I tried to read Shantaram when I was living in Delhi, but ended up literally throwing it across the room. I thought it was poorly written and more about the fevered imagination of its writer than about India. In fact, it offers very little insight into India, if you ask me; and the longer I spend in India getting to know it, the more true this statement becomes.

Since that time, however, I’ve read lots and lots of book about India, by Indians and foreigners, and almost all of them are much, much better. Except Eat, Pray, Love. If you actually want to know something about India — rather than about an ego-driven writer — I suggest the following 10 books, in no particular order.

(If you want to learn more about a book, below, hover your cursor over the image; and to buy it, simply click on the image and you will be whisked to the U.S. Amazon site.)

1. A Search in Secret India by Paul Brunton. A cult classic, this book was published in 1934 and it’s about the author’s sincere, strange and ultimately inspiring search for spiritual truth in India. After many false starts, dead-ends and kooky run-ins, he lands at the feet of Sri Ramana Maharishi. Which in itself a metaphor for the spiritual journey. This is the book that introduced Sri Ramana Maharishi to the west (and he still remains one of the greatest Indian saints of the 20th century).

2. Empire of the Soul by Paul William Roberts. This is the book I hope Shantaram readers graduate to read. It is about two lengthy trips journalist Roberts took to India, separated by many years; and about how he reconciles some of the extraordinary experiences he had there. Roberts is known for hard-boiled books about war-torn countries like Iraq, so when he writes about his spiritual awakening, it rings true.

3. Out of India by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The introduction to this book of short stories is alone worth the price of the book. It’s hands-down the best piece of writing I have ever read about what it is like to be a foreigner in India. Absolutely priceless. If you recognize her name, it’s because she was the screen-writer for the Merchant-Ivory film productions (including A Passage to India, see #6.)

4. India’s Unending Journey by Mark Tully. Mark Tully was the BBC’s chief correspondent in India for many years. He has the character to overcome his profession’s limitations and admit that the chief thing he learned in India was to be certain only about uncertainty. And he says it’s the most valuable thing he has ever learned.

5. India: A Million Mutinies Now by V.S. Naipul. What can I say? It’s the classic. Personally, I admire this book more than I like it.

6. Passage to India by E.M. Forster. Very recently, the Consul General of India in Toronto — a remarkably cultured woman — told me she thought Forster really captured India in this book. I told her I feel like Fielding. Mutual understanding was firmly established. It was the best book I studied at university, I still remember the discussion about the meaning of the Marabar Caves. The film is good too!

7. Maximum City by Suketu Mehta. This is one of the best books I have read recently. It has an ambitious scope and many small wonderful moments, and seemed Dickensian to me in its attempt to capture the spirit of the times in a big, broiling, magnificent city. This is Bombay (Mumbai): gangsters and hero cops, foot-path poets and down-to-earth movie stars. You will learn a lot more about what Bombay is really about in this book than in Shantaram.

8. Kim by Rudyard Kipling. This is my favourite book of all time. If you’ve never read it, throw out everything you think you know about Kipling, who was the most famous writer of his time. The book follows the story of teenage Kim, son of an Irish immigrant and ‘friend of all the world’, who travels the roads of India with his guru, an elderly Tibetan lama on a spiritual quest for a river of enlightenment. It is unique and uncanny in its ability to absolutely immerse you into the scene and the story. You can feel the oppressive heat of the plains and the crisp air of the mountains. You can imagine Kim’s excitement about rejoining his friend on the road after a stint locked-up at school. You can feel the old man’s pain as his quest seems to elude him, and the love he engenders in Kim, his disciple. And you will be carried away by the transcendent ending.

9. City of Djinns by William Dalrymple. I was torn, not sure which Dalrymple book to put on this list. They are all good, especially Nine Lives. He is a solid as a rock in terms of research, reporting and writing. But this is his first book about India and it’s about Delhi (Dilli), my home-away-from home in India — and in fact, his real home. He lives there now. He has an Indian soul. The book is both a personal narrative about living in India for a year and about the history of Delhi. (And if there’s one thing Delhi has, aside from crowds of people and traffic, it’s history.) It’s by turns informative and funny. I keep intending to find out if International Backside taxi stand really exists. P.S. Dalrymple is the found of the Jaipur Literature Festival.

10. Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. On the stroke of midnight, August 15, 1947, India became free. This is the classic book about the biggest event in modern Indian history: the freedom struggle, partition and birth of a nation. You cannot begin to know or understand modern India if you don’t have a grip on its struggle for independence and the larger-than-life players who made it happen, especially Gandhi, Nehru, Mountbatten and Jinnah. The film Gandhi, directed by Richard Attenborough, gives you a lot of the same information, but this book fills in all the holes.

