''Karma Cola'' is a non-fiction book about India written by

Gita Mehta Gita Mehta (née Patnaik; born 1943) is an Indian writer and documentary filmmaker. Biography Born in Delhi into a well-known Odia people, Odia family, she is the daughter of Biju Patnaik, an Indian Independence Movement, Indian independence ac ...

originally published in 1979 by

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publ ...

Subject matter

The story begins in the late '60s, when hundreds of thousands of

Westerners The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania.

descended upon India, disciples of a cultural revolution that proclaimed that the magic and mystery missing from their lives was to be found in the

East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fa ...

. An Indian writer who has also lived in England and the United States, Gita Mehta observed the spectacle of European and American "pilgrims" interacting with their hosts, and recorded her observations in ''Karma Cola''. It describes the

tradition A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...

s of an ancient and long-lived society being turned into

commodities In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a comm ...

and sold to those who don't understand them.

Editions

Reprints include:

References

{{Reflist Indian non-fiction books Indian literature in English Books about India 1979 non-fiction books Books about spirituality 20th-century Indian books