Empire of the Soul: Some Journeys in India [Mass Market Paperback]

Paul William Roberts (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1997

Paul William Roberts's journeys through India span twenty years, and in Empire of the Soul, he creates a dazzling mosaic, by turns tragic and comic, of the subcontinent and its people. From the crumbling palaces of maharajas to the slums of Calcutta; from the ashrams of holy men to a millionaire drug dealer's heavily guarded fortress on India's border with China, Roberts captures the lure of this enigmatic land--this empire of the soul. "India is a harsh mistress," he writes. "She seems to appreciate individual sacrifice so little. Yet she has never wanted for lovers..."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One of the finest travel writers has taken on the most impenetrable country, describing his spiritual pilgrimages of the '70s and return visits of the '90s. Paul William Roberts says "[India] is the only country that feels like home to me, the only country whose airport tarmac I have ever kissed upon landing." But no sentimentality dulls Roberts's keen eye as he visits ashrams, junkie dens, and Mother Teresa's order, explaining the complex history of castes and colonialization as he goes. He ferrets out beauty and hypocrisy with an insightful take on the masses of humanity that travel and live there. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Reminiscent of the work of Bruce Chatwin, this soul-searching literary travelogue turns a keen and uncompromising eye toward India. A Westerner in love with this most un-Western of countries, Roberts (In Search of the Birth of Jesus) evokes in lush prose?and almost too vividly?the profound spiritual heights and sordid depths of humanity he encountered during his years in India in the 1970s and his several return trips in the '90s. The spiritually inclined will be fascinated by Roberts's truth-seeking missions with the famous guru Sai Baba and various traditional Hindu yogis, but they will meet less lofty characters here as well?at one point, Roberts accompanies a sadistic drug-lord to his hashish-oil operation. Roberts describes in excruciating detail unsanitary washroom facilities, fetid food and extremes of poverty?slums, crippled beggars, child prostitutes. His views of the Western seekers he meets along the way are just as unvarnished, especially of the sex-obsessed followers of Bhagwan Rajneesh. Yet the haunting splendor of this ancient, religion-drenched land shines through. At the end of his travels, in Siva's city of Benares, Roberts ponders the cremation-ash laden Ganges River and comes to know his own truth. Going deep within the paradoxes that form the fabric of India, this book offers far more than a postcard depiction
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade; 1st edition (December 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573226351
• ISBN-13: 978-1573226356
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #571,479 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wild ride, March 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Empire of the Soul: Some Journeys in India (Mass Market Paperback)

"India is a harsh mistress," Paul William Roberts admits in the amazing Empire of the Soul. "She seems to appreciate individual sacrifice so little. Yet she has never wanted for lovers." Roberts went searching for the "Truth" in India in the seventies and nineties, and instead discovered a land of paradox and extremes. His personal spiritual journey takes him to the ashrams and caves of holy men, the hippy community of Goa, and a millionaire drug dealer's hashish fields on India's border with China. Roberts pokes fun at "credit-card ascetics"--Westerners in Indian garb who look like they have American Express cards tucked away somewhere: "Don't renounce the world without it." Yet Oxford-educated Roberts himself spent a year following guru Sathya Sai Baba in Puttaparthi, who would become a lifelong influence. "Freaks look less freakish in India," Roberts writes. "Once you have seen a thousand naked sadhus running toward the Ganges River covered with ash from the cremation grounds, dreadlocks daubed with cow dung, nails driven through their tongues, you're hardly going to be upset about a guy with shoulder-length hair and a beard who wears beads and flower shirts." On the offbeat way he meets such figures as the fraudulent sex guru Bhagwan Rajneesh, George Harrison, Mother Teresa, and "The King of the Untouchables," who amassed a fortune doing a job no high-caste Brahmin would touch with a ten-foot pole: burning the corpses of the dead. Roberts rants fluently on topics ranging from the British Raj to the Vedic hymns. Whether in the slums of Calcutta or the crumbling palaces of maharajas, he turns his tragicomical eye inward to explore this religion-soaked realm. By turns hellish and divine, India is experienced for us by a modern literary mystic who has found his surrogate spiritual home; the reader is just along for the ride, but what a wild one it is. . . . --John M. Edwards

