In the Himalayan Nights - Paperback

by Anoop Chandola (Author)

Dehradun City, Himalayas, India 1977: Two bright, beautiful, lesbian research assistants accompany their Indian professor to this city near the tense borders of China and Nepal to observe the "holy-war" dance of the Mahabharata and its link to polygamy and local heroes (or villains?). The girls begin to question the holiness of the Bhagavad Gita's two polygamist avatars while watching the dance, even as they fall in love with India and their friendly hosts. While gathering data on women's rights violations, caste discrimination, and animal cruelty, they discover more about their own culture, their relationship and themselves.When their hosts uncover the women's secret love-life, they turn against them and the research team's existence is threatened. Will the Indian "holy-war" become a personal one between locals and outsiders, men against women, polygamists against lesbians, Indians against Americans?The answer lies in the Himalayan nights...

Author Biography

Anoop Chandola, an American linguist-anthropologist, was raised in a priestly Brahmin family in India near the Nepal-Tibet border. Dr. Chandola, a graduate of the Universities of California-Berkeley and Chicago, has taught Indian literature, culture, and religion at S.V. Patel University, M. S. University of Baroda, University of California-Berkeley, University of Washington-Seattle, University of Texas-Austin, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a member of the American Anthropological Association, Association for Asian Studies, Linguistic Society of America, and Linguistic Society of India. Dr. Chandola, now Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona, lives in Tucson with his wife Sudha. He is a frequent guest lecturer on Hinduism and related religions.