Breathedreamgo » Books

GO Books: In search of the elusive snow leopard

Mariellen — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:41:18 +0000

The view from Shey Monastery, Nepal

The Snow Leopard: A quest in the Himalayas

The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen is an adventure travel masterpiece. It is about the author’s adventures hiking deep into one of the most remote regions of Nepal, on the border with Tibet, to accompany biologist George Schaller on a field expedition to study blue sheep. But the book is about much more than that. Matthiessen, a devoted student of Buddhism and a sensitive, gifted writer, had just lost his wife to cancer, and his book is an exploration of both the outer world of soaring, pristine mountains and his own inner journey through grief and awe.

I love this book for so many reasons. To start, I love Quest stories, and The Snow Leopard is a Quest in every sense of the word. First, is the physical quest itself, to Shey and the Crystal Mountain in a very remote corner of Nepal, back in the early 1970s when hiking in Nepal was not as popular as it is today. Mathiessesn and Schaller — and a changing assortment of sherpas and porters — walked 35 days through almost uninhabited regions, over snow-bound, high mountain passes, to get there. This journey is what makes the book a great adventure story.

Then, there’s the scientific Quest, which is to study blue sheep (though this is Schaller’s quest, not the author’s, and so it is tangential to the main story). And, just as compelling to me as the adventure Quest, is Mathiessen’s inner quest, as a man coming to terms with his wife’s mortality and the tenets of Zen Buddhism, which he is studying. His destination is Shey Monastery; he wants to meet the Lama of Shey.

And he wants to see the extremely elusive snow leopard. Though he doesn’t say it in so many words, it seems that seeing the snow leopard will justify his decision to leave his children for months, within a year after the death of his wife; and help to give him back a sense of magic and wonder, a reason for living. In other words, he has endowed his quest to see the snow leopard with personal and spiritual yearnings.

But perhaps more than anything else, I love this book because it is so beautifully, and sparingly, written. Matthiessen’s style is a perfect match for the austere, rugged landscape, and subsistence lifestyle and Buddhist beliefs of the local culture.

Author and Zen Buddhist monk Peter Matthiessen

Like most great Quest stories, it is in hindsight that Mathiessen realizes why he needed to go to Shey; it is through the journey itself that he gains the awarenesses and epiphanies that make the hardships of it more than worthwhile. Like life.

And, finally, I love this book because it is set in the Himalaya — an area of the world that I am inexplicably and powerfully drawn to. Like a Himalayan mountain, this beautiful book has soared to the top of my favourite books list. A classic.

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

Author and book details

Peter Matthiessen, born 1927 in New York City.

The Snow Leopard first published in 1978; this edition published 2008 (Penguin Classics). Winner of the National Book Award in 1979.

Purchase from Amazon by clicking image, below.

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Celebrate Read an e-Book Week and buy Song of India

Mariellen — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:22:21 +0000

Read an e-book…buy Song of India: Tales of Travel and Transformation!

Author Mariellen Ward

March 4 – 10, 2012 is Read an e-Book Week. I am celebrating by discounting Song of India on Smashwords by 50% — the e-book version is only $0.99 this week. To buy, visit the Breathedreamgo page on Smashwords. Or visit the Song of India page for more reviews and purchasing options.

Song of India is a collection of 10 stories I wrote about my travels in India, following the deaths of both my parents, to recover, heal and learn to live again. It was published in December 2010 to rave reviews:

Reviews of Song of India

“You capture and give depth to an unfathomable place and I would surely recommend it to any one who wants to know more of India.” Jasmine D’Costa

“Your intimate passion for these magical places has taken me by flying carpet into the heart and soul of India – to the mystical city of Benares, the lush tea-fields of Darjeeling, the glowing deserts of Rajasthan.” Sylvia Fraser

“Ward combines a journalist’s eye for detail with an unapologetic passion for India, and the result is a splendidly personal account of the country’s transformation of her philosophy of life (and death).” Niranjana Iyer

“What makes Mariellen Ward’s narration so fascinating and admirable is her ability to don the Indian frame of mind. She slows down and lets the cultural cauldron that is India churn her around till she begins to align herself with the poor Indian masses who manage to maintain unwavering faith in the face of pressing hardships.” Mini Kolluri

“She is a consummate travel writer, combining a keen sense of observation, lucid description, interviewing the right people, extracting the right information or opinion from them, providing a perspective, and writing with empathy.” Mayank Bhatt

NOTE: Photo me signing a copy of Song of India by photographer Yianni Tong.

