In light of India

A collection of youthful letters from her year in the country hints at the ideas that eventually shape Wendy Doniger's research and prolific writing

It would take a lifetime and several books for most people to pack the memories that Wendy Doniger does in 33 letters and a year in India. But then Doniger is not most people and she never travels light.

This book is a collection of letters from when she was just 22 years old (1963-64), a year that she spent in India as a research student. Descriptive and detailed, the letters are all addressed to her parents and they read, in part, like private entries in a personal diary and in bits, like the field notes of a diligent researcher. The style is conversational, which makes the book eminently readable and a breeze-through.

The book does not stick to a theme; the only thread pulling it together is the year that Doniger spent in India. So, she could be writing about the erotic sculptures of ancient Indian temples in the same breath as she could be telling her parents about the menacing mosquitoes of Santiniketan and their deadly sting. She packs an assortment of experiences and characters into her letters, from clambering into packed train compartments through the window to meeting sarod player Ali Akbar Khan and attending his shows, there is nothing Doniger does not write home about.

She routinely uses familiar metaphors, family jokes, folk songs and movies to help her parents get under the skin of a country that they know little about. Nothing escapes her notice and she is also quick to bring it to the attention of her parents, eager to contextualise her experiences for them. Writing from Santiniketan, she describes an impromptu session by the boys in Kala Bhavan where they sang parodies of Tagore songs. Doing so in the school that Tagore founded was sacrilegious and, as she explains, the equivalent of jazzing up Hail Marys in a monastery.

Her attempt to break things down simply adds a charming layer of intimacy to the book. The reader gets the feeling that she is the only one in the room with Doniger, who is delighted for the company. The letters reveal a young writer’s mind — observant and soaking everything like a sponge — and offer a first look at the style that will become the Doniger trademark in her books and other writings: Wit laced with self-deprecatory humour. The letters also hold the light over ideas that will eventually shape her research and power her prolific writing.

For example, in a letter written from Santiniketan (dated September 15, 1963), she writes about being taken in by the sculpture of a horse that she came across during one of her walks. Carved into the side of a clay thatched hut, the bas-relief of a horse, she wrote, resembled the T’ang horses in gallop and its style was somewhat like the Picasso bulls; “altogether, one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen”. Decades later, her impression of the horse and the description made its way into her book Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares, published in 2021.

In another letter she writes about the hypocritical attitudes that many Indians have towards sex (a country that boasts of the Kamasutra and will soon be the most populous in the world, is inexplicably skittish about what goes on inside the bedroom). She notices a strong tie between ideas about extreme chastity and extreme eroticism, telling her parents that the two are just the two sides of the same coin. Out of this clutter of thoughts and observations emerged her PhD dissertation on Ascetism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Shiva for Harvard and her first book, The Erotic Ascetic.

Doniger writes in her preface that the letters give the reader (and herself) an idea of the kind of person she was at the time. Innocent, eager to experience new things and a person of privilege. This may have led to some thoughtless mentions of the luxurious life back home and the scale of poverty in India which may seem misplaced and gauche today, but this is just who she was at the time.

It is not just the poverty, but also the heat, the dirt and the lack of basic facilities that made her uncomfortable and homesick. Even so, her wonder and joy at all that she saw around her never waned. The letters indicate a deep infatuation for all things Indian that rapidly grew into an all-encompassing love for the country.

In one of her letters, she signs off with a flourish of “thank yous”. Thank you for the whole wheat bread that helped her stomach the Indian monsoon with no major problems. Thank you for E M Forster’s A Passage to India that had kindled the desire to see the country. And thank you for letting her study Sanskrit when no one in America knew whether it was a vegetable or an Egyptian king.

Her love for the language (Sanskrit) and the country has endured. Despite the book bans and death threats and the fact that she has never made it back to Kolkata and Santiniketan, Doniger still spends considerable time researching and writing about Indian mythology and culture. What keeps her engaged? This book is a good place to start looking for an answer.

An American Girl in India: Letters and recollections 1963-64

Author: Wendy Doniger

Publisher: Speaking Tiger

Pages: 252

Price: Rs 699