Too much drama over too little trauma!. Review on Eat Pray Love - Elizabeth Gilbert

I knew the movie Eat Pray Love would release in India this month, but I wanted to read the book before watching the movie. I finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert's book Eat Pray Love this weekend and have mixed feelings about it. I know the book has sold over 5 million copies around the world (the cover proclaims that) but I honestly don't see why. (I didn't contribute to book sales because I borrowed the book from a friend.)

I've been reading Eat Pray Love, a few chapters at a time, and trying to get what the hype is all about. There are some things about the book that I really like, but there are many things that I absolutely detest. I'll cover what I like about the book first. The book is well-structured. I love how Ms Gilbert drew from the Hindu idea of the holy trinity (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiv) and the auspicious number, 3. Her book is written in three parts, the first (eat) is all about her experiences in Italy, the second (pray) about her experiences in an ashram in India, and the third (love) is about her experiences in Indonesia, more specifically Bali.

I love how she describes everything she experiences in Italy in detail, the food, the language, the people. The first part of the book is the most interesting and it'll make you believe you're in for a good, enjoyable book... but then you get to the second part and it starts going downhill from there. What's also nice about the book is that while it's autobiographical, it's also philosophical, and to an extent, the author tries to give it a self-help bent. She tries to blend pleasure and passion with penance and pain and achieving a balanace in life. This book might have been amazing, had she not decided to go down an extremely opinionated path.

So let's move to what I didn't appreciate about the book. I think, it's just too much hype over too little tragedy. Ms Gilbert went through a divorce, a divorce that she wanted, not her husband. And then she had an affair with a guy named David that went south because she was too clingy and he felt suffocated (sounds like the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus plot). Was this reason enough to have such a massive existential crisis? I don't know, maybe you have to be there. But there is so much actual suffering in the world that the entire book just seems contrived. Honestly, I hope I never go through what she went through, and I do feel for her loss, but I don't think it warrants all the drama and attention.

What got on my nerves the most was all the stereotyping. The author stereotypes Indians, Indonesians, and Italians, and even men (until she meets Felipe and men are good again). Also, I didn't appreciate her comments about Indian and Balinese women. I don't really know that much about Bali, so I'll refrain from commenting about them (something Ms. Gilbert should learn to do). But I am an Indian woman and from what I know we're nothing like she chose to describe in the book (like the girl Tulsi from the ashram and the way she describes how Indian women are "chosen" for marriage). Sure that might still happen in some families and regions, but definitely not everywhere. Ms Gilbert should do a lot more research before she runs around trying to sound like she knows it all.

All I know is that you shouldn't act like you know all about a country after having spent all your time chanting mantras in an ashram and viewing the abject poverty of the village that the ashram is located near. Sure, the poverty exists, sure yoga is hot here (India's got a deep culture, unlike some countries), and sure some people speak funny English (they speak their own language fine, and how many people in most other countries are bilingual anyway?), but that's not all that this country is about.

That said, I'm not the most patriotic person in the world, and by that I mean I don't go into denial and fly into a rage when a firang brings up something bad about this country (like the indiscriminate spitting, even out snazzy car windows). But when someone decides she's an authority on this country after spending a mere 4 months in a Yoga ashram in India, in some little village, many miles away from Bombay, I can't help but get annoyed. Elizabeth Gilbert didn't go around India, she didn't see anything outside the ahram, and the airport and its parking lot. Apparenly to her the parking lot of Bombay's international airport looks desolate, now that's a laugh - I've been to the airport alone at 1 in the morning and felt totally safe and surrounded by people.

While my opinion might sound strong and while it may sound like I'm deeply offended, I'm really not. I was angry when I read some of the nonsense Ms Gilbert spews about India, but then I figured I should feel bad for her. She thinks she's so self-actualized and so centered, but really she's just small-minded and unable to see anything beyond what she wants to believe, anything that might take her out of her comfort zone (other than traveling to a different country to stay at an ashram). And she didn't come off as ignorant and opinionated only when she spoke of India, it's the same when she writes about Indonesia and, to an extent, Italy.

That's all I'm going to say about this book and how I felt about it... if you want to read some interesting stuff about Italy (particularly the food), you should read the book. But maybe you should stop after reading the first part. Read the other two parts only if you want to see how unfunny the India and Indonesia quips are to someone who understands the countries and their cultures a little bit more than Ms. Gilbert. And if you want to watch the movie, it'll be out this weekend :)