If you’re Indian and are appropriately proud of your country’s diversity, you’re quite right. If you’re Indian and you feel you know your country but haven’t really seen much of it, you should. If you’re Indian and you think you’re religious, you probably are. If you’re Indian and you think you’re spiritual in the true sense of the word, most of you should think again.
If you haven’t read Sarah MacDonald’s Holy Cow, you should.
The book is, subtly put, a rhetoric on the experiences of an Australian woman who had the resources to come into contact with the true fabric of modern India. Through her extensive travels and her keen interest in her quest for understanding what could truly make her feel happy, she’s exposed the delicate nuances of what make up a country so diverse.
I’ve read more than a few books about experiences in India but reading Sarah’s book was immensely pleasurable - the way she could feel the real India, notice small and seemingly insignificant behavioral trends and actually experience India as an Indian would. She felt the ever present threat that women in India feel under constant lewd stares. She was able to appropriately, in my opinion (lest somebody differ), see the best of every practice and belief that she came across. What makes her really special is that she was able to take with her a little of what she thought each experience had to offer.
On the other hand, I did come across several obstacles, so to speak, that seemed to me would have Sarah upsetting somebody, and she did. There are quite a few disgruntled customers out there. I think I can understand what makes them mad but frankly, the book’s just a brutally honest account of a stranger’s experiences in a strange land. What would one do - please everybody by lying?
The book, to me, has stirred something that makes me want to be able to relive each of Sarah’s experiences. Unfortunately, ironic as it may seem, most of us Indians will never be able to do so - it is a fact that in most of the places Sarah visited, being white would definitely be an advantage. Speaking of which, this is just another facet of India that she noticed too - she realized the difference in the behavior that she was getting from the Indians as opposed to the behavior an Indian would get. From the Indians. Sad but true.
In conclusion. a good book - not much in the way of an organized and sequential narrative of events but then who said the Indian fabric would ever present an experience that would be so. A brilliant attempt at discovering the beautiful and awe-inspiring diversity - India, and the people that make her.