Imagine you are an editor/ publisher and get a request for a
book – where the author asks you for a major advance. An advance to spend a
year travelling across the globe. Those travels would include a mix of sun, sand
and lagoons, as well as one of the most expensive locations in the heart of
Europe, and there would be one of the muckiest places somewhere in
between. And then, there might be a book about all of this
somewhere after the end of the year. Would you buy into this pitch, however
less or well-known the author was?
Well the world, at least millions of readers like me, shall
forever be grateful to this kind soul who approved this request for it produced
one of the most brilliant, literally life-changing books ever – EAT, PRAY, LOVE
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| All images sourced from the web |
Again, like most events in my life – this too came by
accident. I don’t follow the latest
bestseller rankings and am not much of a reader, especially of non-fiction or reference
books.
So I switch on Oprah and it is like the last few minutes of
an episode. She’s doing an interview and possibly the only time I have seen her
doing the interview while she’s walking about and the guest is sitting on the
regular plush sofa. Apparently Liz's
(yes, I’d like to think I’m on a first name basis with her J !) book already was a
huge success and Oprah was doing this show to get some fans of Liz to share their
experiences.
And in this last segment I am watching Liz Gilbert explain
how she experienced God and she’s all animated and she’s cupped her palms on
how she held God, and could feel the energy bubbling through her.
If you see this, I think its one of the few moments where
everyone watching her speak, universally had the same reaction, as also
evidenced by Oprah’s face. I think
everyone was envious and wanted to tell her ‘sign me up, PLLLEEEEEEAASE’.
Needless to say, I promptly ordered that book and began
reading it… several times over now. The first time I was reading this, was at the same age as Liz, when she had her experiences in the book And I
too was going through some upheavals (actually, I cant think of a time when I
wasn’t in the last two decades) and the book really helped me relate and put a
perspective to… life!
First, it helped me stop beating myself over for not
enjoying life. I have had this middle-class puritanical guilt over going out
and spending money to have a good time. Not that I didn’t do those things or
enjoy them occasionally – it was only the guilt that kept eating into me, such that it just didn't seem like fun anymore. (Also didn’t help that you sometimes have a lot of
folks around you who might in their own caring way can’t help telling you to
cut it down. Sometimes its so judgemental it hurts, and in that case it hurts
more because.. how could someone close to you feel you didn’t deserve to enjoy
life – more so if you’ve earned it yourself, the hard way??). Towards the last few chapters of her
experience in Italy I think is a brilliant summary of why Italy has the best
artistes and their philosophy of enjoying doing nothing. But mostly its her
argument about, is it really a sin or a crime to enjoy those life’s moments that you come
across - that struck a chord.
Her chapters on India were simply put just brilliant – and
it is a little embarrassing to say that she possibly captured the essence of a lot
of things that Indians, especially some Hindus like me, take for granted right from Yoga to the philosophies
that we are familiar with.
The chapters on Indonesia didn’t really strike much of a
chord with me the first time, and that’s possibly the one where there is a lot
of narrative too, unlike the first few where there was so much reflection,
synthesis and insights from her experiences.
But then I would reach out to that book every so often and
pick up a chapter randomly and start re-reading it. And I think, certain chapters were meant to be read and were, say more suitable at a certain point in ones life and would resonate better then. Thus,
even her experiences in Bali started conveying a lot more the next few times I
read them. (I think the best example for me of how age and time makes a
difference is Deepak Chopra – I just couldn’t appreciate his works earlier when
I was younger they sounded mumbo jumbo, but when I read or listen to him now it feels huge and so
transformative!)
There are a lot of chapters in Eat, Pray, love that would
sucker punch me and I would get up and have to walkabout and really think about
how it related to my life. (chapters 17, 18 and 19 especially have helped me in
fighting loneliness and depression time and time again!)
I also have been a serial gifter of the book, sharing it
with tonnes of folks I know, with mixed results. And since I have moved around
so much, I thought it made for an excellent parting gift. One victim of my charity (OK both the words fit) just loved the book but not the author,
and thought she was a simpering, self-obsessed, pathetic person. One got spooked by the fact that the author was neurotic enough to write in a book and hear her own voice!! Another put down the book after the first few
pages where the author spoke about God, and she also felt the author was proselytising
Hinduism. A lot of them would look at me like, what is this fuss about and why
are you so crazy about it. I normally
would have a smile and ask both them and myself not to be judgemental and see
if anything, whatever, in the book worked for them or helped them. And I continue to gift it in the hope that it
might help at least one more person.
And this is not surprising at all. In her book she talks about one
of her fellow retreat-ers in India, who'd spoken to his farmer dad about how meditation was so
amazing, only to get a response that this is something that the dad knew all
along and you didn’t have to cross the globe to learn it (or something along
those lines, the book says it best!).
And that really is the challenge – there are always going to
be the few blessed folk who are all sorted out and pretty clear about life, as well as
what they want out of it. For the rest
of us – i.e. folks like me, it’s gonna be a challenge and sometimes you are so busy
and beat you might never have the time to reflect or even figure out what
happened and what exactly your feelings about what just happened.
There are a lot of times I have wished, both for myself and for some others I'd meet, that if only maturity came in
a bottle and everyone could drink it and become an adult instantly (kinda like the great
sage Veda Vyasa the author of the Mahabharata, who apparently transformed to an adult right after he was given
birth by his mother. Literally moments after he was born, he simply bowed to his mother, asking her permission to retreat into the forests, and do
his duties of penance and meditation).
Well, there’s no bottle for maturity – but there are great
books like Eat, Pray, love and thank Liz (and that kind soul who approved her
pitch) which help…
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