Tag Archives: quest narratives

An Interview with Karan Bajaj

26 May
Karan Bajaj is a bestselling novelist in India. The Yoga of Max's Discontent is his most recent book.

Karan Bajaj is a bestselling novelist in India. The Yoga of Max’s Discontent is his most recent book.

Karan Bajaj is a bestselling novelist and striving yogi. Born and raised in India, he has trained as a Hatha Yoga teacher in the Sivananda ashram in South India and learned meditation in the Himalayas. He is the author of the novels Johnny Gone Down and Keep off the Grass, both of which were No. 1 bestsellers in India. His most recent book is The Yoga of Max’s Discontent. He’s been named one of India Today’s Top 35 Under 35. He lives in New York City.

To read an exercise on hooking the reader based on The Yoga of Max’s Discontent, click here.

In this interview, Bajaj discusses why he chose a white American character for a novel based on his own experience, the necessity of an author’s “message” staying out of a story, and the importance of taking a sabbatical.

Michael Noll

You’ve written that parts of The Yoga of Max’s Discontent are based on your own experience studying yoga and Buddhism and hiking in the Himalayas, and so I’m interested in your choice to tell this story from the point of view of a white American. On one hand, I can imagine some publishers preferring a white main character because it fits their idea of what sells. On the other hand, I’ve also had the experience in my own work of not being able to write about something until I distanced myself from it somehow. What went into the creation of Max?

Karan Bajaj

Thanks Michael. I made the choice of an American main character, less due to publishing practicalities, more to approach Max’s experiences in India from the perspective of an outsider. His “otherness”, be it an American in India or a white guy in the Bronx housing projects, is crucial to the core idea in the book of a man stripping off layers of external identity, first, physical, then, spiritual, to come closer to a more permanent reality. If I had an Indian protagonist, he’d have too many pre-conceived notions about concepts like karma, re-birth, yogic powers etc. that he uncovers in his journey.

In terms of creating Max, here’s a small anecdote: I read more than one hundred books and as many articles and papers to research the 1st 30 pages of the book that are set in the Bronx housing projects. Almost none of my research appears in the book but I had to truly understand each day in Max’s childhood to understand why someone would make the extreme decision to quit his job in Wall Street to become a yogi in the Himalayas. The next 270 pages set in India required almost no research at all. I’ve lived Max’s life myself and spent a lot of time in hidden Indian ashrams and remote Himalayan villages.

Michael Noll

Part of Max’s attraction to yoga and meditation is the possibility, learned from a street food vendor, that some yogis can sit in mountain caves in the winter in nothing but loin cloths and walk barefoot in deep snow. As a fictive device, this works well, creating intrigue and suspense in both the main character and the reader. But I also found myself wondering how it connects with the physical and spiritual practices that you’ve studied and that are important to you. Did you feel any conflict between the need to tell a good story and the desire to introduce readers to the very real practice of yoga? (Of course, perhaps some yogis really can walk barefoot in snow and across water!)

Karan Bajaj

The Yoga of Max's Discontent is the latest novel by Karan Bajaj.

The Yoga of Max’s Discontent is the latest novel by Karan Bajaj.

Excellent question, Michael. My idea for this novel was to break the paradigm of spiritual/personal transformation novels as fables thick and heavy with messages. I wanted to write a page-turning adventure through contemporary India in which the reader melts into the story and doesn’t feel the presence of an author communicating any message. However, I didn’t exaggerate or falsely exoticize India for the sake of a good story. Yogis and their physical prowess are well researched and in the novel, I’ve treated it as a spontaneous by-product of a yogis’ journey from the finite to infinite rather than the goal of the practice. Yoga, as I’ve presented in the book, is chitta vritti nirodah, the complete cessation of the thought waves of the mind so that the individual dissolves as it were. Every practice referenced in the book is in service of that idea.

Michael Noll

One of the sources of Max’s discontent is his attachment to material things, and one of the realizations he has during his quest is that he actually requires very little in order to survive and be at peace. I think it’s natural for readers to wonder how the book connects with your own life. You’ve studied yoga, gone on a sabbatical, and meditated in silence for a year, but you also work with large corporations in New York and your personal website is no slouch as a marketing device. Do these roles ever feel like competing forces?

Karan Bajaj

As you get deeper into the book, I think the concept that emerges is one of dharma. The tree grows and bears fruit, the water quenches thirst, in the same way every living being has a dharma, a certain innate tendency. Purifying your actions in accordance with your dharma rather than taking someone else’s dharma serves you best. Max’s dharma was to live in the mountains and serve. My own dharma, I think, is to be in business since I feel a very natural inclination for it. So what I’m trying to do is to purify my life in that context by working without attachment to the results of the work. I slip and fall often but that’s the general idea I try to live by. Right now, for example, I’m focused on marketing the book and getting hundreds of people to read a story I think is pure and transforming, but if that doesn’t happen, I know a large part of me will remain untouched.

That’s why perhaps my 4,1,4 model of working for four years, then taking a year-long sabbatical, then working again for four years works for me. Being in the world starts to take its toll so stepping out of it regularly and doing deep meditation helps me return a little more grounded to it. Yet I do always return because I think my dharma is to be in the world of commerce rather than in teaching yoga and meditation in the Himalayas.

Michael Noll

I know that the idea of sabbatical is important to you and that your own sabbatical fueled your growth as a writer and in yoga. What advice would you give to people interested in taking a sabbatical but who also find it difficult for a variety of reasons: limited income, children, or parents or other family members who depend on them for care? I think a lot of people look at their lives and don’t see how they can extricate themselves from them for any long period of time. Is a sabbatical a possibility for everyone?