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Buy Song of India, a collection of 10 feature stories about my travels in India. E-book version is now only $1.99.

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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.

If you enjoyed this post, you can….

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Buy Song of India, a collection of 10 feature stories about my travels in India. E-book version is now only $1.99.

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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!

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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 – which is usually travel literature. 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.

Eat, Pray, Love and India and the quest

Mariellen — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 14:47:19 +0000

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

The biggest question of our time is not do you believe in god; or is global warming real; it’s where do stand on Eat, Pray, Love? The book about Elizabeth Gilbert’s quest to find “everything” in Italy, India and Bali is a publishing phenomenon: it was an international bestseller with more than seven million copies sold worldwide; and in 2008, Time Magazine named Gilbert one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Today, July 18, is Elizabeth Gilbert’s birthday. She is 41. And I want to salute her.

I can’t honestly say that I LOVED the book — there are better books about westerners in India (see my post Another top 10 Books about India) and I question whether Gilbert was on a “real” spiritual quest as she had a book advance, which means it could be argued that she was doing research — but I appreciate it. For one thing, it unearthed an enormous audience for the kind of writing I do: personal narrative / spiritual quest / travelogue. For another, it’s immensely popular AND about going to an ashram in India, which is almost an oxymoron (though that is changing).

And I defend Gilbert and the people who charge her with “self-absorbed narcissism” on the grounds that she did what she needed to do to recover from her divorce, heal herself and become productive and creative. Through her journey of self-recovery and self-discovery, and her ability to share it through her writing, she has inspired thousands, perhaps millions, of people.

In my books, that is not something to sneeze at.

Swami Brahmdev, Aurovalley Ashram, India

The idea of a soul quest or journey of self-discovery is not new. “Know thyself” was written above the entrance to the Delphi Oracle in ancient Greece. It has a long history and is highly respected. My teacher in India, Swami Brahmdev of Aurovalley Ashram, says the purpose of life is to know ourselves; to experience life, to learn, to change and to grow. There are many intelligent, respectable, highly spiritual, non-narcissistic people who think discovering ourselves is what we were put on earth to do!

So not only am I NOT against personal journeys of self-discovery … I, too, went on a personal journey to recover from loss. I wrote about it on my post, What it means to breathe, dream, go. Over the span of a few short years I lost both my parents (my Mother died suddenly and unexpectedly of heart failure and I found her body; my Father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I held his hand while he died); my fiancé left me (with an expensive wedding dress hanging in the closet); my sister married and moved out of town; we lost our family cottage; and I broke my elbow, which seriously affected my yoga practise.

It felt like a river of loss was sweeping through my life and by the end of it, I was exhausted from hanging onto the bank. I threw my faith into yoga to recover from depression and during yoga teacher training decided to go to India for six months. It felt like I was letting go; it felt counter-intuitive; and I was scared. But I felt compelled. I felt I HAD to go to India to save my life.

Me, at Aurovalley Ashram, India, 2010

In my case, I didn’t have a book advance and I went only to India (and oddly I was there the same year as Gilbert). It was a spiritual quest in the sense that I had no idea what would happen – even if I would live through it!

In fact, I fell in love with India and I fell in love with Ajay (my partner) and his wonderful family; and now I make part of my living sharing my love for India through my writing.

Going to India not only saved my life – it gave me a whole new life, a new man, a new family and a new home. I now consider India my second home.

So I “get” Elizabeth Gilbert. And I am encouraged by people who find success in the creative and/or spiritual fields. Happy birthday Elizabeth!

NOTE: If you feel inspired to go on your own journney of discovery, you should check out MeetPlanGo — a free event taking place in several cities in the USA and Canada to inspire people to fulfill their career break and long-term travel dreams.

P.S. Here is Elizabeth Gilbert giving a very inspiring TED talk about creativity and being an artist.

P.S.

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

World Book Fair in Delhi

Mariellen — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:24:22 +0000

children listening to stories at Book Fair

The World Book Fair in Delhi is a highly anticipated event that sprawls across the huge Pragati Maidan fair grounds in central Delhi. There are publishers from all over the world, books in dozens of languages, reading events and books, thousands and thousands of books. It is a book lover’s paradise. My only problem was that it’s so huge, I could only do one section — the hall devoted to books in English (of course).

Nuzhat Hassan, director of Delhi Book Fair

While wandering around, I noticed the sign for the Media Centre, and went in to get information. The next thing I knew, I was interviewing the director, Nuzhat Hassan. And I’m so glad I did. She is a dynamic, articulate woman who, apparently, has re-invigorated the book fair, which is about 19 years old.

