'When a Gandhi dies nobody is safe.' An assassination and a romance. A hijacking several nuclear explosions and a religious experience ...just some of the ingredients in the latest tour de force from the bestselling author of The Carpet Wars. In the searing summer of 2004 Christopher Kremmer returns to India a country in the grip of enormous and sometimes violent change. As a young reporter in the 1990s he first encountered this ancient and complex civilisation. Now embarking on a yatra or pilgrimage he travels the dangerous frontier where religion and politics face off. Tracking down the players in a decisive decade he takes us inside the enigmatic Gandhi dynasty and introduces an operatic cast of political Brahmins 'cyber coolies' low-caste messiahs and wrestling priests. A sprawling portrait of India at the crossroads Inhaling the Mahatma is also an intensely personal story about coming to terms with a dazzlingly different culture as the author's fate is entwined with a cosmopolitan Hindu family of Old Delhi and a guru who might just change his life.