A backseat drive to India

This part-travelogue part-memoir is an unusual tale of how a chronic backache forces the author to visit several countries including India.

Basically, ‘Bending Over Backwards’ by Carlo Pizzati is part-travelogue, part-memoir. The author is, suddenly and quite inexplicably, struck with a very inconvenient backache. It is the pain that leads the writer across various countries and cultish gatherings in search of a cure. And it is the backache, it seems, that eventually leads him to India. It is a familiar tale, one that has been told many times before, the quest for something that leads someone to India.

From this rather strange beginning, where a posturologist declares that the backache is connected to the patient’s teeth, the book takes the reader on unusual and often bizarre journeys. Chronic pain leads the author to try out many, and often, very extraordinary treatments. Instruments like the ‘Egogram’ are introduced that try to pry into the author’s thoughts. In Los Angeles, the author is connected to bracelets and a contraption called the Scientific Consciousness Interface Operating system, while the expert operating it harks back to an event that occurred in 1658.

More adventures and dancing follow in Cinque Terre. A host of New Age ideas are introduced. The author meets a shaman who uses a Kirlian camera, which claims to capture auras. In Vicenza, Italy, Pizzati meets the spiritual leader Ramana, who offers transcendental meditation.

You read a little about spirit animals and past life regression and repressed memories. All that as cures of backache seem way out there, but the practitioners of these techniques are apparently very convincing. They even find ghosts that show up in unusual X-ray-like contraptions.

It does get bewildering and you do get caught in the absolutely alien strangeness of it all.

Past to present

There are a whole lot of individuals in ‘Bending Over Backwards’ and the narrative shifts from past to present and back to the past — at times, it is a little hard to keep track of the timelines, or remember who’s who. The language is not overly complicated, however, and the book has a conversational style that could have used tighter editing. Somehow, the author discovers India and feels right at home. He visits ashrams with their exacting schedules and strict discipline and tries Ayurvedic treatments he is not used to.

There are many conversations in this book as people try to explain the philosophies they believe in. Several pages are devoted to what people think. Attempts are made to spiritualize the mundane. Different philosophical elements are explored, from the downright peculiar to those dealing with elevated consciousness. More people are introduced with comments on them, and the women get particular attention. There are a few romantic encounters as well peppered throughout the book.

The book appears to be targeted more at a Western audience than an Indian one. It does seem that ‘Bending Over Backwards’ could have been better collated. As it is, it is a series of anecdotes and incidents and a lot of what people believe presented as conversations. The time jumps are in particular a bit confusing as current events are interspersed with memories of older events that break the continuity of the text. The book is also written in the present tense, so better demarcations might have helped.

Too many conversations

It could have also benefited from a slight trimming of the huge cast of characters that are constantly introduced. For a book that is not very large, the minutiae are excessive. What these folks believe is interesting to read about — their unwavering faith in auras and spirit guides and past lives — nevertheless, they all seem to talk a lot. Some of those conversations could have been cut down, as they appear to serve as mere page fillers. The chapters beginning from a little after the middle towards the end, which describe the author’s escapades in India, are stretched out a little too much. Too many things happen. Too many conversations take place. Too much philosophy is introduced that reads like a raw transcript of an interview, the revelations of the Ayurvedic doctor being an example.

There is some spiritual self-awakening in there that almost gets lost in the narrative. There are moments of epiphany where visions become nearly as real as reality itself.

Overall, ‘Bending Over Backwards’ has an interesting theme — that of a quest in search for a cure for backache. The author’s encounters with diverse individuals with a range of beliefs and treatments are intriguing. All said and done, the book could have been better put together, the events better arranged. As stated before, the timelines get confusing, there is some repetition and the prose gets weak with too many conversations. Some images or photographs might have greatly enhanced the reading experience since the blurb does state that ‘Bending Over Backwards’ is a travelogue after all.