Read,Watch,Roll Eyes

I was hoping it would combine everything I adore about travel writing — namely intercultural insights and a well-developed sense of place —with all the seductive trashiness of your typical novel aimed at the fairer sex.

Instead,I got 350-plus pages of formulaic “American woman goes abroad and finds herself” blah-blah,cutely divided into 108 mini-chapters to — I kid you not — reflect the number of beads on a japa mala. How very spiritual.

Eat Pray Love traces Gilbert’s year-long intercontinental sabbatical. Her first stop is Italy,where she tries to learn Italian but ends up eating a lot of food and putting on weight.

The second section of the book talks about a stint in an ashram in Maharashtra — I admit I skipped reading most of this section because I believe that one’s inner spiritual life and meditative practice is a personal matter. Plus,I figured there wouldn’t be any dating going on.

I went straight to the last section,which was by far the most interesting. Here,Gilbert discusses her trip to Bali,where she spends time apprenticing with Ketut Liyer,the local soothsayer. She also meets a hot guy and raises enough funds to buy a small house for a local woman she has befriended,only to get ripped off later by said woman! Needless to say,this was my favourite part of the book.

I would later find myself vacationing in Ubud,the same Balinese artists’ village that Gilbert makes her home towards the end of her tale. The little inland town has everything the spiritually minded tourist could ask for: organic cafes,shops selling crystals and batik representations of the chakras,and overpriced yoga studios where the focus seems to be more on flat abs and sexy backsides than on spiritual advancement. A friend of mine who had honeymooned in Ubud just months before my visit had ended up meeting Ketut Liyer and given me his contact information. In the book,Gilbert spends pages on Liyer,hinting at how privileged she was to have spent time with the holy man.

Liyer is,indeed,a sweet old chap who has devoted his life to developing his spiritual knowledge. When I visited,he read my palm and told me when I would marry,how many children I’d have,and discussed my future finances,but I can’t remember any of it. What I do remember is that he advised me to drink almond milk if I plan to engage in,ahem,the conjugal act more than once in a night. Now this kind of discussion can be a little awkward,even for a firangi girl,even with a lady doctor. But to discuss it with a toothless man of a certain age in a foreign country is,well,uncomfortable. I later learnt that he had told more or less the same thing to my friend who had visited him before,but hey,practical advice is often more useful than “ancient knowledge”.

Unfortunately for Liyer and other honest folk who actually want to help those in need,spirituality sells much better than practical advice (we have Google for the latter). Every year,thousands of tourists flock across the world in search of an inner light,not realising that it is,by its very definition,within. India is an international hotspot for this type of pseudo-spiritual journey. While I’ve definitely met some sincere people whose knowledge of the Vedas and Sanskrit far surpasses that of your average Delhi boy,there’s no doubt a large number of tourists who flock to India to partake in a sort of grab-bag spirituality lightly seasoned with a dash of Buddhism and a twist of Hinduism. But rarely will you encounter these self-described spiritual travellers in hard-to-reach pilgrimage spots like Yamunotri. Instead,you’ll find them in Manali,Goa,and Pushkar — India’s very own spiritual Disneyland (bhang’s legal there,after all).

I must admit,I love visiting these little hippie backpacker towns,where I go to pig out on continental food and shop for cheap clothes. It’s also interesting to observe the interplay between the locals and the tourists,which often translates to local young men trying to woo beautiful Israeli girls with their knowledge of the Kama Sutra. Or local shopkeepers attempting to sell very special sacred Ganesh statues to impressionable tourists at very special sacred prices. The smart ones remember to rip the “Made in China” labels off first.

So although I found Eat,Pray,Love to be rather silly,I wasn’t surprised that it sold millions of copies. When the film version came out in the US,I decided to go see it,not because it had gotten any good reviews,but to see how good a job the producers had done at depicting the places Gilbert visits in the book. They were actually close to spot-on with Rome and most of the Bali stuff (except that they put an ocean beach in an inland town). Unfortunately,I couldn’t say the same for the India part of the story.

I’m by no means an expert,but the last time I checked,Maharashtra and Haryana were not cookie-cutter images of each other. But that didn’t stop the producers of Eat Pray Love from using Haryana as a backdrop for a scene in Maharashtra. As far as I know,you’d be hard-pressed to find camels and women covered from wrist to armpit with white bangles a half-hour’s drive from Mumbai airport. That would be like filming a movie set in France somewhere in Holland. Or trying to pass Gulmarg off as Switzerland!

But,hey,how often is India really portrayed accurately? Bollywood films paint India as a land where everyone is beautiful,scantily clad and on the constant verge of breaking into a song-and-dance routine. The artistic repertoires of the rest of the world focus mostly on poverty and spirituality,as if every other Indian is either a sadhu or a leper. And to be honest,there’s nothing exotic about call centres and shopping malls. So really,is it any wonder that India has become the quintessential place to go find yourself,be it in an ashram or in the bowl of a chillum?

(Margot Bigg is an American freelance writer based in New Delhi)