“To be in India is to experience India. It’s not that you have to go find it. It’s all right there,” she says.
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, and Julia Roberts were on the Oprah show to promote the upcoming movie. Do you agree with the director, Ryan?
“I think it’s more than a book. I think it’s a movement, and I think it’s so personal to so many people,” he says. “It was to me. I was a fan, like Julia was, before it came into our lives.”
Liz also shares, “One of the great teachings that I learned in India is that silence is the only true religion.” So what about all the noise from the “EPL marketing machine” as Yoga Dork calls it?
In “Are you experienced?”, Sirensongs quips that the book will release a torrent of tourists unprepared for the experience.
With the release of the Eat Pray Love (or is it Eat Love Pray?) major motion picture (“The amazing adventure of a middle-class white woman who talked her publisher into bankrolling a scripted adventure”), India-tripping is set to become a middle-class fad for the first time since the days of the 70s Overland Chapatti Express. Except this time, instead of tie-dyed trippies, it will be mani-pedi suburban women seeking “adventure.”
She compiles a humorous list of ignorant questions that first-time travellers pose. Yet while her tone seems derogatory towards the potential newcomers, I would prefer to see it as an opportunity for many different kinds of women to be exposed to India where they might never have even thought about it before.
I followed some of the conversations on the EPL Facebook page, and of course there were plenty of disagreements between the conservative Christians and others. And plenty of misinterpretations about yoga, Buddhism, meditation.
Nonetheless, if the book opens some women up to India, so much the better. It would take courage for anyone to come and visit, with or without mani-pedi.
Related posts:
