Wendy Doniger is a scholar of Hinduism at the University of Chicago. She frequently throws a few religious texts from India on her couch, and psychoanalyzes their content. I guess she had trouble getting straight answers out of the Gita, and couldn’t help concluding that the “the Gita is a dishonest book.” A friend once told me about conclusions drawn by people who interpret movies revealing more about themselves than the movie. Not that this has any relevance in this context — that was about movies, and we are talking books — but I just thought I’d throw it out here.
So now, Wendy decides to write a book and the New York Times reviews it. From the review, I could gather three important things:
1) The book seems to have a lot of sex in it.
2) The book was written by Wendy Doniger, who was (gasp) criticized for her views on Hinduism.
3) Wendy’s photo on the jacket is cool. Very sensuous. And because she used an old photo of her on the jacket, Wendy is incurably playful. There was so much wry humor in that photo.
How could I not go out and buy the book?
Manish Vij writes wonderfully about this at Sepia Mutiny.
Boy, am I light on my feet today or what.
