There comes a moment when life’s checklist that includes career milestones, family stability, and social validation feels complete, yet an inner whisper persists: “Is this all there is?” This quiet unrest, familiar to so many urban professionals, forms the heartbeat of Namita Devidayal’s Tangerine: How to Read the Upanishads Without Giving Up Coffee. Far from a devotional sermon, it’s a skeptic’s candid map from doubt to subtle stillness, proving Vedanta’s ancient questions can illuminate modern chaos without demanding monastic robes or forsaken espressos. Trained as a Hindustani classical vocalist, her lifelong dialogue with ragas infuses Tangerine with melody as metaphor. This isn’t abstract philosophy; it’s lived harmony, where musical discipline mirrors the patient unfolding of self-inquiry.
The Upanishadic discomfort
The Upanishads don’t promise bliss; they start with friction: Namita embodies this raw ache of disconnection amid apparent success. A liberal, English-medium journalist with a thriving career, family, and cultural roots, yet haunted by unease. “I should have been happy, but I wasn’t,” she confessed to our ZOW Book Club (a bunch of avid readers who met once a month to discuss books of all kinds under the benevolent eye of Suma Varughese), echoing the universal gap between outer achievement and inner ambiguity. A spontaneous Rishikesh retreat isn’t portrayed as escapism but a pivot: tradition pierces everyday armor, drawing her into Vedanta unexpectedly. Here, skepticism isn’t shed like old skin; it’s the fertile ground where inquiry takes root, reshaping doubt into a compass for navigating relationships, deadlines, and quiet evenings.
Between scepticism and surrender
The title’s alchemy—swapping saffron’s fervent symbolism for tangerine’s approachable hue—signals accessibility. Spirituality, Namital argues, needn’t demand withdrawal from boardrooms or playlists. Culturally attuned yet religiously detached, she reclaims tradition through stories and inherited wisdom, evolving not beliefs but perception. A luminous scene captures this: crafting a personal shrine amalgamating Shiva, Durga, Jesus Christ, Zarathustra, Guru Nanak, and her musical deity, Ustad Alladiya Khan. No hierarchy prevails; it’s Vedanta distilled. Truth is boundless, and paths are mere fingers pointing to the moon. This inclusivity disarms the modern reader, inviting inquiry without conversion.
Vedanta, without the intimidation
Academic treatises intimidate; Tangerine humanizes. Namita doesn’t dissect “Who am I? What is real?” in Sanskrit silos. These Upanishadic probes emerge organically amid marital tensions, parental doubts, and career crossroads, which are realms any reader inhabits. Mentors abound: Swami Dayananda Saraswati’s rigorous clarity, Vivekananda’s fiery universality, Ramakrishna’s devotional fire, Ramana Maharshi’s silent gaze, and Sri Aurobindo’s evolutionary vision. Kabir, her “ghostly bestie,” injects street-smart verse, grounding abstraction in the grit of daily survival. “You cannot see this picture through your senses, only through wisdom. Wipe the mirror clean,” she channels, turning philosophy into a mirror for self-recognition.
Music, identity, and the “neti neti” dance
Namita’s musical lineage elevates the narrative. A raga unfolds with rigid grammar yet boundless improvisation: discipline yielding to intuition. So too is the inner journey: fixed identities (wife, mother, editor) aren’t demolished but gently interrogated via “neti neti”: not this, not that. Parenthood’s chaos, marital negotiations, and professional ambitions become laboratories for this subtraction, eroding the ego’s false certainties. Clarity dawns not in fireworks but in increments: a steadier breath during traffic jams and less reactivity in arguments. For non-religious explorers, this is gold—Vedanta as practical psychology, compatible with coffee rituals and Spotify queues.
A lived philosophy, not an academic one
What sets Tangerine apart is that it stays rooted in experience. Namita connects philosophical ideas to real situations like career, marriage, and parenthood without simplifying them. She shows that inner clarity does not come from stepping away from life but from observing it more closely.
There is also an important tension; she highlights the balance between holding onto identity and letting parts of it go. If observed, this process can feel like a gradual internal change where confusion, questioning, and experience begin to settle into understanding.
The book does not force conclusions. It opens a line of inquiry. For some readers, it may trigger a deeper search. For others, it may simply introduce new questions. Either way, it remains approachable.
The Tangerine promise
Tangerine eschews tidy epiphanies for open-ended grace. Restlessness lingers but transforms: from frantic questioning to poised inquiry, easier to sit with amid life’s hum. “Your superpower lies in not taking things personally,” Namita posits, echoing Upanishadic liberation: freedom in witness consciousness, not world-renunciation. The book is ideal for Upanishad beginners and jaded seekers; it affirms that no life overhaul is needed. Simply attend more closely. The coffee stays; the awareness sharpens.Have you sensed that inner whisper amid success? Tangerine might reframe it.
Namita Devidayal: Journalist, Bestselling Author, and Classical Music Heir
Namita Devidayal’s voice is forged in dual worlds. A veteran arts editor at The Times of India, she’s authored bestsellers like The Music Room, a luminous memoir tracing her family’s legacy with Jaipur-Atrauli gharana legend Ustad Alladiya Khan, and Love Notes of a Wanderer, blending travel with introspection.
Her background bridges Mumbai’s cultural elite with timeless tradition, making her Vedanta exploration feel like a conversation over chai rather than a lecture hall debate. A graduate of Princeton University and former co-director of the Times Litfest in Mumbai, Devidayal is also a trained Hindustani classical vocalist of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana. Her lifelong immersion in music, shaped by maestros such as Ustad Alladiya Khan, lends her writing a distinctive depth, where intellectual rigor meets lived experience and where even philosophical inquiry, as in Tangerine, carries the cadence and intuition of a raga.
A Seeker’s Journey from Skepticism to Stillness: Tangerine Book Review Upanishads for Modern Readers by Namita Devidayal (Westland, 2025)
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