Climbing Chamundi Hill: 1001 Steps with a Storyteller and a Reluctant Pilgrim [Hardcover]

Ariel Glucklich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 25, 2003

At the top of the 1,001 steps up Chamundi Hill, deep in India, lies a twelfth-century temple that houses a golden statue of Chamundi, the Hindu goddess worshipped by the Maharajas. A popular tourist and pilgrimage site, Chamundi Hill honors this consort of Shiva who saved the citizens of the city of Mysore from the monstrous rule of their mythical demon-king.

In Climbing Chamundi Hill, Ariel Glucklich takes the reader on a mystical adventure to this enchanted place. A young American tourist goes out for a jog and rests at the base of some ancient stone steps to rub his aching feet. Seeing him take off his running shoes, a retired Indian librarian stops and asks him if he, too, is preparing to make the pilgrimage up Chamundi Hill -- a pilgrimage often made in bare feet. The old Indian offers to tell him some stories to pass the time -- mystical stories of gods and demons, holy men and courtesans, talking animals, and charming thieves. Thus begins an unexpected journey of spiritual enlightenment for narrator and reader alike.

Many of these rich, colorful stories -- originally told in the ancient languages of India -- are translated here into English for the first time. Read about a common weaver who dyes his skin blue and disguises himself as the god Vishnu to win the hand of a princess; and the self-sacrificeof King Karan, who each morning allows himself to be fried in a vat of cooking oil and eatenby a Tantric sorcerer in exchange for a bucket of gold the king distributes to his grateful, but unsuspecting subjects. There are funny stories such as the merchant's love-struck son, Udhay, who is swindled by a wily dancer, and of his father's elaborate scam to recapture his fortune with a monkey that spits out pieces of gold. Delight in the Sanskrit tutor's faithful wife, Upakosha -- with coral lips and lotus-blue eyes -- and her clever capture of the four royal ministers who try to blackmail her for sexual favors while her husband is away on a pilgrimage in the Himalayas.

The old Indian librarian relates these wonderful tales and, serving as guru, debates their spiritual meaning with his new American companion. From beginning to end, Climbing Chamundi Hill is an enchanting guidebook to the difficult path of spiritual liberation, and a philosophical window into the meaning of life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Religion scholar Glucklich (Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul) presents 30 ancient Hindu folktales, slotting them into the contrived story of an unnamed American biologist in South India. While walking barefoot near the sacred site of Chamundi Hill (simply because he wants to dry his wet sneakers), the narrator meets P.K. Shivaram, a retired librarian, who mistakes the biologist for a pilgrim and takes pity on his tender foreign feet. As they approach the 1,001 steps leading to a 12th-century Chamundi temple, the "tiny wrinkled man in brown polyester pants and worn out rubber thongs" distracts the biologist from his aching feet by telling him pilgrimage stories. The rather preachy riddles and fables, some of which are translated from Sanskrit for the first time, feature casts of kings, demons and talking animals and deliver pat moral lessons. The narrator and librarian dissect each tale on a metaphorical journey to Nirvana-a technique that feels irksomely artificial-and Glucklich dumbs down his American narrator (says the narrator to his guide: "First Shiva, now Vishnu-you know, I never could figure out your complicated polytheism"). In a few instances, Glucklich presents meaningful reflections: "No event in your life is a simple objective fact. It always means something to the memory-processing mind." Still, the flashes of substance feel isolated within a narrative that struggles to reach enlightenment.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In Mysore, India, are a palace, a monastery, and, incongruously, a racetrack doubling as an 18-hole golf course. Also, atop nearby Chamundi Hill is a twelfth-century temple--a center of Sanskrit learning and a place where things aren't what they seem. Marine biologist Glucklich went to Mysore, renowned for its traditional Hindu clinics, to recover from severe sunstroke and food poisoning. Regaining strength, he decided to test his stamina by climbing 4,000-foot Chamundi, which seemed to him a miniature Olympus. Soon he encountered a thin, white-haired old man--a retired librarian, he said. The old man asked to accompany Glucklich up the hill's 1,001 steps, promising the skeptical American that his feet wouldn't hurt "as long as you walk with me." As they walked, he told stories, 30 in all, of gods and holy men, lepers and thieves, that are full of mystery and profound lessons culled from ancient Indian tradition. Their telling led Glucklich, who retells them wonderfully, on a path of spiritual liberation to knowledge of his essential self. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne; 1 edition (November 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060508949
• ISBN-13: 978-0060508944
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,813,189 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Challenging and intriguing, April 28, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Climbing Chamundi Hill: 1001 Steps with a Storyteller and a Reluctant Pilgrim (Hardcover)

Reading this book was like reading no other I book I have ever read-you need to really think as you read, expand your mind and way of seeing the world. It is very rewarding and I recommend it to people who like a challenge, who like to change their way of thinking, who like to think philosophically and deeply.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A mixed bag, April 28, 2010

By 

chainlink (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Climbing Chamundi Hill: 1001 Steps with a Storyteller and a Reluctant Pilgrim (Hardcover)

Climbing Chamundi Hill consists of two interlaced parts: a delightful collection of Indian folk- and fairy tales (or at least folk-like and fairy-like tales--their sources are never given), and a set of commentaries upon them that seems intended to lay out some kind of meditation-based spiritual progression. That is to say, while the tales themselves are discrete and self-contained, the interpretations are intended to form something more unified and coherent, if oblique. Both the stories and the interpretations are delivered by a retired librarian and Shiva devotee who accompanies the the book's narrator, a recovering invalid in search of wholesome exercise, as well as kind of tourist, kind of seeker/pilgrim, on a dayhike to a temple to Shiva.

The stories and their commentaries form together both a postmodern novel (a la Pale Fire) and a sort of Eastern Wisdom compendium. The interpretations themselves seem to push, at the end, towards fusion of postmodern anti-foundationalism and something more specifically Hindu which I, in my ignorance of those traditions, can't identify. And, in general, the problem with the book is that to those of us on the outside of these traditions, the spiritual interpretations of the tales don't really gel. I can make out individual points along the way that seem familiar enough--learning to avoid binary thinking, for example, itself something of a postmodern chestnut--but I don't get enough to be able to connect them up into anything resembling a model of spiritual progression.

Still, if the commentary is primarily for adepts, the stories are more than enough for the rest of us.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enthralling, June 4, 2006

By 

Curious (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Climbing Chamundi Hill: 1001 Steps with a Storyteller and a Reluctant Pilgrim (Hardcover)

"Unputdownable" :-)
If you are jaded by religious/philosophical literature, this book will refresh you.
If you are not interested in religion at all, you will find Climbing Chamundi Hill incredibly entertaining.

Mr. Glucklich, when is the next one coming?