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GO Books: Going Full Tilt with Dervla Murphy

Mariellen — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:15:05 +0000

Dervla Murphy and her trusty steed, Roz

Launching GO Books

Full Tilt: From Ireland to India

This book review of Full Tilt: From Ireland to India by Dervla Murphy marks the first in a new series on Breathedreamgo called GO Books. I will be reviewing and recommending books about travel, personal transformation, culture, India, yoga and/or writing, and providing a link for purchase from Amazon. I will be reviewing classics, like Full Tilt, as well as newly published books. I will NOT recommend any book unless I absolutely believe it is a first-rate read. If you buy it and don’t like it, I will personally invite you over for a home-cooked dinner and you can tell me why (some conditions apply).

I am trying to hatch a plan to visit Ireland (the country of my ancestors) and look up Dervla Murphy. Ever since reading Full Tilt: From Ireland to India, I have become a staunch fan, and I am delighted the adventurous cyclist — who is now in her late 70s — is still with us. In 1963, Dervla Murphy — who was 32 years old at the time — rode her bicycle from the western edge of France all the way to Delhi, India. Yup, that means she rode through Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Khyber Pass – the lot.

She not only fearlessly triumphed over wolves, wolfish men, blizzards, sunburn, snakes and much, much more, she broke out of the ‘confining parameters of her era’ to follow her rugged, independent spirit on a truly great adventure. And, lucky for us, she chronicled the journey in a rollicking book called Full Tilt. Dervla can not only ride, she can write. Her vivid descriptions and trenchant observations impart a sense of place, and of her in it — like a fly in ointment. A white woman riding a bicycle alone across the breadth of a country like, say, Afghanistan, was completely unheard of; so much so, that many people assumed she was a man.

I grew to really like Dervla, as much as I liked her spirit of adventure and her story. She has a (usually) non-judgmental, honest approach and a genuine love of people; and she seems to have a particular affinity for Muslim countries, especially Afghanistan and Pakistan. Plus, she has a way with words. In one of my favourite passages, about dealing with intense heat, she writes, “Riding into Delhi in July showed gross mismanagement of itinerary.”

Dervla Murphy

Dervla rarely writes about herself directly, but I have gleaned that she took care of aging and unwell parents for 16 years, until she was in her early 30s, missing out on much of her youth. After they passed away, she began planning this grand adventure — and I think the magnitude of it was in direct relation to the suffocation she must have felt. She continued to travel and write, even after her daughter Rachel was born; so if you like this book, there are plenty more to read, such as The Waiting Land: A Spell in Nepal and On a Shoestring to Coorg: A Travel Memoir of India and Tibetan Foothold.

Full Tilt was one of the best books I read last year (2010). It’s moving, exciting, heart-warming, well-written, true — all the things I like in a book. Paul Theroux wrote a chapter about Dervla Murphy in his book, The Tao of Travel. You can read an interview with him here.

My GO Books rating is 5 / 5: I would definitely put it in my backpack.

Author and book details

Dervla Murphy, born November 28, 1931, Ireland

Full Tilt first published in 1965; reprinted in 1987 (Overlook); and 2010 (Eland).

Purchase from Amazon by clicking image, below.

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Top 5 ways my India travels differ from Eat, Pray, Love

Mariellen — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 02:31:24 +0000

Me, Liz and the subcontinent

I traveled in India and studied yoga, but there the Eat, Pray, Love similarities end

Because I travel in India and write about it, many people ask me if I was influenced by the book Eat, Pray, Love, and they try and compare me to author Elizabeth Gilbert. Here are the five key differences between my story and Gilbert’s.

1. I did not have a hefty book advance to subsidize my trip. My trip to India was not research for a book, and I had to subsidize it myself out of my meager resources. I sold 1/3 of my possessions, gave up my apartment, moved into a small room and scrimped and saved for a year. After I returned, and realized how much I’d changed, I went through a lot of financial instability. The whole experience was a “real spiritual quest,” in the sense that I threw myself into it without any attachment to outcome. A big part of my journey was about throwing myself off the cliff to find out IF a net would appear. Read on for the other four.

2. I did not go to India because of EPL. I was already in India when the book was published so it didn’t influence me. For the record, seekers and travelers have been going to India for many generations. Steve Jobs went to India. The Beatles went to India. Mark Twain went to India. There’s even some evidence that Jesus went to India.

I went to India originally, in 2005, because of two reasons, carrot and stick. The carrot was that I always wanted to go; that virtually since childhood I have been drawn to the “mysterious east” — I painted Maharaja Palaces on my walls, practised Indian dancing, mooned over photos of The Beatles in Rishikesh (especially George) with marigolds around their necks, went out for Hallowe’en in flowing harem pants and a sequined top, etc.

The stick was that over the course of a few short years, I experienced a series of losses — both my parents died and my fiance and I broke up — and I fell into a lengthy and profound depression. I needed to do something to shake up my life, and at the age of 45, decided to go to India for six months to travel, volunteer and study yoga.

