Spirituality, with a side of artisanal coffee

Wavering between the scriptures and self-help platitudes, Namita Devidayal's book leaves the reader wishing they'd chosen a different book

- Somak Ghoshal

The writer's allusion to coffee in the book title becomes clear only later, when she decides to draw a line to her spiritual quest...

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Namita Devidayal’s new book bears thecryptictitle Tangerine: How to Read the Upanishads Without Giving up Coffee. Tangerine, it soon becomes apparent, isher preferred alternative to the ubiquitous “saffron”, which has become “tainted” by association with Hindutva politics.

The allusion to coffee becomes clear only much later, when Devidayal decides to drawa line to her spiritual quest. Contemplating the third stage of the Vedic ashram system, Vanaprastha—the forest stage—she declares: “I had no plans to head to the Himalayan foothills, where I wouldn't lasta day without my morning coffee, gluten-free bread andthe comforting chatter of my besties.”

Ifthis comment sounds fatuous, it’s part of the cultivated pitch with which Devidayal beginsher book. Tangerine is one part memoir and one part manual for the new-age spiritualist, or “the worldly renunciate,” as she describes herself. The author, estranged from her husband and single mother to their son, decides to put her “biases on mute” and embrace herselfas “an accidental spiritual archaeologist” in her middle years.

Since herson has flown the nest to study in the US, she can press pause and surrender herself to her calling—the study of “Hindu literature” (Devi-dayal’s words). Butshe is worried that her friends “would think I had turned right-wing or joined some creepy cult.” Still, she findsa guruin Neema Majmudar, teacher of Advaita Vedanta and follower of Ramana Maharshi, who famously inducted The Beatles into Eastern mysticism.