MASALA MALA: POEMS FROM INDIA

About the Book

      This collection of poems was written within the maelstrom of India, and conveys the tastes, textures, and feel of the subcontinent.  Here is the ancient, complex, and modern civilization with its heat, dust, kaleidoscope of saris, litter, packed trains, caparisoned elephants, moonlit nights, Mosques, Temples, Churches, Synagogues, and Meditation Centers, beggars, computer scientists, beaches, macaque monkeys, plastic trash, banyan trees, and the spoken musical voices of its brides, Brahmins, preachers, widows, college boys, aristocrats, radicals, professors and mothers.  India has a unique power to seduce, repel, and elevate; these poems make those powers concrete – you can smell the incense, auto exhaust and chai.  For a moment the great old metamorphizing giant of India is held visibly aloft in a net of word, rhythm and image. 

About the Author

Paul R. Fleischman M.D. is a psychiatrist and author of books about psychiatry and religion and related topics. He has been honored by the American Psychiatric Association for his “…outstanding contribution to the humanistic and spiritual aspects of medicine and psychiatry…” He has been a life long student of Vipassana meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka, and has been a frequent sojourner in India. His articles have appeared in popular and professional journals, and his writing has been translated into numerous languages. This is his second book of poetry.