3. Gilbert went to three countries; I only went to India. My version could be called Pray, Pray, Pray because I only went to India; I didn’t go anywhere else. And my spiritual journey was a big part of my trip.

Part of the reason I went to India, and one of the things that drew me there, was yoga. But I have to say, I learned as much about yoga just by traveling in India as I did by studying at an ashram. In order to deal with the crowds, chaos, delays, I learned how to:

go with the flow,
find inner stillness,
trust in the universe.

In other words, I learned many of the teachings of yoga.

4. This is not a love story. EPL ends with Gilbert meeting the love of her life, Philipe. I actually did meet a man in India, and became part of his big, fat Indian family, but that wasn’t the point, it wasn’t the ultimate gift of that trip.

I gained so much from that trip, and my subsequent four more trips to India, that I could write a book about it (hey, I did!), but here is the top 3:

I gained a completely new awareness of the world and my place in it. Traveling in India was really the first time I have ever left my “middle class bubble” and stepped out of my comfort zone. It gave me a completely new perspective on life and on myself as a global citizen.
I gained a new career. I started travel blogging and now I publish Breathedreamgo, write travel stories for magazines and newspapers, and I published a book, Song of India.
I gained a new spiritual awareness that includes recognizing the power each of us has to manifest our dreams and remake our reality. We have more control over our minds than we think we do, and less over the circumstances of our life. So the other big spiritual awareness for me was around realizing that I am part of a much bigger consciousness, that we’re all connected, and that everything turns out the way it’s supposed to.

5. Going, going, gone. Gilbert came back from Italy, India and Bali, married her man, and wrote a book about commitment. I never really came back from India. I’ve traveled to India on four lengthy trips since my first trip, and have a career that is largely based around writing about India. Part of my journey has been to open up to another culture in a very profound way, and it has given me so much in terms of meaningful adventure. In fact, in India I discovered my soul culture, and parts of myself that I never knew existed.

Moi on the morning of the Kumbh Mela 2010 in Haridwar

My top travel tip

If you really want to travel, and be a traveler, not a tourist, consider going alone; or if not alone, then make every effort to open yourself up to the experience and let it affect you, let it change you. Let it shatter your biases. Let it provoke your compassion. Let it change you. I call this respectful travel — and it really means not only respecting the culture you are traveling in, but also respecting yourself too.

NOTE: This speech was given at the Toronto MeetPlanGo event on October 18, 2011.

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Interview with Chris Guillebeau

Mariellen — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:56:48 +0000

Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Non-Conformity

Living a remarkable life in a conventional world

My interview with the charismatic Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Non-Conformity

In my Travel That Changes You e-newsletter, and on my blog, I try and encourage people to breathe, dream and go. So, I cannot imagine a more perfect person to feature than Chris Guillebeau. Chris is the bright light behind The Art of Non-Conformity (AONC), the Unconventional Guides, the The Art of Non-Conformity book, a blog and online community. A prolific writer, a gifted speaker and an obsessed world traveler, he seems to have boundless energy for encouraging people to get off the hamster wheel and live life their own way.

And he leads by example. After publishing his book, The Art of Non-Conformity, he organized a very unique (and grueling) book tour that took him to every USA state and every Canadian province. When he got to my province, and spoke at the Chapters/Indigo store at the Manulife Centre in downtown Toronto, I went to hear him and interviewed him afterwards. This was stop number 58 on his tour, and he must have been exhausted — though you wouldn’t know it from his funny, upbeat and inspiring presentation.

The unconventional book tour map: coloured in by audience members

Do what you want and do good, too

Chris is interested in the “convergence of highly personal goals and being of service to others” and he’s on a mission. He’s been to almost every country in the world (and he’s under 35), he’s published half-a-dozen or so Unconventional Guides and a book, and he’s amassed a huge Internet following.

Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Non-Conformity

Here is the essence of his philosophy, from his website:

You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to.
You can do good things for yourself and help other people at the same time.
If you don’t decide for yourself what you want to get out of life, someone else will probably end up deciding for you.
There is usually more than one way to accomplish something.

At the bookstore in Toronto, he stood up, rolled up his sleeves and spoke to a standing-room only crowd. I liked that he rolled up his sleeves, because that seems to be the way he approaches life. Chris is lean, intense and likeable. He speaks with passion and authenticity because he lives what he speaks.

A happiness first lifestyle

He talked about the importance of deciding for yourself what success looks like and using your feelings to guide you as you make decisions in life. He said that he tries to inspire action, to encourage readers to create positive change in their lives. The central question of his book is, how do you live a remarkable life in a conventional world. He speaks to the dissatisfied, for people who are looking for something different.

