The Light Within

In December 2004, Joseph Anderson left his North Carolina home and law practice for an extended trip to India to study yoga with Yogiraj Bikram Choudhury. He promised his recently widowed mother he would keep a travel log of his journey and post it on his weblog so she could follow him as he traveled. The Light Within: A Travel Log of India is a moving, sometimes funny and sometimes shocking look at the streets of India-from Mother Teresa's orphanage to the high-tech skyline of Bangalore; from an illegal yoga session in the pristine Taj Mahal to the funeral pyres of the tsunami-ravaged southern coast; from plush five-star hotels to the slums of Calcutta, where, in the eyes and smiles of the people, he "glimpsed the inward fire of life, life on the thinnest edge of being, life against all odds." Upon his return, Joseph Anderson established the Calcutta Children's Permanent Fund, an endowment providing medical and nutritional support to the street children of Calcutta.