Customer Reviews
A Fine Balance - By: Tagesmann, 06 Dec 2007 
I bought this book by mistake. I don't mean that I didn't intend to buy it; but that it turned out to be a very different book than the one I thought I was buying.
When I read the back cover I thought I new what the book was going to be about. Then when I read the inside of the dust jacket I realised I had been wrong & that the book was going to be about something completely different. Then I read the book.
This book is about balance. In it Mark Tully explores & discusses a number of issues that are of importance to usin the West as well asin his adopted country. In a rambling, loosely structured but well-written & easy to read way Mark Tully discusses religion, economics & politics.
He describes his Christian upbringing & India's pluralism. He discusses market capitalism & centrally managed economies. And he discusses the impacts that politics have had on these.
In a rambling (in a good way), loosely structured but well written & easy to read book; Mark Tully explores: Christianity, pluralism, the decline of the churchin Ireland, fundamentalist secularism, faithin progress, sex, love, market economies, globalisation, Hinduism, Islam, business culture, nationalisation, humility & arrogance.
Although, or perhaps because this book covers so many subjects; it does not & cannot explore themin any depth but it is a fascinating introduction to them & has made me want to discuss & explore further.
As I said (or rather as the author said) this book is about balance; about finding a balance between views & beliefs. The fact that it does so - or starts to do so for this reader - is a testament to a very deeply felt beliefin balance.
no full stops... - By: A. Singh, 17 Nov 2007 
...was a fabulous book but unfortunately this does not match the same standard. thankfully i did not buy this book but read most of itin waterstones.
yawn yawn yawn,.... Tully spends so much time just talking about himself.
Mark Tully's personal journey... - By: Aditya, 19 Sep 2007 Most Indians & Indophiles are familiar with Mark Tully, who worked for long out of Delhi as BBC's correspondent. In the process, he fellin love with the country, & ended up settling downin India permanently.
This book is a kind of personal journey for him. The narrative is rather tentative, & covers a lot of ground. He weaves back & forth between UK & India, & offers quite a few valuable insights about religion, politics & culture of the two countries. UK is not treated independently, but more as a kind of foil to India. The book's 11 chapters are placedin various towns that he visited, which also serve as a kind of cultural emblem for what he is going to talk aboutin a particular chapter.
He also shares a lot of personal details, his trials, tribulations, anecdotes & triumphs. Being a journalist with a highly respected Channel, he had access to almost everyonein India. It goes without saying that his narrative is very sympathetic to Indian culture & the 'Indian way of dong things'. However, it is also reasonably balanced, so that it does not become a gushing, sentimental kind of nonsense about how great everything about India is.
Some of his comments are quite perceptive - for instance, about how India always tries to find a balance between extremes, a middle (middling?) way of doing things. He believes this is one of India's keys to longevity as a civilization.
Well, he is certainly right that this search for a balance, of avoiding the extremes, is almost an unwritten, unbreakable lawin India. My late father often used to say 'ati sarvatha varjayet' - excess is to be avoided always / everywhere. And this philosophy gradually worked its way into my conscience, so that now the extreme option is always automatically renouncedin favor of the moderate one.
In fact,in India, the term 'extremist' is often used as a political pejorative & is more popular than fundamentalist or terrorist, though it includes both these categories as well. Similarly, 'atyachar' which literally means 'extreme behaviour' is used to signify inhuman behaviour.
This is a book you can soak into. However, it will not make a conscious, discernible impact on you. The book is too wispy for that, too much like a mild fragrance, one of those extremely expensive perfumes, which only leave behind a tantalizing suggestion. I read it only last month, & already I have forgotten what were the key points that Tully made. Perhaps he didn't make any at all. May be he made many. He doesn't try to convince you or sell you his viewpoint - he merely shares his views. And that does really mean that he has become more Indian than many of us (see for example, Amartya Sen's The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture & Identity).
The hardcover edition issued by Rider (Random House group) has been printed & boundin India. The book is fairly easy to carry, & easier to read, because of good paper & printing. Of course, Tully's light, conversational style adds to the ease of reading.
Allin all, an enjoyable, readable book - much more perceptive & interesting than his previous Indiain Slow Motion (Indiain Slow Motion), which was more task-oriented.