Chris offered the rapt audience several suggestions:

See change as positive and start by making small changes.
Consider that efficiency is over-rated; an alternative is to pursue meaningful adventure.
Recognize that we are privileged to be able to talk about having a meaningful life; and ask yourself how you can contribute to the world and make it a better place.
Ask yourself the two most important questions in the universe:

1. What do you want to get out of life?

2. What can you offer the world that no one else can?

Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Non-Conformity

Chris told the story of living in Sierre Leone and volunteering for four years, and pointed out how much he got from the experience, how much his life changed. He calls it selfish generosity. He encouraged people to ask good questions, embrace life as a meaningful adventure and think about your place in the world, your contribution. “What kind of legacy are we building?” he asked. Legacy is a question of influence and relationships. What will the ultimate impact of our lives be?

In spite of all his accomplishments, Chris also was careful to reassure people that his strategy has been a work-in-progress. “I began with the classic blogging strategy of making shit up.” Before taking questions from the audience, he addressed the most common concern he hears: “I want to do [blank] but I’m worried I’m too late.” His advice was to offer a quote: The best time to start was probably last year, but failing that, today will do.

After the question and answer period, I accompanied Chris and several of his Toronto-based friends to a pub in Yorkville, where I asked him several questions over a pint (Chris) and tea (me).

My top four questions, answered

Q. If you know anything about Chris, you will know he’s a very productive dynamo. My first question to him was: How do you do all the things you do?

Book launch cupcake

A. Most of the things I do, I really enjoy. That’s the key. If you can structure your life around things you really enjoy and derive energy from, it gets much easier. Almost everything I do, I find meaningful and purposeful. I get tired, but feel very fortunate and grateful. Along with this, comes a sense of responsibility. Even when I have downtime, I work, but that’s okay.

Q. What’s the underlying message; what’s motivating you?

A. The fundamental underlying message is that you don’t have to live life the way others want you to, or to expect you too. You can just ignore them. It’s okay to pursue a big dream, a passion, but you should also connect that passion to other people and find out what’s your place in the world. The goal is to help people live unconventional, remarkable lives. That’s a really strong motivation. When I meet people, and hear stories, it’s very motivating.

Chris relaxing with a pint after the book launch

Q. How do you, or can you, inspire people? Or is this something you have any control over?

A. I have learned that you don’t have influence over how people respond. People will relate to you for various reasons; they derive inspiration where they will. If you want to be an inspiration, the tone you use is important, as well the words, the attitude and the overall message. Be clear about your motivation and your intentions, figure it out, and then do something really great for yourself and the world.

Q. What has surprised you about your journey with AONC?

A. I was afraid I would get bored and move on. I’ve been surprised that I’m not bored at all, and that I’m extremely satisfied, and I’m more excited about what’s to come — and a lot of it is because of all the people who’ve joined the project and contributed their vision.

Thanks Chris, for inspiring me, and many thousands of other people, too. (and thanks to Janice Waugh of Solotraveler for telling me about Chris in the first place, back in August 2009.)

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Shelley Seale: India Chooses You

Guest — Sun, 15 May 2011 19:12:08 +0000

Author Shelley Seale and children

Shelley Seale reveals how she was changed by giving her heart to the children of India

Guest post by Shelley Seale, author of Weight of Silence: The Invisible Children of India

I never expected to be in India. And without a doubt, I never thought once I had been I would return, again and again.

It wasn’t the exotic beauty that drew me back. It wasn’t the warmth of the people, their gentle and inquisitive nature, their open hospitality. It wasn’t the storied, ancient history of the country or its rich and varied culture. It was not the colors or the spices or the sounds or the spirituality of the place. India is all of these things, to be sure, and I have grown to love them all. But they were not what seeped into my being and pulled me close, becoming a part of me that I missed with a strange emptiness when I left.

It was the children.

They are everywhere. They fill the railway stations, the cities, the shanty villages. Some scrounge through trash for newspapers, rags or anything they can sell at traffic intersections. Others, often as young as two or three years old, beg. Many are homeless, overflowing the orphanages and other institutional homes to live on the streets. I had no way of knowing just how much they would change my life.

The most alive place I had ever been.

From the moment I arrived, I found India to be everything I had imagined – only more so. More colors and smells, more noises and people, more everything. It was an assault on all the senses at once. There seemed no still or quiet space. Instead there were throngs of people everywhere, living and working and sleeping; hundreds of street vendors lined every available inch of sidewalk, while mangy dogs and cows nosed at piles of trash around them.

Shelley Seale, author of Weight of Silence: The Invisible Children of India

Rickshaw drivers pedaled through traffic alongside schoolgirls with their braided hair and backpacks. The smell of curry and incense hung thick in the air along with soft chanting from nearby temples. The dusty roads peppered with potholes were filled with a constant stream of buses, bicycles, rickshaws, cars and cows and rising over it all was the constant, blaring beep-beep of the horns. It was the most alive place I had ever been. India is too big to describe adequately, too big perhaps to absorb in a single lifetime. The country simply wrapped itself around me and refused to let go.

