Fifty shades of tangerine

In a world divided between right and wrong, right and left, where centrism is seen as too neutral a ground, journalist and author Namita Devidayal’s new memoir stands apart in negotiating a fair ground for itself. It tells the story of an unexpected journey into Hindu philosophy during a period of personal turmoil.

- NEHA BHATT

Spurred by a chance encounter with a practitioner of Hindu spirituality in Ris-hikesh when melancholy had begun to set in during her 40s, Ms Devidayal found herself at an inflection point.

As her carefully curated life in Mumbai was coming apart, her marriage dissolving, everything she had worked to build — from Bombay to Princeton, back to the cozy comforts of Mumbai life — seemed to lose its sheen. Existential questions began to surface, and she found answers buried in Hindu scriptures. She started connecting the dots between experiences in her childhood, early adulthood, as a wife, mother, friend, journalist and musician. On her 50th birthday, quite in contrast to how her life had unfolded in the years before, she found herself on the banks of the Ganga, spending time in an ashram, “paying heed to this unusual stream of knowledge that flowed down through the centuries like the river.” She was, in her words, attempting to draw the map of her life.