Last week, in spite of a pretty busy schedule, I managed to finish 2 books. Quite an achievement really since I hardly read 'proper' stuff nowadays, apart from the newspapers, trashy men magazines and migraine-inducing reports that is. Oh yah and office email of course =))
So with a good cuppa coffee and ciggies, I found myself winding down after hours with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Sarah MacDonalds's Holy Cow!. The former cos I was determined to read the thing before the movie starts screening in mid-May (yes I am that SLOW =P) and the latter cos I was attracted to the gaudy cover and the equally bawdy Karma Chameleon of a colleague who was finishing it over breakfast one morning.
Both books are 'spiritual' in their own way but it was Ms Macdonald's playfully hilarious prose and witty journalistic cynicism that won me over the stacatto-chapter style of Mr Brown, who honestly spins quite a believable yarn about the Holy Grail not really being a cup =))
In her twenties, Sarah Macdonald backpacked around India and came away with a bad impression of the heat, pollution and poverty. So when an airport beggar reads her palm before she boards the flight home and tells her she would return to India for love, she gives him the middle finger. Aussie brat!
But eleven years later, as a successful broadcast journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the prophecy comes true. When the love of her life Jonathan is posted to India as the ABC's bureau chief, she takes a sabbatical from work to move to New Delhi. It sure seems like the ultimate sacrifice for love, and it almost kills her, literally, cos she falls dangerously ill with double pneumonia soon after arriving, an experience that compels her to face some serious questions about her own fragile mortality and inner spiritual void. Thus begins her journey of discovery through India in search of the meaning of life and death.
The book is Sarah'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.
For me it is a travelogue with a difference and I leave you guys with an excerpt of Sarah's discussion on the eponymous cow, which follows a description of Indian traffic rules:
I've always thought it hilarious that Indian people chose the most boring, domesticated, compliant and stupid animal on earth to adore, but already I'm seeing cows in a whole different light. These animals clearly know they rule and the like to mess with our heads. The humpbacked bovines step off median strips just as cars are approaching, they stare down drivers daring them to charge, they turn their noses up at passing elephants and camels, and hold huddles at the busiest intersections where they seem to chat away like the bulls of Gary Larson cartoons. It's clear they are enjoying themselves.
But for animals powerful enough to stop traffic and holy enough that they'll never become steak, cows are treated dreadfully. Scrawny and sickly, they survive by grazing on garbage that's dumped in plastic bags. The bags collect in their stomachs and strangulate their innards, killing the cows slowly and painfully. Jonathan has already done a story about the urban cowboys of New Delhi who lasso the animals and take them to volunteer vets for operations. Unfortunately the cows are privately owned and once they are restored to health they must be released to eat more plastic.*************************
Ok after writing so much I don't feel like talking about Calamaris and Cookies anymore =)) Suffice to say that when R told me he felt like Calamari, I figured that perhaps a certain Cookie had inflicted the same
sotong-effect on me. Its ok if you guys dunno what rubbish I am spewing =)) See
bo-liao definition below.