And in the children this beauty seemed to come alive, almost making me believe it was a living entity I could capture in my hands. They are what bring me back to India over and over – to volunteer at an orphanage run by the Miracle Foundation, home to over a hundred kids. When I arrived for the first time in 2005, I had expected it to be a sad place, an emotionally wrenching experience. But those expectations had been turned on their head. Yes, there are stories behind each of the children – many of them painful and tragic. Stories of death, abandonment, abuse, poverty. They all have a past.

Yet their hope and resilience have amazed me time and time again; the ability of their spirits to overcome crippling challenges inspire me. Even in the most deprived circumstances they are still kids – they laugh and play, perhaps far less frequently than others; they develop strong bonds and relationships to create family where none exists; and most of all they have an enormous amount of love to give – for nothing more than just showing up.

As I sat in the courtyard on my last night with them, and house mother Madhu held a tray of tiny, steaming cups in front of me, I felt everything I loved about the place converge together inside me in that moment.

India simply cannot be approached with anything but fully open arms and a willing heart.

The smell of the chai, its cardamom and ginger and cinnamon drifting up to my nose, the sound of bare feet slapping against the ground as children ran. The soft breeze that whispered through the trees and caressed my skin while the fading sun bathed everything in an orange and pink light. The colorful painted elephants who seemed to watch over us from their places on the surrounding walls. The vibrant blue and yellow and purple sarees of the house mothers as they passed by and the bangles on their wrists that clinked melodically against each other while they worked. The occasional monkey above us in the trees, or a calf or dog that wandered into the courtyard before being shooed away by the staff. Most of all, the familiar faces around me that made me feel I had come home.

The very existence of these children had forever altered both the person I was and my view of the world. In some ways I felt more familiar to myself here, like I was now the person I had been brought to India to become. I had arrived, that first time two years before, not really knowing what to expect. I had not come to India to change anything about it; instead, the country and its people had worked a transformational change in me. They had allowed me into the real heart of the place and by doing so spared me from viewing it with the eyes of an outsider.

India simply cannot be approached with anything but fully open arms and a willing heart. And it will embrace you in return with an exhilarated spirit, splendor and enchantment, nonstop vitality, amazing people and their daily parade of life – struggles, joys and triumphs – that passes by every moment. I was lucky enough to have been given this incredible treasure by these children and the people of India.

Buy the book

To read more about Shelley Seale and the book visit, The Weight of Silence: The Invisible Children of India by Shelley Seale. And to buy a copy of this heart-felt and inspiring book, click the image below:

Thank you for reading. Please visit BreatheDreamGo or stop by my Facebook page at Breathedreamgo.

Song of India published

Mariellen — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 04:25:21 +0000

Song of India: Tales of Travel and Transformation

I am very excited to announce the publication of my first book, Song of India: Tales of Travel and Transformation. The book is a collection of 10 travel stories and it is available for purchase from Amazon.com by clicking this link: Song of India. Canadians can buy it from Amazon.ca or from Chapters/Indigo.

Most of the stories have been published in magazines and newspapers; some on this blog; and one or two as guest posts on other travel blogs.This is from the back cover:

“Follow your bliss!” Joseph Campbell famously said, so she did. After several harrowing years of losses, author Mariellen Ward set out to recover from grief, understand the essence of yoga and rediscover the joy of living by traveling, studying yoga and volunteering in India.

The stories in this collection are inspired by the scorched earth of the Rajasthan desert; the hypnotic currents of India’s most sacred river; the awe-inspiring spectacle of the sunrise reflected against the white wall of the Himalayan mountain range in Darjeeling; the masses of people at the world’s largest spiritual gathering; and the intense, smoke-filled darkness of a night facing death on the river in Varanasi.

They are geographically diverse, but thematically linked by the author’s transformative journeys across the subcontinent and her obvious love for the culture, the country and the people of India.

Thank you for reading. Please visit BreatheDreamGo or stop by my Facebook page at Breathedreamgo.

Collisions with karma

Mariellen — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 02:12:38 +0000

On the ghats in Varanasi, India

Capturing the concept of karma

Karm cola, karma chameleon, karma co-op, karma account, increase your good karma, it’s your karma baby … Karma has become an all-purpose word in the west that is used fairly indiscriminately without much understanding of what it really means. This is probably a pretty common phenomenon when words migrate from another language / culture. I can tell you that, as a serious student of yoga, Hinduism and Indian culture, I have been trying to wrap my mind around the word karma for years, and I have barely gleaned its meaning.

I’ve been thinking about karma for a couple of reasons lately. One, I just finished reading the book Karma Cola.

Karma Cola, written by Gita Mehta, was originally published in 1980. The author wrote it in response to the waves of hippies who washed up on India’s shores in the 60s and 70s, to avoid the American draft and the Vietnam War, to follow in the Beatles footsteps in Rishikesh, to find an alternative to the consumer-driven lifestyle of the west and to experience spiritual enlightenment — or at least spiritual understanding (which was — and is — largely absent in western culture, if you ask me).

