In Priya Kumar’s The Calling, we meet Arjun, an overworked marketing manager on the brink of divorce. A near-fatal accident and a chance encounter with a sadhu sees him set off on a journey to Hemkunt Sahib. As he climbs the mountain with his guide Chandu, little does he know the mysterious turn his life is about to take.
As the mountains move and the trail changes, Arjun comes face to face with another sadhu and the reason for his coming to the mountains – his calling. Through this mysterious meeting with the sadhu, the three tests that the sadhu sets for him, and his subsequent time spent in sadhna, Arjun realizes the root cause of all his miseries and the path to his awakening.
The book is filled with spiritual truisms that most of us would already be familiar with, so there is nothing new there. But by presenting it as fiction instead of another new age spiritual book that takes itself a bit too seriously, and by creating a character that most of us can relate to at some level, the insights seem, somehow, more believable.
While I didn’t discover anything new within these pages, it is an enjoyable, quick read. I’ll leave you with a few passages from these pages, so you can decide if it is a book that would appeal to you.
“Life doesn’t test you at your level, life tests you at a level higher than yourself.”
“There is a larger world and then there is a space, your space, where you create your own world. And your world becomes your responsibility. You become responsible for what is in your space and what happens to things and people in your space.”
What do you think of The Calling, and of spiritual/new age spiritual books in general?
Want to read The Calling? Buy on Amazon
I am reading a lot of reviews on this book and all are praising it. On my TBR list for sure.
Great! It’s quite nice. I’d love to hear what you think of it! 🙂