Pass the Sick Bag, Alice - By: millicentlyd, 16 Sep 2007 
How can anyone stomach anything written by that unctious near-bigamist, Tully? His own morality just getsin the way of anything he might want to tell us about any religion. This is a sure case of how extraneous biographical material can getin the way of the content of text. I am listening to his gross religious programme as I type this. "Oh God have mercy". "Give me a friend, a lover,in whom I might see the bliss of . . " whatever . . never mind what the wife backin London has to put up with.
Going native, and how! - By: S. Yogendra, 08 May 2007 It might be a bit much - & hubristic - to suggest that Mark Tully - who is close to my father's age - & I swapped countries, but I wish all immigrants would go nativein the way he has done, while maintaining a great deal of objectivity & sensitivity towards the complex & evolving landscape of India, where he has spent over 3 decades.
Bornin India, Mark Tully was brought up with an English nanny so he would 'not go native', but how his parents might react to the Mark Tully, who makes his homein India & by all counts, speaks Hindi well, now is anybody's guess.
Before I say anything about the book, I must confess my partiality to Mark Tully: I grew up with his spoken word as a child listening to the BBC &in my adult years, I have read much of his written word. His style is lucid, his argument clear & his language highly accessible. That applies to his books I have reviewed earlier & to this one.
This book, his latest, focuses on the pluralistic traditionin Indian & Hindu philosophy by weaving an autobiographical story encompassing his days as a boy at Marlborough, then at Cambridge & Lincoln, & his experiencesin India. He nods to Amartya Sen's book on the argumentative & discursive traditionin India, but adds a layer of his own experiencein faith. Ah, faith, that word! It is almost taboo to discuss God & faithin a scientism & commercialism focused time such as ours. But Tully does discuss it & is not afraid to discuss how his life was shaped by his experiencesin absolutist traditions of Marlborough, his doubts during his theological training, his constant questioning & his observation of the possibility that no one absolute truth exists (in religion asin life), & his experience of India.
The narrative goes back & forthin time but sometimes those flash-backs are the best method for presenting a story (in Indian mythology, the term is 'dant katha', an explanatory story which digresses from the main plot but enriches it by imbuing it with meaning & context). He starts with how the book was 'born' definitivelyin Puri where he had had many a vacationin his childhood, recalls his absolutist studentship at Marlborough, touches on Delhi & what makes it tick, travels to Raipur & how a singularity-themed Hindutva tradition betrays the pluralism & all-embracing evolution of Hindu philosophy. He describes how Cambridge's tradition of teaching to think changed him tremendously, esp coming as it did after Marlborough & the Armed Forces. He touches upon ancient & modernist interpretations of sexualityin religion bothin Christian & Hindu societies. All through, the prose is refreshingin that it is not politically correct but it is not deliberately offensive either - a tough balance for even for inclusive liberals with a social conscience & political awareness.
Mark Tully is one of the rare persons who are decorated with the highest of civilian honours bothin the UK &in India. And well-deservedly too. I do not know of many other writers capable of quoting both St Ignatius's prayer & the Bhagwadgitain his prose; nor do I know of many others who understand the nuanced evolution of every religionin secular India (for more on Indian interpretation, I recommend Ed Luce's 'In spite of the Gods')in ways that make them uniquely Indianin good ways & bad; he quotes RC Zaehner with as much ease as he does Dr S Radhakrishnan, one of India's Presidents, who had earlier headed up a departmentin religious studies at Oxford; none of his arguments misses being framedin the context of a modern India which is searching for an identity that satisfies all its facets.
If, by the time I am nearing 70, I could write an equally sensitive & nuanced book on Great Britain, I might make the claim of having swapped places with him. For now, I recommend strongly this book to those who wish to comprehend India & its paradoxes, as a valuable contribution. Now on my next trip, I really must try & meet him...
I highly recommend the book, & would strongly suggest you do not miss his reading list at the back for some excellent books he has referred.
Some flags for:in some places, he uses liberally some termsin the book without an explanation e.g.in the first chapter, Sahib & Memsahib (sort of a spoken term to address an English person & his wife for whom 'Madam Sahib' becomes Memsahib), Kartik Purnima (full moonin the month of Kartikin one of the Hindu calendars). You can find the meanings of those terms easily using Google so please do not get disappointed.