Karma Cola by Gita Mehta

It’s an entertaining book, full of colourful stories, and she certainly has her own pop-culture-influenced writing style (a bit dated now), but I found her thesis depressing and mean-spirited. The stories in the book describe encounters either she has had, or that she has heard about, between western spiritual seekers and Indian gurus. She seems to think that westerners who travel to India to pursue a spiritual path are gullible at best, and dangerously deluded — to the point of having a fragile grasp on reality — at worst. She shows no compassion for her subjects, no understanding of what might have compelled them to become seekers, and generally no sympathy for the human condition. The book is judgmental and holds to one viewpoint from one end to the other. According to Mehta, people are either idiots (westerners) or charlatans (Indians).

She makes one point that I agree with: it’s very hard for most western minds to understand eastern concepts — they are so fundamentally different. I have seen this phenomenon many times: western yoga students and travelers to India overlaying the western world view with yogic or Hindu ideas. It’s not easy to undergo the fundamental paradigm shift from the dualistic thinking of the west (founded on the notion that you only live once, and therefore must strive to achieve everything you can in this lifetime; and the right-or-wrong view of morality-based religion) to non-dualistic Hindu thinking (based on the notion of reincarnation, the vastness of time and the oneness of the universe).

And I am no exception. Here’s my understanding of karma.

Crowd at the Kumbh Mela, Har-ki-pauri, Haridwar, India

Karma east and west

Karma means action. It is not a reward-and-punishment system; neither is it a cause-and-effect phenomenon. According to the Bhagavad Gita, which is the bible of Hinduism, Krishna instructs Arjuna that he must take his action — his karma — based on his duty — his dharma. He is a prince in the house of Pandava and therefore he must wage war against his cousins, the Kauravas, who are trying to usurp the kingdom. He cannot know or control the fruit of his actions; that is not his responsibility.

Govinda Baba: Toronto-born sadhu at the Kumbh Mela

So Karma is, in a way, based on the actions we take, but not in the straightforward way we might think of it in the west. And your “karma” can be built up over lifetimes. So things happening to me now might be the result of past karma (past actions) taken in a previous lifetime.

I see the difference between east and west largely in the response to the idea of karma. Westerners think they can control karma, so it goads them into action: work out more, be nicer, get up earlier, pay bills on time, work harder, whatever. The ego mind of the westerner springs into action and tries to control the situation, to a desired outcome or effect.

I don’t see the same reaction in India. Indians tend to be more philosophical, more accepting, more resigned you could say. My teacher in India, Swami Brahmdev, would encourage us to increase our consciousness, in other words to learn from the situations we find ourselves in. Not to try and control or change the situations.

But I am still trying to learn this concept, so I am open to more insight — please comment!

Thank you for reading. Please visit BreatheDreamGo or stop by my Facebook page at Breathedreamgo.

More favourite books about India or travel

Mariellen — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:08:14 +0000

Spiritual seekers, heroes and India lovers

I am way behind in writing reviews about the books I am reading. Ever since I got rid of my TV, I’ve been reading like a fiend — and I am expanding my lists to include books about transformational travel. For my previous lists, please read Another 10 books on India or 10 (more) books I love about India or Top 10 books on India thus far.

(NOTE: Do not look for Shantaram, The White Tiger or Eat, Pray, Love. You will not find them; I don’t think they rate. But you will see a comparison to Shantaram, number 9 below.)

The mass popularity of Eat, Pray, Love seems to suggest that author Elizabeth Gilbert was the first seeker ever to brave the rigours of travel in India in order to discover inner bliss at a spiritual retreat. To set the record straight, spiritual seekers have been going to India for many generations, perhaps many centuries. The Beatles went to India in 1968. A Search in Secret India (on the list below) by Dr. Paul Brunton was published in 1935. Somerset Maugham’s masterpiece A Razor’s Edge is about a man who goes to India just after WW1. Mark Twain went to India in the 19th century. There is even speculation that Jesus trained as a yogi in India – and that’s where he learned to perform “miracles.”

Sri Ramana Maharishi

1. A Search in Secret India by Dr. Paul Brunton

This is a fascinating book that starts slowly and becomes very compelling. Brunton was way ahead of his time — this book was published in 1935 and it’s about his search for a spiritual master in India. He admits to being skeptical; admits to getting duped by fakes; and almost dies in a Bombay hotel room. But something pushes him forward and after about a year of searching, traveling and living in very (and I mean very) rough conditons, he meets Sri Ramana Maharishi. That is when the book becomes transcendent, and impossible to put down. The last part of the book, about Sri Ramana Maharishi, is just about the best writing I have ever read by a spiritual seeker. It’s truly riveting.

2. Nine Lives by William Dalrymple

A masterpiece. I was already a big Dalrymple fan — his wonderful book City of Djinns, about Delhi, is on one of my previous lists — but this book escalates him to a new level as far as I am concerned. The book profiles nine different people Dalrymple has met on his extensive travels in India. All of the unique characters in the book are involved in some arcane spiritual practise and the enormous research Dalrymple did to flesh out the stories and give the reader background and context makes for fascinating and informative reading.

