Paul Theroux’s new novel isn’t scheduled to be released in the U.S. until February 2010, but it’s already getting mixed reviews in the British press. It’s a mystery of sorts set in Calcutta and featuring a down-on-his-luck travel-writer-protagonist named Jerry Delfont.

Intriguingly, writes Doug Johnstone in The Independent:

Midway through the book, Delfont meets a fictional veteran US travel writer called Paul Theroux, a more successful and famous version of Delfont, whom he despises. The next 20 pages amount to a diatribe by Delfont about the act of travel writing, describing it as an emotionally stunted, puerile and selfish pastime, and brutally denouncing anyone who is stupid and arrogant enough to do it. This remarkable interlude is compelling, like rubbernecking a psychological car crash - but the rest of the novel is distinctly patchy, the bad points eventually outweighing the good.

Apparently the sex writing in the book leaves something to be desired. Once again, Theroux has been nominated for the Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex in Fiction award.

Photo by Koshyk via Flickr (Creative Commons)

A devotee prays at Amritsar’s Golden Temple, the holiest site in Sikhism

REUTERS/Raj Patidar

School children in Bhopal dress as Mahatma Gandhi for a celebration marking the 140th anniversary of his birth.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Dirda professes his love for J.R. Ackerley’s book about his five months in India, Hindoo Holiday—both for its content and his quest to find it.

“I first read Hindoo Holiday 25 years ago because of [Evelyn] Waugh’s atypical rave, which I came across in the massive, and massively enjoyable, volume of his collected essays and journalism,” Dirda writes. “In those pre-Internet days it took a while to turn up a copy of Ackerley’s onetime best seller, and I can still remember my glee in finally unearthing that worn Chatto and Windus edition in Heffer’s bookstore during a short visit to  Cambridge, England.”

There’s trouble on the set of “Eat, Pray, Love” in India: Apparently, local villagers were banned from praying in their ashram during an important religious festival because filming was going on inside. Said one local police officer:

There are more than 100 policemen outside the Ashram Hari Mandir and almost equal number inside the premises, both uniformed and in civilian disguise. Nobody can breach this cover and no outsider is allowed to enter the ashram, no matter whosoever he or she is. We have strict instructions.

Now that’s what I call a “hearts and minds” strategy.

The Indian flick, which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend, follows a young man as he attempts to escape the family business, traveling Rajasthan in an old truck loaded with film projectors and movie reels. To judge by the trailer, it’s going to be a good one:

There’s no word on North American distribution plans beyond TIFF, but if “Road, Movie” makes a splash at the festival—and assuming <a href="http://www.worldhum.com/travel-blog/item/unstoppable-slumdog-from-slum-tours-to-the-billboard-chart-20090126/" title="last year's "Slumdog Millionaire" explosion">last year’s “Slumdog Millionaire” explosion has left plenty of viewers wanting another taste of India—I’d bet it will turn up in select theaters before Christmas.

The New York Times reports from a new women-only commuter train in Delhi, part of a pilot program spanning four major Indian cities that’s aimed at cutting down on the harassment of female passengers. I’m thrilled to hear about the program, but here’s hoping it will only need to be a short-term solution—as one interviewee noted in the story, “You really need to make every train as safe as the Ladies Specials.”

REUTERS/Punit Paranjpe

Hindu priests sit inside water-filled barrels as they pray for rain in Mumbai.

Photo by Koshyk via Flickr (Creative Commons)

The Telegraph’s Michael Kerr doesn’t think so. Kerr is unimpressed by the news that the Agra Development Authority is contemplating the addition of ropewalks, cable cars and a Ferris Wheel at the most famous mausoleum in the world, all in the name of “enhancing the visitor experience.” He writes: “The Taj Mahal, has, of course, long been a tourist trap, one of those sights that we can take in only as part of a swarm of camera-clicking visitors. Nearly three million people a year are drawn to visit it. Somehow, 360 years on, it is still surviving the swarm. The threat to it now has less to do with improvement than with greed, a greed that infantilises rather than enhances experience.”