Being India

by Pavan K. Varma

Book Overview

An exploration of what it is to be Indian in the modern day. Lots of Insights. Sections on "Image versus reality", The triumph (unexected) of democracy., the myth of other worldliness, technology, wealth, violence and the power of accommodation, and an epilogue. Uzes sources such as myth and legend and sanskrit, Bollywood, anecdotes, and more. Intelligent and challenging read. Softback, intact and clean and undamaged.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143033425
• ISBN13: 9780143033424
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Penguin Books India
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.5" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Excellent insightful book

Excellent book with great insights into the minds of Indians and what makes them click.

India Underlined

Question #1: If I want to read the definitive book on India, what book should I read? Answer: Being Indian. Question #2: So with all the other books I've bought, but still haven't read, why should I read a book on India? Answer: 1,166,079,217 people. With more than 1.1 billion citizens, India has the second largest population (behind China) of any country in the world and expects to be Number One in the years ahead. Rather than just whine about customer "service" call centers in India I encounter almost daily, maybe you and I should learn something about this incredible country. India is increasingly affecting my life (and leadership) every month. A colleague from India recommended this book. After five minutes, I was hooked. The cover endorsement says, "contains striking insights on almost every page." Not true. It has multiple, multiple striking insights on every page. Fascinating. Incredible. Eye-popping. Deep. Implications far beyond India. Bring a pen. I underlined something on almost every page. Yet I'm still at a loss on how to hook you into reading this. The subject is too vast--the illustrations are too perfect--and the writing is pure art form, yet clear and to the point. India is a conundrum. It's an oxymoron. Just when you think you get it, you miss it. The book is unlike any I've read. I plead with you--read it. Yet, frankly, even after reading it, I'm embarrassed by how little I really know about India--and I have traveled a fair amount (but not there). The author's credentials are sufficient: press secretary to the president of India, official spokesman for the Foreign Office, and much more. Bottom line: practically every page has a point and an anecdote (many humorous) that I have found myself repeating to almost any person or group that will listen. This is an astonishingly pertinent and powerful book. Actually, it's really not beach reading this summer--unless you bring both a pen and the power of concentration. By the way, according to the CIA website, a 2001 census shows that the Hindu religion claims 80.5% of the people followed by Muslim (13.4%), Christian (2.3%), Sikh (1.9%), and "other" (1.8%), plus unspecified (0.1%). Parachurch and local church leaders will immediately find this book relevant.

looking at the real

I had been in India for 9 weeks and was staying in a guesthouse in the holy city of Varanasi, when I found Varma's book in a locked case with many other used and random books of every persuasion. I had come to India with my mind, senses, and feelings open, done volunteer work then traveled alone. The pieces of my perceptions and experiences lay scattered all around me, but would not cohere. There were some things I could work out, like the way people clung to extremely narrow job functions, self-sufficiency in my terms was not a value and --I could see -- would do someone (maybe many someones) out of an income however meager. But, for one example, the dogs and other animals...often starving, wounded, sick sometimes with rabies...Why did no one care? Many, many other things rested heavy in my mind. For a moment, consider the behavior of the man who let me into the case to look through the books; after 2 or 3 minutes of standing over me in obvious boredom (but would he leave me alone with used books left by guests?), he began to chant "closing, closing!" and slam! went the case. I had to sign out the book and surely return it. A couple of days later, a departing guest wanted to leave the book she had just read, a desirable book from the best-seller lists, and the manager told her no -- because there was no more room in the case. I had come to India with expectations of a different world, a spiritual world; I did not want to impose my world-view, in which, for example, wounded and sick animals rate a significant, even urgent, spot. I did not want to do this, because then I knew I would miss this opportunity, this challenge to my life. On the other hand, so much of what I saw was inconceivably irrational; below my balcony in the Ganges river, where 30 sewers emptied along the ghats of Varanasi into the sacred waters, morning and evening lines of pilgrims formed and immersed themselves in the filthy water, to purify themselves, to cleanse themselves of their sins. Into the disheveled and distraught conflagration of my mind as it had become at that time, in that city, came the words and paragraphs of Varma's book. I saw my thoughts and experiences and perceptions in his pages, and recognition and comprehension gradually and gratefully replaced my confusion and raging for understanding. It is true, the book deals very peripherally with what westerners think of and perhaps revere as the Hindu spiritual journey. Yet although Hindu religious or spiritual pursuits are evident at every turn in India, still the major evidence of my senses and experiences were factual, physically vivid,irrefutable...and could only possibly become spiritual...IF I could absorb, integrate, risk to comprehend, to move beyond my limits. In that context, Varma's book was invaluable to me. Priceless.

Excellent book: One of the best ever on what it means to be Indian

This is a tremendous book. I am Indian, but grew up in a very western household in India, and have spent my whole life thinking about what it means to be Indian. This book more than any other has shed light on this question. In writing about Indian attitudes towards power, money, technology or culture, Pavan Varma hits the nail on the head on what makes the Indian civilization so different than any other and so complex in many different ways. He writes excellently all through and makes insightful comments on every single page. I would recommend this book to any Indian who wants to learn more about themselves, or to any non-Indian who has either spent time in India or around a lot of Indian people.