Introduction

In this captivating and surprising novel of spiritual discovery—a No. 1 bestseller in India—a young American travels to India and finds himself tested physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Max Pzoras is the poster child for the American Dream. The child of Greek immigrants who grew up in a dangerous New York housing project, he triumphed over his upbringing and became a successful Wall Street analyst. Yet on the frigid December night he’s involved in a violent street scuffle, Max begins to confront questions about suffering and mortality that have dogged him since his mother’s death.

His search takes him to the farthest reaches of India, where he encounters a mysterious night market, almost freezes to death on a hike up the Himalayas, and finds himself in an ashram in a drought-stricken village in South India. As Max seeks answers to questions that have bedeviled him—can yogis walk on water and live for 200 years without aging? Can a flesh-and-blood man ever achieve nirvana?—he struggles to overcome his skepticism and the pull of family tugging him home. In an ultimate bid for answers, he embarks on a dangerous solitary meditation in a freezing Himalayan cave, where his physical and spiritual endurance is put to its most extreme test.

By turns a gripping adventure story and a journey of tremendous inner transformation, The Yoga of Max's Discontent is a contemporary take on man's classic quest for transcendence.

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Excerpt

Chapter 6

Max entered the cold bus, his eyes swollen and heavy. It was 4 a.m. but six or seven people were already inside the bus, their heads resting on the metal bar of the seats in front of them. Max looked around for a seat. Most were broken with steel columns jutting out of their back frames. He found one with a thin cushion and settled into it. Freezing, he huddled against his backpack and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The engine’s roar shook him awake. Broad daylight. They were negotiating a steep uphill curve. The outside tires of the bus were merely an inch away from the thousand foot valley below and the dirt road was crumbling around them. It seemed wiser to keep his eyes shut so he slept again.

Max’s head banged against the ceiling. The bus groaned to a halt. Two large boulders lay in their narrow path. He rubbed his head and stepped out to join the four men pushing the boulders aside.

“Did they just fall?” he asked in English.

A man nodded. “One minute back.”

Max looked at the giant rocks and weathered trees on the mountains above. No barrier separated them from the road. If the boulders had slipped just seconds later, they would have pushed the bus into the valley below. Every moment on the road was an exercise in surrender.

Max helped the men roll the boulders off the road. Back in the bus, the fifteen or so locals making the journey with Max greeted him with excitement. Two boys, seven or eight years old, wearing imitation Gap sweatshirts gave him high-fives. A woman with a rough, cheerful face joked about his six foot six inch frame on the tiny seat. Another woman wearing a red sweater over a bright yellow saree offered him apples. A kind faced man in a hip length coat with a mandarin collar gave him water. The questions started again. No foreigner ever came in winters. Why was he here? Where was his wife? Did he want a Guru? Why was he so tall? The engine roared to life again, filling the bus with an oily smell. The locals left him alone and busied themselves in praying for safety. They folded their hands and closed their eyes every time the bus navigated a treacherous turn. Max stared at the calm, silent face of the driver and slept again, dreaming of burning black bodies with shiny white bones.

The boys woke him up a few hours later. They pointed excitedly to a sign saying ‘Danger. Accident Zone’ in bold black letters.

“Death point, death point, death point, death point,” they sang.

The woman who had offered him apples pointed to a curve ahead where a bus had overturned the previous month he learned. Soon, Max found out why. When they turned, the outside front wheel of the bus flew out, standing suspended in air for a few seconds. Max’s heart stopped. They were heading straight down the valley, into the swirling, angry Ganges far below.

The driver rotated the wheel furiously.

Max hugged his knees tight, preparing to barrel himself out of the tiny window.

The bus landed on solid ground again.

Everyone clapped spontaneously. Max’s heart pounded. The air filled with audible sighs of relief. Only the kids looked disappointed.

“Why doesn’t the government make the road bigger?” asked Max when the bus moved at a steady pace again.

“No government here. God takes care of roads in the Himalayas,” said a woman.

They reached Uttarkashi twelve hours after they had left Rishikesh, a mere five hours later than expected, despite the rough roads. Max congratulated the driver on his skill. He wanted a photograph with Max and Max gladly obliged.

“Any bus to Gangotri?”

The driver shook his head. “No, no, never this season. Never.”

A stocky Indian man wearing a small ponytail and earrings who had been sitting quietly in the front of the bus came up to him. “I can drop you to Bhatwari village in my jeep if you’d like. It’s twenty miles ahead on the way to Gangotri,” he said.

Max shook his hands. “That’ll be great,” he said. “Thank you.”

Max helped the man carry one of his two suitcases back to his jeep in a parking lot next to the bus stand. They put the suitcases and Max’s backpack in the back of the weathered jeep and Max joined the man in the front.

The road became narrower from the Uttarkashi bus stand. They crossed a low lying cement bridge inches above the river. The river bank was lined with debris: bricks, concrete, truck tires, engine parts and tree branches.

“A cloud burst here five months ago,” said the man. “Seven days of nonstop rain. People, houses, trucks, all taken by the river. Some people haven’t even been found yet.”

The roaring, angry river below them was so close Max could touch it. Any moment now, the river could rise and drown them like it had drowned hundreds of others. Or the weak bridge could break. How fragile this body, this life was. The jeep lurched. Max held on tight, feeling a renewed sense of purpose for his journey. They crossed the bridge.