Nuzhat explained to me that the book fair has three main thrusts: One is based on the traditional idea of a fair, or mela, in India, which means that it is a business-to-customer model. In other words, people come to buy books. India is a huge country with people reading and speaking in a multitude of languages. The book fair gives people the opportunity to find books in many different languages, all in one place. Two, there is an international trade element to the book fair. Delegations from about 15 countries are represented, and Nuzhat says that interaction between Indian and foreign publishers is increasing.

Finally, she said that the Delhi book fair is established in the mind set of Indians, especially Delhi-ites. I already knew that because my boyfriend, Ajay, who grew up in Delhi, remembers it very fondly. Going to the Delhi Book Fair was his favourite annual event. Nuzhat said the book fair is “a celebration of the reading habit.”

Nuzhat said that there is a mind-boggling number of books at the fair, and I remarked that India is mind-boggling in general.”Yes, there is variety and chaos, but you can still find your way,” she said. I totally agree.

As I walked around, I also met another impressive woman, Moyna, who is an editor with a children’s book publisher called Katha. The picture of the children listening to a story, above, was taken right outside the Katha stall. This publisher has an inspiring mission and philosophy to help give underprivileged an education by using a story-telling model; and also to teach the rich, ancient culture of India to the younger generations. When I get back to Delhi, I am going too meet with them and visit the school they founded.

For those who are interested … I bought about five books and picked up several travel magazines as well. The books included the new William Dalrymple book, Nine Lives; One Night at the Call Centre by Chetan Bhagat, and a beautifully illustrated children’s book set to a story by Rumi.

The pictures below were taken at the book fair, and include a picture of the Rajasthan pavilion on the Pragati Maidan grounds (once a year there is a state fair and each state has an elaborate pavilion). The final picture is of one of the main Commonwealth Games stadiums, which is in an alarming state of semi-construction, given that the games are only eight months away. I’m sure it will be done. (I took the pic from my taxi as we drove past the site on our way back to South Delhi.)

Rajasthan pavilion

Karanataka pavilion

stadium under construction

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Another 10 books on India or by Indian or South Asian writers

Mariellen — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:21:08 +0000

I am continuing to read lots of books on India or by Indian or South Asian writers. It helps that I only get a limited number of channels on my TV — a TV that is so old I can’t even attach a DVD player to it. So, most nights I am “forced” to read. Lucky me.

But before I start, I want to mention two books that you will not find on any of my lists, so stop looking: Shantaram and The White Tiger. I just don’t think they deserve to be recommended.

My first list of books on India included

Midnight’s Children, which I have since re-read, and was re-stunned by its brilliance and audacity,
Maximum City, incredible book about Mumbai and
My Experiments with Truth by M.K. Gandhi, a must-read for admirers

My second list of books on India included:

the very funny Holy Cow,
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The God of Small Things

Now, without further ado, my third list of books on India:

1. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. This book is a masterwork. Dickensian in scope, descriptive detail and character development, it stays with you for a very long time … maybe for life … The characters and scenes Mistry depicts are truly indelible. If you want to gain insight into the poverty and corruption of India, read this book. You will be forever changed. I especially recommend it for those who wear rose-coloured glasses about India.

2. Cracking India by Bapsi Sidwha. This is the book Deepa Mehta based her riveting film Earth on. It’s about the diabolical partition of India, as seen through the eyes of a Parsee child in Lahore, crippled with polio. I met Ms. Sidwha at a South Asian literature festival recently and found her to be very charming and feminine. After meeting her, I didn’t expect this ballsy, bawdy and pungently written book. I love the way she uses language, like she is throwing handfuls of spice in the air. I also agree with what Deepa Mehta did with the story to tighten and focus it, and heighten the tension.

3. An Area of Darkness by V.S. Naipaul. Although of Indian ancestry, Naipaul was born and brought up in Trinidad. In this book, subtitled A Discovery of India, he chronicles his first encounter with his ancestral homeland. Naipaul is a masterful writer and he creates scenes that are alive with detail, feeling and atmosphere. A true classic of travel writing, I felt I was with him in Kashmir and as he makes a pilgrimage to an ice cave high up in the Himalayas to see a naturally formed Shiva lingam made of ice; and as he negotiated the Kafka-esque bureaucracy of Mumbai to retrieve two bottles of liquor that were taken from him when he arrived. A great read.

4. Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. The book that launched a thousand flights to India. Probably a lot more. You would be heard-pressed to find a yoga student in India who has not read it. Compelling, fanciful, sometimes rambling, always intriguing, this is a book that deserves not only its own category, but its own genre. It truly is one of a kind. By the end (what am I talking about? I have started it twice and never made it to the end), you just want to hang out with Yogananda more than anything else in the world. But you can’t because he no longer inhabits this earthly realm ( as far as we know), so you will have to make do with going to India, walking in his footsteps and hoping for the best. I’m not even going to try to describe this cult classic. Just read it and love it unabashedly like the rest of us. Resistance is futile.

5. Climbing the Mango Tree by Madhur Jaffrey. Jaffrey is probably India’s leading food writer. I have her Simple Indian Cookery and it is my favourite cookbook. This book is an autobiography about her childhood in Delhi. Her sensuous descriptions make it the literary equivalent of eating a delightful, aromatic dish spiked with tangy citrus bursts and an undercurrent of warming, exotic spices. Her sharp observations give the story depth, and make the book worth reading. Overall it’s a wonderful experience — as if she cooked you a gorgeous full-course dinner and spun the air with tales as you ate.

NOTE: I learned of this book through Nicholas Hoare Bookstore in Toronto. They host a Reading India bookclub: 12 people get together each month to read a book set in India and then they travel together to visit the book’s locations. What a great idea.

6. Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden. I have seen the movie based on this book several times over the years, but finally just read the book. It was a particular favourite of my Mother’s and I can see why: A small group of Catholic nuns ride out into the Himalayas beyond Darjeeling to take over a mysterious, exotic and windy palace and attempt to turn it into a nunnery, school and clinic. The movie, as it turns out, was very faithful to the book — except perhaps to turn up the volume on the melodrama. The scene when the young “rat-faced” nun freaks out on Deborah Kerr and tries to push her over the precipice was a 40s-style chick flick classic. Love it!

7. The River by Rumer Godden. Yes, I am a Rumer Godden fan, and I am making my way through her published novels. She grew up in India and consequently sets many of her books there. This one is about a bright, literary-minded girl of British origin who lives with her family in a big house on “the river” (never named) in pre-independent India. Her father manages a jute mill. The story takes place over the course of the year in which she begins the metamorphosis from girlhood to womanhood. She writes poetry, develops a “crush” on a visiting wounded ex-soldier and has to deal with death when her little brother is fatally bitten by a king cobra. It’s a lovely, lyrical book that moves to the rhythm of the ancient, mighty river that flows past their house and through their lives. This book was also made into a movie — but it is a bit odd and uneven.

8. From Here to Nirvana: The Yoga Journal Guide to Spiritual India. Authors Anne Cushman and Jerry Jones visited 70 ashrams in India and wrote detailed descriptions about the teachers, teachings, facilities, etc. It also features an introduction to the religious landscape of India, the author’s stories and some practical advice about traveling in India. The book is a bit out of date now (my copy was published in 1998), but things don’t change that much in spiritual India. I found it to be a fair, well-written book and I don’t have any real quibbles with it — except you will never know from a book or from reading about someone else’s experiences whether a teacher, ashram or spiritual path is for you. You have to go and find out for yourself. This might help narrow your choices, but that’s about it.

India Gate, New Delhi

9. Life is Perfect by Himani Dahlmi. I was shopping for a book in Tekson’s bookstore (South Extension market, Delhi) when I spied a young man buying up copies of Life is Perfect. Turns out, he knew the author and was supporting her by giving out copies of the book to friends. He recommended it to me, of course, and I decided to bite. It is about a young woman growing in Delhi, though this is a modern story and the family is rich. It is quite accomplished for a first-time novel, and I liked the emphasis on the interior life of the main character as she deals with dating and her parent’s separation. But I didn’t care enough….

10. Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai. Another book about growing up in Delhi in pre-independence India. This one, though, is written by the gifted South Asian writer Anita Desai. She draws a rich portrait of family life in Old Delhi. Very satisfying.

Please leave comments and let us know what you are reading, what you recommend — and what you don’t!

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

10 (more) books I love about India

Mariellen — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:56:03 +0000

A while I ago, I wrote a blog post that listed my Top 10 Books on India (thus far). This is the second installment in my series, Books I love about India.

