Unbearable India
For most people, India means excitement, exotic food, historical monuments, ancient folklore and, most of all, adventure. Many would pounce on the chance of visiting India - even be eager to live there for a while. Not Jenny Feldon.
A New Yorker through and through, Feldon says she never wanted to trade the dusty, traffic-snarled familiarity of the Big Apple for the dusty, traffic-snarled unknown of Hyderabad, even for just two years.
But when her husband Jay gets the call to set up a department in the South Indian behemoth, Feldon gives up her career and decides to follow her yoga and blogging dreams.
Incredible India quickly bends her out of shape in ways she had never imagined.
Who knew that the coffee shops don’t take American Express? Not Feldon, whose roller-coaster introduction to Hyderabad also has her screaming with fright on her first rickshaw ride, then getting closely acquainted with a toilet bowl right after a restaurant meal.
Behind the humour, it’s plain that Feldon and India are not getting along.
The loneliness, fear and frustration of expat life suck her down a path of depression and into fits of rage at Jay.
He eventually packs her back off to New York with dark mutterings of “divorce”. The threat stings Feldon. With a new resolve to become a better wife and not run India down continually, she gives in, hiring staff to help with household chores and making a friend in Anjali, a fan of her blog. She restarts yoga, tries her first ever mango, does a bit of volunteer work and even jigs Bollywood style with the orphans she helps look after.
Though “Karma Gone Bad” is an interesting insight into expat life in Asia, the bulk of it reads like a list of complaints about everything that’s wrong with India.
But Feldon has the gift of drawing readers in and getting them rooting for this fish out of water’s clumsy attempts to adapt to life in a strange cultural landscape.
The verdict: Serious travellers (backpackers with no qualms about eating street food) best avoid this book. But armchair adventurers who enjoy the guilty pleasure of easy reading laced with pop psychology will get a kick out of “Karma Gone Bad”.
Karma Gone Bad: How I Learned To Love Mangos, Bollywood and Water Buffalo
By Jenny Feldon
Published by Sourcebooks
Available at good bookshops, Bt522
Reviewed by Sharil Dewa