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not quite spiritual, October 28, 2000

By 

Joseph Malieckal (Cochin,Kerala,India) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Empire of the Soul: Some Journeys in India (Mass Market Paperback)

This book is interesting reading because the author is forthright and humorous.Since he writes about two eras, one in 1975 and the next in 1992, we do get to compare the changes in the spiritual world.I am surprised at his devotion to Sathya Baba to such a high degree in 1975 byt somehow did not try to pursue for the next 17 years.Some of his observations are platitudinous.Like many of the travel writers,including Paul Theroux,he also stays in very poor hotels paying 50 cents rent and then complains about cockroaches and lizards.And then he stays in the Taj Hotel and keeps drinking tea which at Taj costs more than 50 cents per cup!There are several inconsistent statements as well as contradictory ones. Even though he claims to be a great lover of India,some of his statements are not credible.In every conversation with the Indians,there is an air of elitist posture. William Dalrymple is a much better travel writer who searches more into the meaning of India.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly great travel book that captures the essence of India, July 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Empire of the Soul (Hardcover)

India is a country that evokes very strong emotions. On any brief visit, one is enraged by the filth, the decay, the disorganization, not to speak of the heat and the dust. But when one has lived there for some time, a strange magic starts to work. It is like the seductive charm of a beautiful gypsy woman in rags! What secrets lie buried in her chest?

India is more than a palimpsest. It is as if each layer were alive and continually changing right before your eyes. How does one write about such a land without a stereotypical juxtaposition of the old and the new? How does one communicate the horror and debasement that has entered the soul of urban India and still be able to speak of the ancient springwells of its culture?

Well the task may appear impossible but it can be done as shown in this magnificent book by Paul William Roberts, a British-Canadian writer. Recounting several journeys made over an eighteen-year period, Roberts is able to draw a powerful pictu! re of India with its smells and sounds, bazaars and chai-shops, bug-infested cheap hotels and rationed electricity, gurus and drug-runners, penuried ex-rajas and movie-stars, country roads and camel rides, ashrams and whore-houses. But these are just the props for his marvellous gifts of story-telling.

It is a very moving book which also manages to be funny and profound. Through his experiences he is not only able to describe the moods of the many Indias, he also paints the soul of the West. This book is not analytical like the travel books of Naipaul; for Roberts the story is told through suggestion and a torrent of feelings. In linear discourse, the same drama in the sky will be thunder to the blind and lightning to the deaf, but Roberts is able to capture in one sweep the many dimensions of his experience. This method literally transports us to India; we become his fellow-travellers.

The journeys are peopled by fascinating characters: A seven-foot tall German ta! ntrik in loin-cloth; a 300-pound woman who actually cooks h! er lunch on a pressure-stove in a crammed bus; sex-crazed followers of Rajneesh; old aristocracy reduced to penury; hippies in Goa; the dom raja of the burning ghats of Benaras.

Although the book has its gurus, the maharaja, the hippies and the movie-stars, it does not deal with hackneyed themes. Roberts brings a rare perception to his experience so that we are brought face to face with the universals of the human condition.

Returning from India on his most recent trip, Roberts evokes an emotion familiar to expatriate Indians and others who have lived there for any length of time: ``As the plane left the ground, rising up over the central plains of India, heading out over Rajasthan, I gazed down at the fast-disappearing features of the land. The thousands of tiny villages; the mountains; the rivers; the jungles; the deserts; the temples; the great holy cities; and all these people---I was leaving them all yet again. On the headphones an Urdu ghazal singer was wailing o! ut the Oriental version of country music: Whatever he sang about, it had to involve broken hearts, broken dreams. I felt the bittersweet ache of love inside, too; felt my heart swelling up---as if wanting to embrace the whole world. India: I couldn't live with her, and I couldn't live without her.''

It is a remarkable book, one of the great travel books of our times. Not only does it evoke the mystique of India, it does so with great aplomb and style.

It is the perfect book to read this year, the fiftieth anniversary of India's independence. Written with great zest and sympathy, it shows why the attraction of India is something more than a longing for a homeland. India may be an infuriating place but there is magic in its rhythms!