The Rope in the Water

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"At Kovalam beach on India’s southwestern shore I plunge into the Arabian Sea, the same soft temperature as the air…Looking shoreward, I see lifeguards gesturing. Since I’m much fu rther than I imagined, I begin a determined swim toward them…The lifeguards continue to blast and gesture, but I’m powerless against the riptide irresistibly sweeping me out to sea. Though my situation appears hopeless, I’m about to undergo the most remarkable and mysterious event of my life…." So begins The Rope in the Water, the story of Sylvia Fraser’s three-month pilgrimage to India in search of "something larger than myself, something deeper, something more." Travelling 12,000 kilometers across deserts and through jungles, Fraser visits sacred sites such as the twilight city of Varanasi on the Ganges, dense with the smoke of hundreds of funeral pyres; north to the glittering Golden Temple of the Sikhs; up Mount Abu where she stays with a Hindu sect called the Brahma Kumaris; south to a Buddhist retreat where she meditates eleven hours a day for ten days while observing a vow of silence; and to the Kovalam beach where her life is saved by a miracle. Fraser brings alive the sense-luscious tapestry of India, from its fluorescent seas of turbans and flowing robes, to the cerulean alleyways and the hot crush of urban bazaars, while exploring Eastern concepts such as "You create your own future" and "Change yourself and you change everything." Humourous and intelligent, The Rope in the Water is an uplifting yet earthbound literary odyssey for all those interested in the physical and philosophical worlds beyond their own. Show more