by Gita Mehta · Penguin · tapa blanda · ISBN 9780140236835
VAT included
Hamelyn quality guarantee · checked and verified, or your money back
«Karma Cola» is Gita Mehta's satirical essay on the clash between Eastern and Western cultures, published by Penguin in 1993 in paperback (193 pages, in English).
Mehta ironically analyses how Eastern mysticism was commercialised in the West and portrays Westerners who travelled to India in the 1970s in search of spiritual enlightenment. Through anecdotes and observations, she shows the misunderstandings, excesses and frauds of a phenomenon that turned spiritual tourism into a consumer product. The work includes her famous introduction about the letter from a young woman who ended up institutionalised after following a guru.
Work originally published in 1979, here in the 1993 Penguin India edition. The book's full subtitle is «Marketing the Mystic East».
Gita Mehta was an Indian-American writer and documentary filmmaker. As a journalist and documentary filmmaker she frequently covered war and conflict including covering the Bangladesh liberation war of 1971. As an author she published five books which were translated into 21 languages. Her works described aspects of life in India and were intended to interpret the country for a largely western audience.
