An Indian Odyssey

by Martin Buckley (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $4.23

  Myth, travelogue and holy writ, the Ramayana - the Journey of Rama - is India's best-loved book, an inspiration to schoolchildren, monks and movie-makers. It's one of the world's great epic tales, yet is largely unread in the Western world. The story of a man searching savage jungles for his kidnapped wife, the Ramayana combines Heart of Darkness with the Odyssey . And bizarrely, this violent and erotic account of a war between light and dark is at the heart of the fiercest controversy in contemporary Indian politics - one that has claimed over 10,000 lives. When Martin Buckley first encountered the Ramayana twenty-five years ago, it became a guide to the complexities of Indian life. Here, he fulfills a dream - to retrace the route of Rama from his birthplace in north India to the climax of his confrontation with evil in Sri Lanka.In doing so, Buckley finds that the epic is as much a key to understanding India today as it was 3,000 years ago. Some historians have recast the fight between the hero and a race of dark-skinned demons as a colonial war, waged by Aryan invaders against indigenous Indians. Incredibly, it is echoed today in the brutal civil war being fought in the jungles of Sri Lanka. At the same time, the God-King Rama inspires spiritual devotions of a kind almost unimaginable in the West. An Indian Odyssey is the story of an adventurous and sometimes perilous passage through India by motorbike, microlight, bus and train. In the course of his own odyssey - physical and spiritual - Buckley witnesses death on the chaotic Great Trunk Road and passes through a war zone in Sri Lanka where bicycle bombs are the weapon of choice. A cast of mystics and Marxists, idealists and cynics - Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist - lays out the rich fabric of contemporary India and Sri Lanka, illuminated by the remarkable story of their past - and the quest of a man to rescue the woman he loves.

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.42

  The Ramayana - the Journey of Rama - is India's best-loved book, an inspiration to school-children, monks and moviemakers, yet it is virtually unknown in the Western world. The story of Rama, an exiled prince searching savage jungles for his kidnapped wife, it mixes Homer's Odyssey with Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It is an ancient epic, at once violent, spiritual and erotic. Yet it also lies at the heart of India's fiercest modern controversy, the Hindu-Muslim clash that has claimed 13,000 lives since 1992. When Martin Buckley first encountered the Ramayana twenty-five-years ago, it seemed a key to unlocking the myriad mysteries of Indian life. He dreamed of retracing the journey of the blue-skinned warrior god from his birthplace in North India to the climax of his confrontation with evil in Sri Lanka. Buckley's own physical and spiritual odyssey, a sometimes perilous passage through India by motorbike, microlight, bus and train, offers unique and passionate insights into the heart of India - ancient and modern.