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Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East
 
 
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Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East (Paperback)

by Gita Mehta (Author) "I went from one candle-lit barsati to another, chancing upon a hypodermic event here, a seance there, until I finally found the gentlemen who had..." (more)
Key Phrases: platform heels, burning ghats, Hare Krishna, New York, Anand Margis (more...)
3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)

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Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East + Snakes and Ladders + A River Sutra
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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 -- Review

"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

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

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: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #380,938 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category: (What's this?)

    #26 in  Books > History > Asia > South Asia

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Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East
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Customer Reviews

27 Reviews
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4 star:
 (4)
3 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (27 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
20 of 21 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.
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars True, but Very Partial and Unfair, June 3, 2005

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.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Not the usual view of India, February 6, 1998
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).

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Antidote
This book is a cautionary antidote to the foolish infatuation with Indian gurus on the part of gullible Westerners.
Published 28 days ago by David Kiebert

2.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes mildly entertaining, but not useful for people interested in the history
Gita Mehta's KARMA COLA, originally published in 1980, is a 1979, is a collection of anecdotes about the Western travelers that Mehta met in India in the 1970s. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Christopher Culver

4.0 out of 5 stars spirituality for the modern consumer
There's a great abundance and variety of spirituality or holistic health in India. Each permutation requires at least one guru. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Ryan Costa

5.0 out of 5 stars Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East
Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East
"Karma Cola" is a strong, clear minded book and easy to read. A compilation of short amusing stories. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Panagiotis Kontodaimon

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly Mocking, Insulting & Enlightening
Before anyone even starts reading this book, think Dave Barry or PJ O'Rouke. The tone of this excellent piece of writing is both sharply insulting and brutally honest... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Chan Joon Yee

5.0 out of 5 stars It will make you a more sophisticated traveler.
I read Karma Cola before my first trip to India in 1983. It helped me understand that I cannot fully comprehend this beautiful, exotic culture. Read more
Published on March 17, 2007 by Cracked Country Lips

5.0 out of 5 stars KARMA COLA IS AN AMAZINGLY WELL WRITTEN BOOK
Gita Mehta has a real knack for using an economy of words. She covers the vast topic of Westerners misunderstanding of South Asian spirituality in less than 150 pages, and yet she... Read more
Published on November 2, 2006 by Gregory A. Butler

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing...
Mehta's book is nuanced and wonderful. She's hardly against the mixing of east and west (whatever those cliched labels may mean... Read more
Published on June 22, 2006 by Tanvi

3.0 out of 5 stars Amusing but not Moving
I bought this book while traveling in India. Mehta offers well-written vignettes in which Western hippies make fools of themselves in "mystic" India. Read more
Published on June 1, 2004 by Lukas Jackson

5.0 out of 5 stars Second time around as good as the first
I loved this book the first time I read it years ago and enjoyed it even more the second time just lately. Ms. Read more
Published on April 25, 2004 by Gingko

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