Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East [Paperback]

Gita Mehta (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 28, 1994

Beginning in the late '60s, hundreds of thousands of Westerners descended upon India, disciples of a cultural revolution that proclaimed that the magic and mystery missing from their lives was to be found in the East. An Indian writer who has also lived in England and the United States, Gita Mehta was ideally placed to observe the spectacle of European and American "pilgrims" interacting with their hosts. When she finally recorded her razor sharp observations in Karma Cola, the book became an instant classic for describing, in merciless detail, what happens when the traditions of an ancient and longlived society are turned into commodities and sold to those who don't understand them.

In the dazzling prose that has become her trademark, Mehta skewers the entire Spectrum of seekers: The Beatles, homeless students, Hollywood rich kids in detox, British guilt-trippers, and more. In doing so, she also reveals the devastating byproducts that the Westerners brought to the villages of rural lndia -- high anxiety and drug addiction among them.

Brilliantly irreverent, Karma Cola displays Gita Mehta's gift for weaving old and new, common and bizarre, history and current events into a seamless and colorful narrative that is at once witty, shocking, and poignant.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A witty documentary satire.... Mehta embraces an enormous variety of life and death. Her style is light without being flip; her skepticism never descends to cynicism. [Karma Cola is] a miracle of rationalism and taste."

-- Time

Sometime in the 1960s, the West adopted India as its newest spiritual resort. The next anyone knew, the Beatles were squatting at the feet of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Expatriate hippies were turning on entire villages to the pleasures of group sex and I.V. drug use. And Indians who were accustomed to earning enlightenment the old-fashioned way were finding that the visitors wanted their Nirvana now -- and that plenty of native gurus were willing to deliver it.

No one has observed the West's invasion of India more astutely than Gita Mehta. In Karma Cola the acclaimed novelist trains an unblinking journalistic eye on jaded sadhus and beatific acid burnouts, the Bhagwan and Allen Ginsberg, guilt-tripping English girls and a guru who teaches gullible tourists how to view their previous incarnations. Brilliantly irreverent, hilarious, sobering, and wise, Mehta's book is the definitive epitaph for the era of spiritual tourism and all its casualties -- both Eastern and Western.

"Evelyn Waugh would have rejoiced."

-- The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

"It is a sad, hilarious, rueful tale and Mehta tells it with a rich fund of irony, satire, acerbic wit and insight."--The Los Angeles Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (June 28, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679754334
• ISBN-13: 978-0679754336
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.9 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #629,910 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Karma Cola maintains its fizz..., October 2, 2000

By 

Richard Wells (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Karma Cola (Paperback)

I've come to this book a little late in its publishing history, and though the story is dated in terms of the mass of seekers who descended on India in the 60's and 70's westerners still seek the "wisdom of the east," and this Karma Cola has not lost its fizz. This is an angry, critical, sarcastic look at the rage for inner peace that has driven many seekers to psychiatric care, and many gurus to the bank. It's also a book filled with sadness as Gita Mehta both castigates and mourns - for her country's spiritual traditions stacked into the supermarket of the latest craze; and for the naive who believe hard won self-knowledge can be had with the touch of a teacher's hand - or a certain less visible appendage. It's finally true that if you can't find peace and love at home you probably won't find it in India either. Besides, six thousand years of spiritual and cultural history just shouldn't be toyed with.

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars True, but Very Partial and Unfair, June 3, 2005

By 

Zen Nataraj - See all my reviews

This review is from: Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East (Paperback)

I read this book during my research about spiritual tourism in India. Mehta is a professional writer from a secular elite Indian family. Taking place in the 1970s, the author snipes at both Western New Agers and Indian gurus. The former are criticized for their blind naivete in searching for enlightenment in India; the latter are denounced for their shrewd manipulation of wealthy foreigners, for their own material (sometimes sexual) benefit. I witnessed similar situations.

However, Mehta was way too selective in what stories to tell, and she says nothing positive at all about spiritual search. Underlying her sarcastic sense of humor, there lies a basic exclusionary assumption: Mehta is against the mixing of East and West. Her irritation with such experiments leads to often unfair commentary (such as, contrary to what she claims, Bhagwan Rajneesh was never seen as a god by his Western disciples). Mehta ends up throwing the baby out with the bath water.

For more descriptive, less judgmental accounts on Westerner travelers in India, the reader may try Cleo Odzer's auto-biographical "Goa Freaks", as well as Anthony D'Andrea's "Global Nomads", both of which examining the lifestyle of Westerners in Goa and Pune.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not the usual view of India, February 6, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East (Paperback)

Karma Cola is definitely required reading for any westerner interested in things Indian or perhaps contemplating hitting the Dharma trail. Its recognition that misunderstanding goes both ways (eg. the anecdotes about gurus treatment of their Western students) is a good reality check for those of us whose spiritual search has taken us there. Ms Mehta gently reminds us that trying to absorb 5000 years of experience and living may take a little more than a few weeks of squat loos, and some Om Mani Padme Hums.

This is the first time I've ever read a book about the move of Eastern thought into the West which was not written by a Westerner. In some ways sobering, it is also witty and at times poignant.

By the way, an earlier reviewer lambasted the author for attributing the wrong language to clerks from Kerala. That mistake has been fixed in the edition I have (Minerva 1997 paperback).