An Indian Goes Around the World Ii: What I Learned From My Thirty-Day European Odyssey. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.An Indian Goes Around the World Ii: What I Learned From My Thirty-Day European Odyssey

This is the second book by M.P. Prabhakaran on his world-trotting experience. The first one, Capitalism Comes to Mao's Mausoleum, was published three years ago. This book is devoted exclusively to the 30-day tour he undertook through 10 countries of Europe in the summer of 2009. If academic qualifications are a measure of one's learning experience, Prabhakaran says in the Preface to the fi rst book, he has a string of them, including a Ph.D. in Political Science from The New School for Social Research, New York. But, he hastens to add, what I learned from this prestigious American institution and, before that, from various academic institutions in India is no match for what I did from my travels around the world. In describing what he felt at the end of the 2009 European tour, he goes a step further. The more I travel, he says, the more I discover my ignorance. He admits that his description is a mangled version of poet Shelley's immortal words: The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance. But, he adds, he could not find a better way to express his enlightening experience. The tour of 10 European countries, he says in the Preface to this book, opened his mind to various aspects of European cultures he had been quite ignorant of. Through the subsequent pages of the book, he shares with readers the knowledge he gained from conversations with people and from events and objects he got exposed to during that tour.

Most of his working life, M.P. Prabhakaran straddled two professions, journalism and teaching. He started his career in journalism, in 1969, as a cub reporter on Current, a weekly newspaper (now defunct) published from Bombay (now Mumbai). He then moved on, as a sub-editor, to March of the Nation (which is also defunct now), another Bombay-based English weekly; and then to Free Press Journal, one of India's leading English dailies. After immigrating to the U.S. in 1975, he worked as the editor of The Voice of India, a monthly, and of South Asia Newsspecial, a news and feature syndicate. Side by side with his journalistic work, he also pursued a Ph.D. in Political Science, at The New School for Social Research, New York. After completing the Ph.D., in 1988, he taught for several years as an adjunct professor of political science, at the City University of New York. Since 2001, Prabhakaran has been travelling extensively and posting his travel experience on The East-West Inquirer, an online monthly he started that year. The monthly, also carries his social and political commentaries. Prabhakaran has authored three other books: The Historical Origin of India's Underdevelopment: A World-System Perspective, which is an expanded version of his doctoral dissertation; Letters on India The New York Times Did Not Publish, which is a collection of letters he sent to The Times over a period of three decades; and An Indian Goes Around the World I: Capitalism Comes to Mao's Mausoleum.