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| Author: Sarah Macdonald |
In her twenties, Macdonald
backpacked around India and came away with a lasting
impression of heat, pollution and poverty. So when an
airport beggar read her palm and told her she would return
to India—and for love—she screamed, “Never!” and
gave the country, and him, the finger.
But eleven years later, the prophecy comes true.
When the love of Macdonald’s life is posted
to India, she quits her dream job to move to the most
polluted city on earth, New Delhi. For her this seems
like the ultimate sacrifice for love, and it almost
kills her, literally. Just settled, she falls dangerously
ill with double pneumonia, an experience that compels
her to face some serious questions about her own fragile
mortality and inner spiritual void. “I must
find peace in the only place possible in India,” she
concludes. “Within.” Thus begins her journey
of discovery through India in search of the meaning
of life and death.
Holy Cow is Macdonald’s often hilarious chronicle
of her adventures in a land of chaos and contradiction,
of encounters with Hinduism, Islam and Jainism, Sufis,
Sikhs, Parsis and Christians and a kaleidoscope of
yogis, swamis and Bollywood stars. From spiritual
retreats and crumbling nirvanas to war zones and New
Delhi nightclubs, it is a journey that only a woman
on a mission to save her soul, her love life—and
her sanity—can survive.
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From Publishers Weekly
Australian radio correspondent Macdonald's rollicking memoir recounts the
two years she spent in India when her boyfriend, Jonathan, a TV news correspondent,
was assigned to New Delhi. Leaving behind her own budding career, she
spends her sabbatical traveling around the country, sampling India's "spiritual
smorgasbord": attending a silent retreat for Vipassana meditation,
seeking out a Sikh Ayurvedic "miracle healer," bathing in the
Ganges with Hindus, studying Buddhism in Dharamsala, dabbling in Judaism
with Israeli tourists, dipping into Parsi practices in Mumbai, visiting
an ashram in Kerala, attending a Christian festival in Velangani and singing
with Sufis. Paralleling Macdonald's spiritual journey is her evolution
as a writer; she trades her sometimes glib remarks ("I've always
thought it hilarious that Indian people chose the most boring, domesticated,
compliant and stupidest animal on earth to adore") and 1980s song
title references (e.g., "Karma Chameleon") for a more sensitive
tone and a sober understanding that neither mocks nor romanticizes Indian
culture and the Western visitors who embrace it. The book ends on a serious
note, when September 11 shakes Macdonald's faith and Jonathan, now her
husband, is sent to cover the war in Afghanistan. Macdonald is less compelling
when writing about herself, her career and her relationship than when
she is describing spiritual centers, New Delhi nightclubs and Bollywood
cinema. Still, she brings a reporter's curiosity, interviewing skills
and eye for detail to everything she encounters, and winningly captures "[t]he
drama, the dharma, the innocent exuberance of the festivals, the intensity
of the living, the piety in playfulness and the embrace of living day
by day..--he drama, the dharma, the innocent exuberance of the festivals,
the intensity of the living, the piety in playfulness and the embrace
of living day by day."
© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. |
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$14.00 (softcover)
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