Holy Cow:No Bloody Hell
Written: Mar 30 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: None that I could find.
Cons: Cribbing without limits bores the audience.
The Bottom Line: Avoid it, or at the best read it after you have visited India.
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| mridula's Full Review: |
Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure by Sarah Macdonald is full of cliches about India. She lived and travelled through India for a few years starting from the year 2000 and writes such a irritating book.
Apparently, Ms. Macdonald had visited India in her twenties and had a horrible experience.
"So when an airport beggar read her palm and told her she would return to India- and for love- she screamed "Never!" and gave him, the finger. But eleven years later the prophecy comes true."
And therein lies a boring story. Five reasons why I didn't like it.
5. The Ending is Predictable: In spite of the tone set by the author from the first few pages of the book you can see the ending from a mile and I am not convinced why it had to be that way. And the book has every formula that one can have in writing a book about India.
4. The Great Village of Delhi: I quite agree that Delhi is polluted, it has the people with worst driving sense in the world, living here could be nerve wrecking experience on the account of the harsh summer alone. The author finds it difficult to live here.
But how can you convince me that Vasant Kunj, one of the most expensive localities, was a village in 2000? That the author never found a McDonald's or Wimpy or TGIF in 2000 (they are littered around) but she saw more elephants and snake charmers in her stay of a few years than I have seen in my entire lifetime in India.
3. Bollywood Anyone: Ms. Macdonald has a brush with quite a few stars of Bollywood. Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan definitely make an appearance in this book. Yaaaaaawn. Another formula?
2. Cribbing, cribbing and cribbing: I know traveling in India is not easy and people do not have the same idea about personal space and the infrastructure sucks. But, if even one single sight of this country fails to move you and you cannot pen in two lines positive about it till we get to the last 10 pages, I get bored.
I guess Ms. Macdonald should have gone to Disneyland after all, as she kept mentioning. It sounds more like her kind of place. She cannot see anything but 'red arsed mangy monkeys' everywhere. It seems we Indians drugged her and dragged her out of Austraila, instead of she coming out of her own sweet free will.
1. Religion, Religion and More Religion: More than half the book is about Ms. Macdonald's brush with one religion or the other, while her boyfriend roams the sub-continent on various assignments for Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
She is reluctant about religion initially, calls herself atheist and ends up at Kumb Mela ( a huge religious festival, held at the bank of the Ganges in the city of Allahabad). Then, she complaints that she found the place full of devotes and religious activities. What else will one find there? If you do not want religion, stay away from Kumbh like me! It is like saying I went to the Mall and found so many designer labels there!
Later, this self proclaimed atheist embarks on a tedious (to the reader) journey of discovering the various religions like, Hinduism, Islam, Sufis, Parsis, Buddhism etc etc etc.
Pick this one up at your own risk, don't tell me later that I didn't warn you.
A blog friend of mine how was recently in India from the US and have read this book had this to say about it:
"Hi Mridula,
While I was at the beach I read that book you had on here earlier: "Holy Cow." I kept wondering what had happened to all the mangy monkeys and rabid dogs she kept talking about and I never saw. It seemed like the book was just an exaggerated version of all the worst cliches about India. I'm glad I didn't read it before I went there!"
Recommended:
No
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mridula
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Location: India
Reviews written: 121
Trusted by: 166 members
About Me:
So Little Time, So Many Places to Visit!
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