Resumo de Eat Pray Love - Elizabeth Gilbert

How liberating it would be to just cast off the reins of your current life and go on a year-long trip to three far flung countries of the world? Elizabeth Gilbert does that in Eat Pray Love, by embarking on her journey with specific purposes ? one country for pleasure of the senses, another for spiritual enlightenment and the third to restore balance in her life. The resultant travelogue is a warm and lively read.

The book begins with Elizabeth lying on the bathroom floor of her house in New York and crying for the 47th consecutive night. She feels the overwhelming need to be free ? from her marriage, without fuss. In desperation, she begins to pray; and this stirs the beginning of a religious conversation that surfaces intermittently through the book. After an ugly divorce and a doomed Love affair on the rebound, Elizabeth is a wreck; and completely broke. Leaving New York behind, she sets forth on a trip to Italy, India and Indonesia. It helps that a publisher purchases her travel book in advance, and thus financed, she sets off for Rome.

The section on Italy is mouthwatering - savoring a simple Italian meal with wine and tiramisu for dessert on her first day in Rome, roaming around the streets with frequent cappuccino and gelato refreshment breaks, and joining an Italian language class for no practical reason but simply to roll the sounds over her tongue and revel in the texture of the mellifluous language. Inspired by her Italian friend?s explanation of his countrymen being the masters of bel far niente ? ?the beauty of doing nothing?, she sets out her primary objectives in the four months spent in Italy ? ?to eat beautiful food and to speak as much beautiful Italian as possible ? a double major!? So unmindful of the pounds piling on her frame, she devours her pizzas, pastas and pastries with relish. Never mind that the clothes of one month do not fit her the subsequent month. Putting on 23 pounds in her Italian sojourn, she holds her last pair of jeans as a cherished souvenir ? a pair with a waist measurement that stings her eyes! Her descriptions of her freewheeling spontaneous travel to various Italian cities, conversing in Italian with the locals and always asking them where the good food is available, are delightful. Leaving Italy, plumper and happier, she is all ready for her four months of meditation in India.

These four months are spent in a Guru?s ashram near Mumbai. Having grown up in a non-religious family, she approaches the road to spiritual enlightenment with a fair degree of skepticism. Now at the ashram, she is keen to practise yoga and find God. She finds scrubbing the temple floors at the ashram physically tiring, but easier than the hours of daily meditation. She frankly states her inability to still her mind and her tendency to brood over the past. Driven to find inner peace, she struggles to meditate and gets frustrated. Her stay at the ashram perks up when she meets Richard from Texas who teases, prods and challenges her to go easy on herself, while seeking divine grace. The tide starts turning when Richard advises her to let go and let contentment come to her. Elizabeth?s rendering of the concepts of yoga, meditation and the mindset of the spiritually inclined are lucid, insightful and extremely well-written. Her self-effacing humor, interactions with the ashram inmates and her constant banter with Richard, who nicknames her ?Groceries? after noticing how much she eats, lightens up the narration. By seeking what she had come for, Elizabeth moves on, calm and grateful, to the final destination of her journey.

The section on Bali is not as gripping. It flows languidly, in the manner of a tourist enjoying a longish vacation. Elizabeth?s descriptions of the medicine man, his path to peace and her attempts to teach him English, her interaction with a few local Balinese and her impetuous involvement in their personal lives are quirky and amusing. The book then meanders into Elizabeth?s romantic dalliancewith a Brazilian and ends with her finding true love.

The biggest plus of this book is its ability to hold your attention for a fairly major part of the narrative. Elizabeth Gilbert appears to hold your hand and carry you through her experiences. Notwithstanding the fact that she comes from a cultural background starkly different from your own, you tend to empathize with her. She is candid about her loneliness and depression during her divorce, her failings and weaknesses. For instance, she considers traveling to be the true love of her life but confesses to being a bad traveler, in terms of a weak stomach, zero navigation skills, and her penchant of landing up at a place, absolutely clueless. Her talent, she says, lies in her effortless ability to make friends with anyone and everyone.

This book is an inspiring story of someone who resiliently surmounts her dark mental demons and finally makes peace with herself. Reading this book leaves you with a vicarious satisfaction of enjoying the simple pleasures of life and of glimpsing that happiness lies within.

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