The Smile of Murugan: A South Indian Journey

It is always reassuring to see positive reviews (overwhelmingly positive, actually) from the people that and author is writing about - in this case the people of Tamil Nadu, in southern India.

It is obvious from the outset that the author has genuine affection for his lose friends, and in general the people and the culture of Tamil Nadu. The book draws on the positive, and is written from the perspective of a non-Hindu. Michael Wood is a historian and has written many books, but this one seems to come from a more personal level.

While in Tamil Nadu, with his girlfriend of the time, Wood meets Mala and her family. This begins a long friendship. At the same time he visits a Hindu astrologer, who tells him he will have two daughters, and that he will complete a pilgrimage. He is then given an extensive list of pilgrimage sites he will visit, all around Souther India.

The bulk of this book covers that journey, undertaken with (or under the guidance of) Mala. Loosely it is taken on a bus, in an organised fashion (the Video Bus, so named for the Tamil movies on continuous play). At some point some 30 or so locations into the pilgrimage I zoned out a little. They inevitably became a bit repetitive, and while they were all described in detail in order to demonstrate that they differed, it wasn't by enough. More interesting were the minor interactions with various people during his travels.

A noted above, Wood isn't Hindu, and was exposed in depth to the lifestyle and process of a genuine pilgrimage, so writes from a position of experience, as describes in great detail. If this level of detail about this topic is interesting to you as a reader, no doubt it is an excellent book. For me, it was good, and it was interesting, but I needed less repetition and more side-stories to keep me enthralled.

Published in 1995, it would be interesting to understand the difference now, twenty years later.

A solid 3 stars.