3. All Roads Lead to Ganga by Ruskin Bond

This is a lovely piece of writing, an elegiac about Ruskin’s home in the Himalayan foothills of Uttrakhand. It reads like a love letter to the countryside and especially the nature of Dehra Dun, Mussoorie and the Char Dham pilgrimage routes to the source of the Ganges River which naturalist Ruskin has hiked many times. I read it on a long train ride to Dehra Dun, in fact, and it was the perfect accompaniment.

Author Bruce Chatwin

4. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

I love this book. I just finished reading it again after many years. It is unusual, audacious, inspired, brilliant, poetic and magical. Wish I had met Chatwin — I think he must have been all of these things, too. If you haven’t read it, just a get a copy and read it. Ostensibly it’s about the songlines of the Aboriginal people in Australia; but then it descends into a much deeper, broader subject — man’s inherent need to roam.

In fact, I like this book so much that I added Rohetgarh — the Rajasthani haveli-hotel that he stayed in while he wrote it — to my Dream in India tour. This tour will take you to inspirational and literary places in India including the Jaipur Literarature Festival.

4. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

This book was a huge best-seller and it is one of those rare books that actually deserves to be. It is an extremely inspiring story about a man who stumbles into a village in the remotest corner of Pakistan and promises to build them a school. He ends up building hundreds of schools in Pakistan. The other reason it’s such a great book is because of the writing by David Oliver Relin — who traveled with Mortensen in Pakistan for a year.

6. Carpet Sahib by Martin Booth

Carpet Sahib was the mispronunciation of Jim Corbett’s name by the local people of Nainital, in the Kumaon region of India, where he was born and lived most of his life. Jim Corbett was completely at home in the jungles of India and became famous — legendary, actually — for tracking and killing several man-eating tigers and leopards. He later became a very successful writer and one of the first modern conservationists. He hung up his gun and picked up a camera and shot some of the first moving pictures of tigers in the wild. Corbett Tiger Reserve is of course named after him.

7. The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag by Jim Corbett

Not as well known as The Man-Eaters of Kumaon, this book is nevertheless a good read. It made me feel like a boy scout at camp, reading by flashlight — it’s that kind of book. Corbett won’t win any awards for poetic writing, but he sure can tell a good story. The descriptions of the killings can be gruesome. I read it in bed with my tabby cat stretched out across my legs and there were a few times I found myself looking at her a little more intently than usual.

8. Baumgartner’s Bombay by Anita Desai

This is a deceptively hardcore piece of writing from a masterful writer and storyteller. It’s about the last, pathos-filled days of a “man without family or home,” a lonely, aging foreigner in Bombay who has no where else to go. The final scenes, after he meets an unwashed hippie in a local cafe, are searingly hard to read. This book is to Shantaram what Masterpiece Theatre is to an Adam Sandler film.

Jasmine D'Costa and her Mother in Mumbai

9. Curry is Thick than Water by Jasmine D’Costa

Jasmine D’Costa is an Indo-Canadian writer, originally from Mumbai. The stories in this collection are extremely well told, very entertaining and very well-written. I will never get the image of the elephant lying down on the highway in Bombay out of my head, and nor would I want to.

10. An Indian Summer by Jamers Cameron

No, not THAT James Cameron. (Although, oddly, the film director will be at an ideas conference in India in December 2010, the INK Conference.) This James Cameron was a newspaper man in India during the twilight of the British Raj. In 1972, he returned to India, newly married to an Indian woman. The book is about his return journey. It’s thoughtful, really well written and underneath his vigorous journalistic style lurks a palpable love of India. In the book, he wrote that he produced a television program with an English director with the goal of scrupulously avoiding “the picturesque… and out worn visual beauties … that had suffocated every film about India since the medium was invented.” But the plan fell through “as soon as the camera turned; it was difficult indeed to film anything in India without some element of the strange and beautiful intruding.”

I really like this book for many reasons, not the least of which is this sentence — about the rotting piles of papers piled high in the offices of Calcutta’s bureaucrats: “Their protruding edges stirred under the fans with a gentle bony crepitation.”

Thank you for reading. Please visit BreatheDreamGo or stop by my Facebook page at Breathedreamgo.

In defense of the spiritual quest

Mariellen — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:47:43 +0000

Sadhu at the gates of the "Beatles ashram" in Rishikesh, India

Don’t throw the sadhu (holy man) out with the holy water

NOTE: This letter to the editor was published in the Globe and Mail newspaper this morning, August 16, 2010.

In Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, celebrity columnist Johanna Schneller says about Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love: “Gilbert’s story distills for me my problem with spiritual quests. Is trying to be a better person just a really great excuse to think about yourself all day long?” Only in the world of Eat, Pray Love – which does not describe a spiritual quest at all.

