When Jimi Hendrix appeared as the multi-headed and multi-armed cosmic Vishnu on the cover of his band's second album, Axis: Bold as Love, in 1967 it caused quite a stir among the small but growing Hindu diaspora in the United States. However, the fact that Michael Jackson appeared as the face on the head of an iconic statue of the buffalo demon Mahishasura being trampled and slain by the great goddess during the 1982 Durga Puja held in Kolkata, while the singer's recently released song “Beat It” blasted repeatedly through loudspeakers in the background on the streets, raised few eyebrows. I had these two contrasting images in my head, the latter personally witnessed by me, as I began reading the book under review. But the author did not fulfill my expectations when he perhaps too easily dismissed such transnational borrowings at the very outset of this brief but...
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