THE YOGA OF MAX'S DISCONTENT
Karan Bajaj
Published by Riverhead Books; Hardcover: 336 pages
Kindle Edition; Releasing on May 3, 2016
The author of this novel is an Indian/American with personal experience of the world of big finance, which gives him exactly the necessary perspective for this story.
The Yoga of Max's Discontent is a book that challenges categories. The marketing departments of publishers must despair, since their job is ostensibly to sell as many copies as possible. Because it is not, strictly speaking, nonfiction, it will doubtless be advertised as a novel. Karan Bajaj is the author of novels, thus this book must be one also.
The prose is evocative and vibrant, but except for his height, the reader sees little of the central character. While Max throws himself into an ultimate adventure and encounters not just barriers to progress, but life-or-death challenges not once, but many times, his quest is of a different sort from those encountered by traditional European protagonists. His desired goal simply doesn’t fit with the strivings of Western (as opposed to Eastern) heroes. Max is as unlike Sir Galahad as Augie March.
Bajaj is a master at creating suspense; it's hard to put the story down. The vivid writing about India, that will be to most of his American audience utterly exotic, is wonderfully descriptive. The yogis Max encounters along with the wannabes are weirdly (to western eyes) captivating. Yet in some way, this is not a novel so much as a thinly disguised apology for a way of life, or rather, an escape from life. Yoga is depicted as perhaps the best hope from relief from fear, pain, sorrow, unhappiness for those who are willing not just to give up, but to desert human contact and emotional connections.
Max has feelings, but they are sublimated. Max is accomplished and successful in spite of his ghastly childhood, but without a perceptible catalyst, he decides to abandon everything and everyone in the search through unimaginable trials for an existence on the planet in only a physical sense, to a degree that makes fundamentals of survival virtually unnecessary. Technical descriptions of the disciplines leading to this end are plentiful.
This is a book for a reader with a strong stomach — at least of the metaphorical kind. At the end, one may be satisfied or not. Either way, the journey with Max will leave memories and likely questions for a very long time.
©2016 Joan L. Cannon for SeniorWomen.com
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