Gilbert traveled to Italy, India and Bali on a large book advance – which means essentially that she was doing research – and she doesn’t change, she doesn’t transform, she just falls in love again. The book/movie have none of the hallmarks of a true spiritual quest.

Many people are cynical about the Eat, Pray, Love juggernaut, and I don’t blame them. I heard the cash register ch-chinging as I read it. But I hope the popularity of this highly commercial memoir will not cause people to be cynical also about spiritual quests. I hope people will not throw the sadhu out with the holy water.

An unexamined life is not worth living

Spiritual quests have a long and honourable history. The dictum “Know Thyself” was carved over the entrance to the Delphi Oracle in Ancient Greece. Buddha left his life as a prince to find a solution to human suffering. Jesus went on a spiritual quest – and some say to India where he studied with yogis and learned to perform “miracles.” Aboriginal people the world over have traditions of vision quests and walkabouts. Muslims are enjoined to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. And in India there is a rich and ancient tradition of spiritual questing that takes on many hues.

A true spiritual quest is not about discovering oneself in the egotistic sense – I’m vegetarian, I prefer to live in the country, I would never use Botox – it’s about discovering oneself in the spiritual sense. This means discovering the divine within you; transcending your ego and the materialism of the everyday world and seeing your place in the cosmos; increasing your consciousness and becoming more aware of others, the environment, the sacred and the impact of your thoughts, words and actions, among other worthy pursuits.

Far from being a frivolous distraction, a spiritual quest represents the opportunity to discover an alternative view; a way to live a more meaningful life; a means for recovering from loss, trauma and addiction; and a chance to open to the divine. It is almost a necessity in today’s world of rampant consumerism and materialism.

The massive popularity of Eat, Pray, Love proves there is a tremendous need among people to live a more spiritual, meaningful life. It is a baby step in the right direction.

Thank you for reading. Please visit BreatheDreamGo or stop by my Facebook page at Breathedreamgo.

Toronto winners of Eat, Pray, Love contest pick up their loot!

Mariellen — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:27:17 +0000

the winner's loot

And the winners are…

The winners of the Eat, Pray, Love contest gathered at the Chapters-Indigo book store in downtown Toronto on Wednesday, August 11 to pick up their free passes to a preview screening of the film and a whole lot more. Thanks to Natalie, Grant and Kyra at Sony Pictures Canada for giving one double pass, a “pray” t-shirt, bookmark and mala bead bracelet to each winner; and to Chapters-Indigo for giving each winner a copy of the book by Elizabeth Gilbert. Chapters-Indigo was also very cordial about hosting us — thanks go to Michael and Phil and the really friendly people at this store. If you want to shop in a bookstore run by friendly people, go to the Chapters-Indigo at John and Richmond streets in downtown Toronto.

To see the winners’ photos, read more.

Gizelle and Mariellen

Stephanie

Natalie

Alexandra and Waheed

Sundeep

Michele of A Taste for Travel

Thank you for reading. Please visit BreatheDreamGo or stop by my Facebook page at Breathedreamgo.

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Song of India published

Song of India: Tales of Travel and Transformation

Most of the stories have been published in magazines and newspapers; some on this blog; and one or two as guest posts on other travel blogs.This is from the back cover:

“Follow your bliss!” Joseph Campbell famously said, so she did. After several harrowing years of losses, author Mariellen Ward set out to recover from grief, understand the essence of yoga and rediscover the joy of living by traveling, studying yoga and volunteering in India.

They are geographically diverse, but thematically linked by the author’s transformative journeys across the subcontinent and her obvious love for the culture, the country and the people of India.

Collisions with karma

On the ghats in Varanasi, India Capturing the concept of karma

Karma east and west

More favourite books about India or travel

Spiritual seekers, heroes and India lovers

Sri Ramana Maharishi

1. A Search in Secret India by Dr. Paul Brunton

2. Nine Lives by William Dalrymple

3. All Roads Lead to Ganga by Ruskin Bond

Author Bruce Chatwin

4. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

4. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

6. Carpet Sahib by Martin Booth

7. The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag by Jim Corbett

8. Baumgartner’s Bombay by Anita Desai

Jasmine D'Costa and her Mother in Mumbai 9. Curry is Thick than Water by Jasmine D’Costa

10. An Indian Summer by Jamers Cameron

In defense of the spiritual quest

Don’t throw the sadhu (holy man) out with the holy water

NOTE: This letter to the editor was published in the Globe and Mail newspaper this morning, August 16, 2010.

An unexamined life is not worth living

Toronto winners of Eat, Pray, Love contest pick up their loot!

And the winners are…

To see the winners’ photos, read more.

On the ghats in Varanasi, India

Capturing the concept of karma

Jasmine D'Costa and her Mother in Mumbai

9. Curry is Thick than Water by Jasmine D’Costa