Reviews of the latest books from and on Southasia

A Taste of Life: The last days of U.G. Krishnamurti
by Mahesh Bhatt
Penguin, 2009

Few deaths are worth writing much about; the actual event is generally utilised by memorialisers simply as a peg by which to talk about the far more important issue – the life itself. More so when the one doing the dying is that great anti-guru U G Krishnamurti, he who believed in little (supposedly) and depended on even less (purportedly). Yet an account of the final days of any spiritually enlightened being seems a sure-fire shortcut to embellished hagiography, especially if the account is written by a self-proclaimed follower. But while Bhatt, the filmmaker, is indeed another follower (despite his mild protestations to the contrary), he was also specifically appointed by the notoriously prickly U G to 'oversee' his death, in 2007.

But "death takes a long time to come," Bhatt writes, and so we come to see something of a last lesson unfolding around Krishnamurti. Slowly expiring (he refuses any medical intervention) in a grand (rented) villa on the Mediterranean coast, Krishnamurti's followers and friends and relatives slowly begin arriving from around the world. The resulting mishmash of personalities, all living a sudden communal lifestyle surrounding a dying man, leads to some truly touching collective reactions, at once irreverent (as per U G) and reverential (as per those gathered).