The Scent of India

This is an interesting little travel journal that sheds about as much light on the subject of India as the Italian author's background. There are bits of western-centric thinking throughout the book and it's hard in these hyper vigilant times to see past that. I'm not generally too upset by it, but it's rather noticeable in this particular book. However, if one can overcome that drawback and accept the book as something as a product of its time, then you see that Pasolini did enjoy his time in India and seems to recommend the trip. It probably focused too much on the poverty of India in a way that felt almost voyeuristic, as I think that a slum tour of Mumbai would do today. But like the slum tours, which provide the residents with income that would not come otherwise, the book is useful in that it shines a light on the subject of India. As we prepare to head there in April I'm glad to have read the book, though India's modernization in the past fifty years may see our trip as having a very different look to it than that of Pasolini's. However, I think that what Pasolini set out to do was to provide an impression of his trip and the fact that he focuses on the feel of the environment and the assault on the senses that India provides, it may be a very similar trip. "That smell of poor food and of corpses which in India is like the continuous powerful air current that gives one a kind of fever. And that odour which, little by little, becomes an almost living physical entity, seems to interrupt the normal course of life in the body of the Indians. Its breath, attacking those little bodies covered in their light and filthy linen, seems to corrode them, forcing itself to sprout, to reach a human embodiment" (Pasolini, 51). In this short passage you see the observations that seem to cement his view of India as being dirty and poor and the environment being the natural conditions to produce a dirty and poor society. But, you also get the feeling of the overwhelming power of the land and his recognition of its power. Overall it was a good read and I'm not upset for having discovered Pasolini by mistake in a dollar bin at a book store.