1. Kim by Rudyard Kipling. It’s a masterpiece. I read it with my jaw on the floor. I have been reading for, oh, 43 years, give or take, and I have never read a book that is so in the moment. You tramp along with Kim down the streets of Lahore, on the Grand Trunk Road, through Himalayan passes. Every sound, every smell, every gesture, every accent is evoked. The dust swirls around you, the smell of cooking food entices you, the fresh air of the mountains revives you. Kipling knew the road in India, and he knew how to capture it in words. And Kipling is not just a master of description — he is a master story-teller. Like India herself, this story is bold, complex, subtle and ambiguous. Though it is not an easy read, it is hugely rewarding. I will be reading it again soon.

Fishermen on the beach in Kerala, south India

2. A Rope in the Water by Sylvia Fraser. I read this book just before I left for India the first time; and I am re-reading it now. The story engrossed me the first time; it’s her writing skill that captures me this time: vivid descriptions, intelligent insight, great story-telling and a journalist’s skill for reporting. She also has a sensitive feel for the culture of India and keen spiritual understanding She can do it all. I don’t want to give anything away … but when she tells the story about the rope in the water, I get shivers. That story has really stuck with me. I also got shivers when she gets an astrology reading done and reveals her birthday, March 8, which is also mine. I find it very compelling that Sylvia Fraser and I have so much in common … we are both female writers from Toronto, born on March 8, who went on pilgrimages to India to deal with trauma from the past. I also ended up in many of the same places she did — without meaning to! But even if your birthday is not March 8 and you haven’t been to India, this is still a great read by any yardstick. And if you are looking for an authentic spiritual quest, read this before Eat, Pray, Love.

3. No Full Stops in India by Mark Tully. Actually, anything by Mark Tully. I also have India in Slow Motion and India’s Unending Journey. Tully (which means drunk in Hindi!) was the chief correspondent for the BBC in Delhi for many years. He’s a good writer and he knows India. His most recent, India’s Unending Journey, is by far the most personal. It’s about his own psychological and spiritual journey as he learns from India to be “certain about uncertainty.” I can relate. Compelling reading.

4. Holy Cow by Sarah MacDonald. A classic. Every time I think of the iron scene, I start chuckling as I picture Sarah’s face hidden by her hands so the very serious servants won’t realize she’s actually bursting with laughter over the missing iron. I laugh even more since I experienced living with servants in a Delhi household. (But servants in an India household are a bit more light-hearted than those in a foreigner’s household, methinks.) Oh, just read the book. It’s both hilarious and also moving as she traces her own relationship to India from reluctance and disdain to head-over-heels, unabashed love.

5. Slowly Down the Ganges by Eric Newby. Eric and his wife took a slow boat down the Ganges in the days before India’s modernization began. It’s a fascinating journey, written in precise detail that makes every agonizing minute they are dragging the big tin boat over rocks and sandbanks almost painful to read.

6. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Had to start this book a second time before I really got into it. It creeps into you like rain forest dampness. Very evocative and very powerful. While the setting is Kerala, in tropical southern India, it could be anywhere rural and stifling. I thought of the American deep south more than once. Strikingly original writing.

Jama Masjid, Old Delhi

7. Twilight in Delhi by Ahmed Ali. This book, a “cult classic,” was apparently very hard to get for many years. Ahmed Ali was a Muslim writer and professor from Delhi who was out of the country when partition was announced and Pakistan was created. He was not allowed back into India and had, instead, to settle in Pakistan. It is a prose poem dedicated to the twilight days of “old” Delhi, when the Muslim area of the city flourished. It not only captures a bygone era, it also relates some moving personal stories.

8. City Improbable edited by Khushwant Singh. Bombay/Mumbai and Calcutta/Kolkata seem to get all the press, but there are those of us who are quite taken with Delhi. It’s a fascinating, historical, multi-layered city that sometimes seems, well, improbable. This is an excellent collection of entertaining and informative essays.

9. Calcutta edited by Geoffrey Moorhouse. The history of Calcutta, from its founding in 1690 by Job Charnok, an agent of the East India Company, is inextricably linked to the history of the British in India. Calcutta was the capital of the British Raj until it was moved to Delhi in 1911. The tales Moorhouse chose make for fascinating reading. They cover many eras, many subjects and include well-known authors as well as excerpts from the diaries of English women who came out to be with their husbands (or to find husbands).

10. Rajasthan Getaways by Outlook Traveller. Oh, I was glad I had this book when I was traveling by myself in Rajasthan. Published in India, it’s much more than a simple guidebook. The book is primarily a series of essays written by talented writers who love India’s most-visited state as much as I do.

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

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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.

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