A twenty foot tall iron statue of an Indian God with long, matted hair, sculpted muscles, and a trident in his hand stood incongruously on the riverside.

“Pilot Baba’s ashram,” said the man, pointing to a cluster of white houses scattered next to the statue. “If you want, you can stay here until the winter ends.”

“Is he a Guru?”

“Everyone is a Guru in India,” said the man witheringly. “Pilot Baba was just a regular pilot in the Indian Air Force. His helicopter crashed here and he had some sort of spiritual realization—perhaps that there is more money to be made in this racket than in flying planes. So he became a Guru.”

Max laughed. “How did he find disciples?”

“No shortage of foreigners touring exotic India,” he said. “Pilot Baba teaches that man loses his ego during orgasm so there is plenty of sex here. Westerners love it. Spiritual Mcdonald’s. ”

As if on cue, a dreadlocked white guy in just a t-shirt and shorts emerged from one of the houses. He shut his eyes and spread out his arms melodramatically in the frigid air. Max’s face went hot with embarrassment. Was there really no difference between him and these eighteen year old hippies? He strengthened his resolve to keep pushing forward until he found a real Guru.

“Do you want to get off here?” asked the man, slowing down his jeep.

“I’ll pass,” said Max. “There is a man further up in Bhojbasa I want to visit.”

“The roads are closed beyond Bhatwari,” said the man.

“I’ll take my chances,” said Max.

They took a steep turn and the statue and houses disappeared from view.

Max’s companion raised his index finger. “One percent maximum,” he said. “Only 1% of these yogis at most are genuine and most of them live way on the top of the mountains where you are going. Out here and below in Rishikesh, searching for God has become a joke.”

Max nodded. “A man with human flesh in his hands offered to be my Guru this morning,” he said.

“Covered in ash? Near a cremation pyre?”

“Yes, exactly,” he said.

“An Aghori Baba. They eat animal carcasses and human remains to show their love for even the most repulsive of God’s creations,” said the man. “They look scary but are pretty harmless.”

“And the men with painted faces and red marks?”

“Lord Shiva’s devotees,” said the man. “If I smoked as much hashish as them, even I’d see God everywhere.”

So many teachers, so many belief systems, yet none inspired confidence. Why wasn’t the path to the most fundamental of human quests clearer?

“What do you believe in?” said Max.

The man adjusted his ponytail. “My father was a priest in a temple here,” he said. “I believed in Lord Krishna, his God, until my father got buried in a landslide while conducting a puja, a worship ceremony for the Lord. After that, I left the Himalayas to work in Delhi. Now I come back only to visit my crazy family. Man is far more reliable than God. He rewards you with a paycheck instead of a landslide when you work for him.”

The jeep’s floor shook with a loud clunk. Max held on to his seat tightly. The man changed the gear nonchalantly and the jeep resumed its smooth motion. They took a turn into a flat valley. In the distance, a colossal tower of ice arose high above the mist, glittering in the fading light of the evening sun. Max inhaled sharply at his first full view of the mountains ahead.

“Is that where Gangotri is?” he asked.

The man laughed. “Yes, Gangotri is at the bottom of that mountain,” he said. “That’s why all roads are closed beyond here.”

The road ahead was covered in snow as were the withered trees on either side. The Ganges whispering below them suddenly fell silent, throttled by the heavy chunks of ice floating in its waters. Did the yogis hike up from this point? If they could figure out a way, couldn’t he? He ran marathons in less than three hours, he hiked steep mountains, his diet was predominantly salads and fruits, he’d never been fitter, healthier, more prepared.

“There must be a way, perhaps on foot,” said Max.

The man shook his head. “Not until March or April.” He took a turn and stopped ahead of a cluster of huts. “Bhatwari village,” he said pointing to the huts. “Ask around there. Someone will know when the road opens again. Perhaps you can even stay in the village for a few months. Who knows, you may become a Guru yourself? This place does that to people.”

Max shook his hands. “Thank you for the ride,” he said. He took out his backpack from the jeep and came back to the driver’s window. “Can I pay you?”

The man folded his hands and lowered his head in a mock bow. “No, no, great Guruji. Just bless my family so they are absolved of my sins.”

Max laughed. “Please let me. I know how hard it was to get here.”

The man waved his hands. “I was coming this way anyway. My family lives in Pilot Baba’s Ashram. I told you they are crazy."

He turned around and left.

Max trudged through the packed ice to the village, the chill cutting through his bones despite his heavy overcoat.

A group of men and women huddled around a fire in front of a small, open-air roadside restaurant. Next to it, a bare hut sold cigarettes and biscuits. Opposite it, there were more wooden houses with tin roofs. The village ended there.

Max knocked at the door of a house with a peeling sign saying ‘Bright Hotel.’

The tall, lean proprietor’s eyes widened at his request for accommodation. He showed Max a dark, musty room which had obviously not seen visitors in months. There was no water or electricity in the freezing room but the owner made up for it with thick piles of blankets and two buckets of hot water. Max’s mood lifted. He had a bucket shower, snuggled into the blankets and slept a little less restlessly now he could at-least see his destination one week after leaving New York City. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1: What inspired this unusual story and what research went into writing a book set in surreal night markets, remote ashrams, and hidden caves?

2: What was the hardest part about writing this book?

3: Are some of the mystical events eg, levitating, walking on water etc. referenced in the book true?

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