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A review by bjr2022
Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam
4.0
Until I read Diane Barnes’s review of this book, I’d not been drawn to it. But Diane directly addressed my assumptions: that it was fluffy—a light read. She said it was a better book than she’d assumed it was.
The cover, cover blurb, and title seem to misrepresent it, conveying light fluffiness and fun, inevitably disappointing readers who want that and turning off those who want something substantive. But now that I’ve read and enjoyed this book, I understand the marketing conundrum. (More on that in a second.)
This is an easily readable, straight-forward account of a man, Professor Chandra, forced to admit his real feelings and soften his judgments in order to preserve the relationships with his beloved children. This is not inspired literary writing. It is occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, but as Jaline said in her review, “The story has humor but it definitely isn’t comic,” (so ignore the “searingly funny” cover blurb). The writing is almost simplistic in tone with dialogue that plays like the slow volley of a badminton game. For the longest time I thought it was a self-help book disguised as a novel—as Chandra negotiates a self-acceptance workshop at Esalen, gags at the psychobabble of his ex-wife’s shrink husband, and is aghast at the fantastically false teachings of his ambitious son—who calls himself doctor but has never earned the credential (Don’t get me started on lies of self-proclaimed gurus).
The territory of self-actualization workshops and the pervasiveness of group-think and group-talk among New Agers are familiar to me. But Chandra persists despite it because he is ready to change and rescue his family. Add to that the fact that he is so easy to identify with that I found myself working on myself as he worked on himself, and I finally concluded that the book is a secretly sophisticated “poke”—a nudge, a push, an invitation to think deeply and get underneath your own conditioning.
So back to the cover and the title: The title is accurate and right out of the text, representing the book’s tone. So too is the fluffy cover art. The problem is that although the book is conveyed simplistically, it is not at all simple. A dark literary cover would completely misrepresent it, as would a more poetic title, but you can only understand the cover art as a metaphor (joining the ocean of consciousness) after you’ve read the book. So how do you convey that this really simple-sounding story conveys an invitation to work on yourself and possibly contemplate things you’ve not dealt with? I have no idea, which leaves me reiterating Diane Barnes’s message: this book is much better than one might assume from its cosmetics.
The cover, cover blurb, and title seem to misrepresent it, conveying light fluffiness and fun, inevitably disappointing readers who want that and turning off those who want something substantive. But now that I’ve read and enjoyed this book, I understand the marketing conundrum. (More on that in a second.)
This is an easily readable, straight-forward account of a man, Professor Chandra, forced to admit his real feelings and soften his judgments in order to preserve the relationships with his beloved children. This is not inspired literary writing. It is occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, but as Jaline said in her review, “The story has humor but it definitely isn’t comic,” (so ignore the “searingly funny” cover blurb). The writing is almost simplistic in tone with dialogue that plays like the slow volley of a badminton game. For the longest time I thought it was a self-help book disguised as a novel—as Chandra negotiates a self-acceptance workshop at Esalen, gags at the psychobabble of his ex-wife’s shrink husband, and is aghast at the fantastically false teachings of his ambitious son—who calls himself doctor but has never earned the credential (Don’t get me started on lies of self-proclaimed gurus).
The territory of self-actualization workshops and the pervasiveness of group-think and group-talk among New Agers are familiar to me. But Chandra persists despite it because he is ready to change and rescue his family. Add to that the fact that he is so easy to identify with that I found myself working on myself as he worked on himself, and I finally concluded that the book is a secretly sophisticated “poke”—a nudge, a push, an invitation to think deeply and get underneath your own conditioning.
So back to the cover and the title: The title is accurate and right out of the text, representing the book’s tone. So too is the fluffy cover art. The problem is that although the book is conveyed simplistically, it is not at all simple. A dark literary cover would completely misrepresent it, as would a more poetic title, but you can only understand the cover art as a metaphor (joining the ocean of consciousness) after you’ve read the book. So how do you convey that this really simple-sounding story conveys an invitation to work on yourself and possibly contemplate things you’ve not dealt with? I have no idea, which leaves me reiterating Diane Barnes’s message: this book is much better than one might assume from its cosmetics.