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Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure | 
 enlarge | Author: Sarah Macdonald
Publisher: Broadway
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $1.63
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Rating:  98 reviews
Sales Rank: 17834
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0767915747
Dewey Decimal Number: 954.56052092
EAN: 9780767915748
ASIN: 0767915747
Publication Date: April 13, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In her twenties, journalist Sarah Macdonald backpacked around India and came away with a lasting impression of heat, pollution and poverty. So when an airport beggar read her palm and told her she would return to India—and for love—she screamed, “Never!” and gave the country, and him, the finger.
But eleven years later, the prophecy comes true. When the love of Sarah’s life is posted to India, she quits her dream job to move to the most polluted city on earth, New Delhi. For Sarah this seems like the ultimate sacrifice for love, and it almost kills her, literally. Just settled, she falls dangerously ill with double pneumonia, an experience that compels her to face some serious questions about her own fragile mortality and inner spiritual void. “I must find peace in the only place possible in India,” she concludes. “Within.” Thus begins her journey of discovery through India in search of the meaning of life and death.
Holy Cow is Macdonald’s often hilarious chronicle of her adventures in a land of chaos and contradiction, of encounters with Hinduism, Islam and Jainism, Sufis, Sikhs, Parsis and Christians and a kaleidoscope of yogis, swamis and Bollywood stars. From spiritual retreats and crumbling nirvanas to war zones and New Delhi nightclubs, it is a journey that only a woman on a mission to save her soul, her love life—and her sanity—can survive.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 93 more reviews...
 A Selfish Woman's Selfish View of India & Search For Self October 26, 2008
I have to admit that I decided to read this book because it has a great cover. I should have peeked a bit inside, though, because the cliched chapter titles would have kept me away: Insane in the Membrane, Birds of a Feather Become Extinct Together, etc.
Basically, this is the memoir of a selfish Australian woman's year in India. She sees India as a filthy place full of disgusting people with intolerable cultural habits. And she spends her free time (while her husband is working in other cities or countries on news stories) traveling around India in search of religion. She seems to have a disdain for religion at the same time she seeks out religious celebrities and empty religious experiences.
Perhaps I have negative feelings about the author's view of India because, when I was in India, all I felt was compassion and sadness for the poor around me. What type of person sees poverty and is disgusted by it? I guess it's this type of selfishness that also keeps her from giving a face and a personality to her husband in her writings.
 Travels in the Future October 12, 2008
India is our future - as the youngest, biggest, and increasingly smartest society on earth the way India goes will lead us all. So much I read on India is about macro forces....this book gives an on the ground view from a slightly wacky but always hilarious explorer from Australia. At this point in my life I can't pick up and travel around India...so this book is the next best thing.
Exaggerated Satirical Whining September 24, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I picked this book because the front cover looked colorful (read funky) and the review on the back said it was hilarious account an Ozzie's journey.
Sarah definitely has a flair for humor, but unfortunately wastes all her talent making satirical remarks. She is too inflexible to adjust to anything different from her cozy comfortable life in Sydney. So she completely failed to enjoy the enthusiasm and vibrancy of the country and could only see the poverty, population, pollution and garbage. It is not that those things do not exist or that no one should write a book about them, but this book could have been a lot more enjoyable without Sarah McDonald's constant whining.
 Terrorists Don't Meditate For Peace September 15, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Sarah Macdonalds Holy Cow was generally an enjoyable read particularly as she reported her experience with
her spiritual journey and the adventures she encountered. Her descriptions of the events, people and environment were colorful, witty and powerful. I thought that she ran into trouble when she gave her commentary on the aftermath of 9/11. She took a decidedly naive opinion as she expressed disappointment that the US reactions was not that of "forgiveness and compassion". She also some unflattering remarks about
President Bush referring to him as the cowboy in the White House. Perhaps Sarah would have preferred that the President first conferred with one of her swamis before he decided to take action.
Escaping First Impressions September 10, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Sarah Macdonald, author of Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure, starts out her book describing how she hated living in India and would much prefer to return to her native Australia. But then, after discovering India below the surface, the authorfalls in love with the country.
The value of Holy Cow, then, is that it takes the reader beyond the first impressions most tourists see and smell to the richness and greatness India offers to those who make an effort to discover this hard-to-get-acquainted-with country.
Macdonald has produced a refreshing and fascinating travelogue on India. But her book also is a memoir offering up a Westerner's perspective on an Eastern culture that is hard to come to grips with without effort. Her discovery of religion in India took her beyond Buddhism and Hinduism to the spiritual lives of the Jains, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jews and Parsees.
While some Indians may find the book and its cover offensive, Holy Cow's humor is affectionate and not uppity. In my trips to India, I see the title selling freely and displayed prominently at bookstores.
MacDonald makes an observation that I also embrace -- "India is beyond statement, for anything you say, the opposite is also true." The author also stands as a good example of the fact that you cannot travel to India and spend much time there without being personally changed in significant ways.
By Gunjan Bagla
Author of Doing Business in 21st Century India
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