Customer Reviews

The Revised Kama Sutra

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The book is probably the most candid and frank exposition of an Indian man's discovery of sex with all its 'cosmic' implications! Switching rapidly from the mundane and the comic to the more serious and profound, Crasta is able to get to the very core of the Indian duplicity towards a very important and basic aspect of our lives. At the same time, it takes a wry look at attempts for political change and tries to find out their roots and underlying motives. The book is hilarious and I have read it on more than a couple of occassions. Highly recommended. Mohit Misra.

Any book that can force me, against my will, to guffaw out loud while reading it in public places is to be treasured. "The Revised Kama Sutra" was as rife with inventive comic imagery as "A Confederacy of Dunces," as insightful and subtly searing as "Catcher in the Rye," and as sensuous as the Kama Sutra itself. Although I've never been to India, I felt I experienced the lively streets, people, colors, aromas, shapes and sounds of the cities mentioned in the book right along with the author. It's a cliche to say, "you'll laugh, you'll cry!," but that truly is the case with this book--I recommend it, you'll savor each page.

Affected by the Western rationalism and science of his school books, the poor but brilliant Vijay rejects the rigid code of South Indian Catholicism, giving up God, religion, and his dream of becoming a saint. From there, Vijay's story becomes a search for meaning in a godless material world.

To borrow a bit from a perceptive previous review, Revised Kama Sutra is an exuberant Catcher In The Rye, a South Indian Confederacy of Dunces, spiced with the author's indefatigable love of hilarious word play. Unlike Catcher and COD, though, Kama is auto-biographical (if not, my apologies to the author!).

So far, so good. You might want to read it. But if I add it's a story about obsession with sex (not that Vijay gets much), will you change your mind? Can't be helped. It's the gut-busting hilarity of Vijay's quest to lose his virginity that keeps the story moving.

We are all obsessed. The difference between most of us and Vijay is that we hide away our obsessions or sublimate them under something more suitable for public viewing.

So there it is. That's what the book's about. But good stories usually have something more. A Western reader learns: what Pax Brittania and Pax Americana look like from the other side; about grinding third world poverty seen not through the eyes of Western pity but as a normal everyday reality; how traditional power structures dominate traditional societies despite a veneer of outside Western values (ie, not much chance we're going to make any real societal changes in Afghanistan and Iraq with an army); the way the English language permeates everything, is pursued by everyone, and becomes something new in the process (this last, fascinating to me as a linguist).

Revised Kama Sutra is not your standard novel by a long shot. For those who want to avoid such things, there are sections in which it is x-rated in content and vocabulary. But, ultimately and thankfully, this story is uplifting and powerful at the end when the author realizes, in spite of himself, there must be something more.

Avatar Parabhu (a.k.a., Richard Crasta) has given us a madcap glimpse of the life of an Indian, America-phile, and Indian male. He has a good sense of the sardonic with a good wit. The book is punctuated with some rather madcap "letters to Jackie" that give the reader a sense of what it is to grow up in the poorest of countries with visions of America dancing in their heads.

Once a member of the highly privileged "I.A.S." (Indian Civil Service) this semi-autobiographical, novel leads the reader through the tortures of growing up in the confused home of the original Kama Sutra where sex is now unthinkable.

It is a first novel and has some flaws. Some sections are overdone. Overall it is a good novel. No, it is not a scholarly treatise on what Indian - American relations are about. But it does give the reader a look at the psyche of what draws people to America. My favorite line was: "Most people go to America as nobody and come back as a big shot. I went as! ! a big shot and came back as a nobody." Perhasp that says it all.

The glossaries are well worth the time to read them as they will leave the reader howling with laughter.

A wonderfully irreverent, memorable character's painfully humorous journey through Western-fed fantasies and back again. The sly witty style is a pleasure to read.

Franz Kafka said, "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us." Whatever your initial instincts might be, try this book, and stay with it for at least a few chapters. You will enter a world, a boyhood, a manhood, and a mind as different and as honest as any you have encountered.

...an irreverent, zany, sexy and laugh-out-loud funny sexual coming-of-age tale. Crasta's narrator gleefully, perceptively and unsentimentally skewers human nature, folly and desire in both Indian and American society; at the same time he effortlessly dispenses his own idiosyncratic brand of unpretensious, cynical and compassionate wisdom. The anti-hero narrator of "The Revised Kama Sutra" is deliciously sinful company; one is hungry for more at the book's end. Crasta has a warm, witty, sweetly sarcastic and utterly hilarious voice all his own. A real original.

The back-cover lured me to buy it. I spent over a month trying to read it.

It goes into impressive details in creating the scene & mood. Also, contextualises the protagonist's (Vijay's) emotions & dilemas.

However, the narrative leads nowhere. It is not half as funny as the back-cover claims (or as some of the reviews do). Pathos? Probably. But wit? If there was wit, I obviously missed it.

In the end I found the book dull and boring. Gave me a close-up of Vijay's world and of Vijay himself. But would I want to have a close look (figuratively speaking) at Vijay's pimples, acne, etc.? Naaaaah!

I must say that I found the title somewhat misleading -- at first -- but after reading the book I realized that the author was really narrating the dynamics of sex -- or the search for it -- in India.
The following paragraph is all-enclosing: "The Europeisation of Catholic India from its original cleanliness to hopefully bathless odor state" sums up the underlying process, in my opinion.
I believed in the stereotypical notion that India lived under one big sex bash. After reading this novel I have revised my trans-cultural knowledge.
Mr. Crasta did send me quite frequently to my Kindle's handy dictionary, which is something I generally like. Nothing like building up my vocabulary as I read a story.
Just one comment off my head: I'm from Panama, and I find that Vijay Prabhu's complaints made me recall quite a few situations in my Jesuit Catholic school upbringing.
This is a serious book, though written with sarcastic wit.

Crasta's a pretty good writer, very talented and all. But I read this book based on what he said on his website -- that it was daring and controversial. It really isn't. It's a humorous piece of writing but is really more cute than meaningful.