British-born photographer and Theyyam researcher Pepita Seth is the only foreigner who is allowed entry into the 50th-century-old Guruvayur Temple in Kerla. She acknowledges this blessing in the form of a book: Heaven on Earth: The Universe Of Kerala's Guruvayur Temple, which is the culmination of seven years of research and documentation. It is the first such book on the Guruvayur Temple. Heaven on Earth: The Universe Of Kerala's Guruvayur Temple is a fine documentation with many sensitive pictures, published by Delhi-based Niyogi Books.

Pepita Seth's chronicle of Guruvayur temple is a painstaking work of an occidental mind. Heaven on Earth: The Universe Of Kerala's Guruvayur Temple is a book of exceptional excellence about a temple of unparalleled glory and fortune. The book is a beautiful travelogue as well as a spiritual pilgrimage. It can be described as an epitome of the core of our Indian culture, which is a magnificent synthesis of the material and spiritual in all walks of life and thought. The enchantingly beautiful and threadbare descriptive text is matched only by the equally sublime and stately photographs taken by the author herself.

Pepita Seth's evocative rendition of Heaven on Earth, a book on the famed and venerable temple of Guruvayur, is an edition that one sifts through with concentrated zeal. In a book that straddles the history and the integral labyrinth of rituals and delicate theatrics of administrated perfection, here are 19 chapters that are worthy of discerning scholarship. The text of Heaven on Earth uncoils with the sinuous, architectural grace of the power of devotion and the eternal philosophical quest of the human mind.

Heaven on Earth is for Hindus to relive their experiences and understand Guruvayur's rituals and ceremonies. For non-Hindus it is to see a world we could not have even imagined. Pepita Seth is to be commended for so vividly bringing to life the temple and its importance to India.