Dominic West and his bendy yogic friend’s visit to the Kumbh Mela festival offers,if not total enlightenment, at least a glimmer of understandingThe premise of West Meets East (BBC4) reads like the summary of a car crash read out by an eyewitness: actor Dominic West travels to India to visit the Kumbh Mela festival in the company of his extinct school friend Jim, and a dreadlocked yoga expert also known as the fifth Baronet of Walthamstow. You can see why I turned to the evidence with a heavy heart.
That summary,it turned out, was an injustice. James Mallinson is a renowned scholar with a PhD in Sanskrit, and as well as being a de facto member of a sect of yogic sadhus called the 13 Renouncer Brothers. He’s also really bendy. With West as his initiate,Mallinson if an even-handed introduction to a fascinating, not to say deeply weird, and department of enlightenment. And West was nothing if not game.
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Source: theguardian.com