Rating: 
Summary: Has nice lyrical passages but weak in history
Review: Paz's comments on Indian literature are eminently enjoyable. His commentary of ancient sanskrit poetry is very entertaining. His opinions on politics and nationalism seem to indicate prejudices formed from other Western interpretations of India. A country which may have some amusing aspects, but which is by and large populated by the ignorant and the poor. And if at all there is anything good in India, it must have come from Europe. Paz too recites the same idiocies. Gandhi is portrayed more as a product of Western thought, than of Indian philosophy. While Indian nationalists are likened to religious fanatics, Tamils (of whom I am one), Paz says, "are separatists." The only thing I would like to be separate from are such pathetically ignorant statements. Misinformed commentaries on the Gita can be classified into two --- those that insult the reader's intelligence and those that reflect the writer's ignorance. Paz's comments on the Gita probably fall in the latter category. While he accepts Krishna's words that the Self neither kills nor dies, he seems to worry about the "suffering" that war brings. Paz seems unable to comprehend that the Self which cannot die or kill can also not suffer. Gita is about "save himself, not how to save others" for Paz, because he fails to see the underlying Advaita. It is surprising that someone as perceptive as Paz missed the point about how "himself" and "others" are really the same.
Rating:
Summary: An amusing but miguided adventure.
Review: Paz's comments on Indian literature are eminently enjoyable. His commentary of ancient sanskrit poetry is very entertaining. His opinions on politics and nationalism seem to indicate prejudices formed from other Western interpretations of India. A country which may have some amusing aspects, but which is by and large populated by the ignorant and the poor. And if at all there is anything good in India, it must have come from Europe. Paz too recites the same idiocies. Gandhi is portrayed more as a product of Western thought, than of Indian philosophy. While Indian nationalists are likened to religious fanatics, Tamils (of whom I am one), Paz says, "are separatists." The only thing I would like to be separate from are such pathetically ignorant statements. Misinformed commentaries on the Gita can be classified into two --- those that insult the reader's intelligence and those that reflect the writer's ignorance. Paz's comments on the Gita probably fall in the latter category. While he accepts Krishna's words that the Self neither kills nor dies, he seems to worry about the "suffering" that war brings. Paz seems unable to comprehend that the Self which cannot die or kill can also not suffer. Gita is about "save himself, not how to save others" for Paz, because he fails to see the underlying Advaita. It is surprising that someone as perceptive as Paz missed the point about how "himself" and "others" are really the same.
Rating: 
Summary: In Light of India: A Reverent, Thoughtful "Adios"
Review: Paz's technical, highly informative swan song, as he wound down his amabassadorial stint, is at once distant, respectful...and oddly wistful. One can picture him, gazing contemplatively out of the window, as his train wisks him through the Indian countryside, his elbow on the sill, head in hand...A rather grand, respecful Goodbye, with just a hint of saddness and yearning...which is what this book represents. Paz's envious, strangely misplaced attempts to compare his native Mexico to the country-of-his-dreams (India) seem a bit desperate and even clumsy at times. One could sense Paz's wish: "If only my Mexico were as majestic, grand and enigmatic..." Or atleast had as many software startups per capita. Perhap's Paz will convert to Hinduism by his 85th birthday. An informative, (too) reverent, but decent piece of work...Almost has the mood and (deliberate) distance of Langston Hughes' "Big Sea", but far more exacting, patient and academic in its use of the english language and (again) far more technical...A lot of starch in this one. A worthy edition to one's own library - or to Paz's works, in general. SP
Rating:
Summary: Has nice lyrical passages but weak in history
Review: Starts off very well with the account of Paz's first visit to India. But I was shocked at his defence of the colonial history of Mexico when he makes comparisons between India and his native country. His understanding of Indian history is rather shallow. Paz was a good poet but no historian.
Rating:
Summary: In search of India -- through the lens of a Mexican poet
Review: This book is an odd medley of genres and has a distinct "entre deux mondes" quality. It briefly starts as a travelogue, as Octavio Paz, describes his sea journey during the 1950s from his diplomatic posting at the Mexican Embassy in Paris to his first assignment in India where he would later return, in the 1960s, as Mexican ambassador. In many ways, I enjoyed these thirty odd first pages, replete with images from the crossing of the Suez Canal to the docks of Bombay and over rail tracks to Delhi, much more than the rest of the book. The bulk of the book is an impressionistic, enigmatic, and often confusing essay on Indian society, religion, castes, languages,and cosmology. Many of these difficult topics are treated too superficially for this book to be a serious historical or sociological analysis of India. While not the central thrust of this book, comparisons between Indian and Mexican history become inevitable as, for example, when Paz considers different outcomes from what he sees as a common experience in Mexico and India of an indigenous polytheistic culture colliding with an invading monotheistic faith. Or when he analyzes the impact of what he sees as two secular institutions supposedly brought to India and Mexico by colonizing forces - the civil service and army. It is rare for two important, but spatially and historically distant civilizations, to be analyzed next to each other in such a personal way. The reader will not escape a sense of forced comparisons by the author of very different historical and social settings. But the author does not claim rigor in his analysis of India, acknowledging that "this is not a systematic study, but a more or less ordered gathering of the reflections, impressions, and objections that India provoked in me." For the reader who can view these impressions of India from a Mexican diplomat and Nobel laureate in literature on a less obvious level, this self-conscious disavowal of profound insight into India makes the book intriguing. The author may shed less light on India than he does on his native Mexico,or Latin America, more generally. Perhaps, this is his real intention. The final pages return to the biographical style at the beginning of the book, giving glimpses into how Octavio Paz historically situates demands for political reforms which were emerging in Mexico in the late 1960s, from his vantage point in India. Ultimately, these political convulsions in Mexico, notably the student riots, culminate in his resignation as a representative of the Mexican Government in India. "I decided I could no longer represent a government that was operating in a manner so clearly opposite to my way of thinking." Readers of his classic on Mexican society "The Labyrinth of Solitude" will sense echoes in "Light of India" which Octavio Paz concludes with a short and tender poetic swan song to his diplomatic assignment in India, invoking the Hindu deities Shiva and Parvati.
| 