Karan Bajaj

It’s never easy for anyone, I think. It was difficult for me to step out of life for a year when I was alone, harder when both my wife and I had to plan it together, and will be harder still now that we have a toddler and an infant! But each time I’ve come back, I’ve transformed in so many dimensions from becoming more spontaneous and creative to a greater stillness in my thoughts that I make it a point to keep taking them. If someone is interested in the idea but struggling to make the time, I’d say start by taking deeper, more meaningful vacations. Rather than going to a beach resort or a comfortable destination like Florida, take vacations that dissolve your sense of self. I highly recommend the 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat, for example or a tough hike like Kilimanjaro or the Grand Canyon where for a period of time, you just take one step, then another, and no other idea exists. Once you take a few such vacations, you start seeing the impact on your life and make the space to take longer and longer sabbaticals. In some ways, this is much easier than the dramatic re-inventions I see in American life. People are always becoming in the U.S.—from lawyer to yoga teacher; from marketing director to life-purpose coach etc. It’s perhaps simpler and more effective to go from point A to nothing at all rather than point A to point B.

May 2016

Michael Noll Michael Noll is the Editor of Read to Write Stories.

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An Interview with Phaedra Patrick

5 May
Phaedra Patrick is the author of the novel The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper.

Phaedra Patrick is the author of the novel The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper.

Phaedra Patrick studied art and marketing and has worked as a stained glass artist, film festival organizer and communications manager. She is a prize-winning short story writer and now writes full time. She lives in the UK with her husband and son. The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper is her debut novel.

To read an exercise on setting up happy endings, inspired by The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper, click here.

In this interview, Patrick discusses how to set a character off on a quest, happy endings, and using coincidence in a novel.

Michael Noll

The novel begins with the main character, Arthur, deciding to go on a quest. It’s a decision that is part of a long tradition of quest stories that is alive and well as shown by The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry; Eat, Pray, Love, and Wild. The difficulty, I would imagine, in writing such a story is that you need a reason to push the character out the door. Did you always know that Arthur would find the charm bracelet? Or did he begin as a character in search of a reason to go searching?

Phaedra Patrick

The charm bracelet idea came to me first, as I showed my young son my own bracelet. I write short stories too, so I liked the idea that each charm would be like a short story in its own right, then there would be a thread linking them all together, like a bracelet. I then had to find the right character to discover the bracelet and to set off on the journey to find out more about it. I thought it would be interesting if it was an older gentleman, who was rather set in his ways, and who I could take out of his comfort zone to go on this search. One of my favourite exercises is to write down the ten worst things that could happen to your character, then to explore how they’d react if these happened. And that’s what I did with Arthur.

Michael Noll

One question that often comes up in my writing classes—especially with college undergraduates—is “Why must stories be so sad?” The “literary” novels and stories that they’re reading tend to end unhappily. (One caveat: this isn’t really true of the fantasy and science fiction novels they read.) So, I was struck as I read this novel how its emotional arc is pretty much always oriented toward a happy ending—and it’s to the book’s strength. The book jacket even says that it’s a “joyous celebration of life’s infinite possibilities.” What was required—in dreaming up the novel, in its early chapters—to get it moving in a happy, satisfying direction?

Phaedra Patrick

I believe in happy endings! And in order for the story to be happy at the end, it kind of needs to be the opposite (at least in places) at the beginning, so the character can go on his/her transformative journey. The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper has been described as a kind of fable and even compared to a fairy story. A lot of fables or fairy tales traditionally start with the character in an unhappy place—Bambi’s mother dies, Cinderella is ill-treated by her step-sisters, etc. So I had to put Arthur in a bad place to make things right for him in the end. It was a fine balance not to make him too self-pitying, but as soon as I introduced his neighbour, Bernadette, then this brought along humour to lift the first couple of chapters.

Michael Noll

I had the pleasure of moderating a recent panel on writing that included Alexander Chee, and he talked about how coincidence is often frowned upon by writers, and so he wanted to write a book with a lot of it (and did, in The Queen of the Night). Your novel is full of coincidence; I suppose these moments (such as the ease with which Arthur finds the people he’s looking for) might be unrealistic, but they’re also hugely entertaining. How do you approach coincidence in your writing? How do you manage to explain a plot point enough for the reader to buy it but not overexploit it until the reader is suspicious?

Phaedra Patrick

The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper is Phaedra Patrick's first novel, and it's been called "tender, insightful, and surprising."

The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper is Phaedra Patrick’s first novel, and it’s been called “tender, insightful, and surprising.”

I think because the book had to link up eight charms then there had to be a rather strong element of coincidence, or else Arthur would just discover the first charm and then get stuck! It’s also a story rather than a real-life account, so it does invite readers to suspend disbelief a little and get swept along with it. For quite a while I pondered on whether readers would believe there was a phone number engraved on the elephant charm, but then I decided that Arthur had to get his first lead from somewhere, and that this was the story I wanted to tell. I also ensured that Arthur found out about the charms in a variety of ways—word of mouth, letter, photo, a receipt, family, etc., and at one point he even gets stuck in his search. I think this helps to make the coincidences more believable. It is a difficult balance though.

Michael Noll

Near the end of the book, Arthur has a conversation with a woman named Sonny Yardley. I don’t want to give anything away to readers, but Sonny’s response to Arthur’s questions is strikingly different from what he’s encountered before. Did you always know the scene would play out like this? Or did you sense that the novel needed a kind of unexpected hard turn to shake the reader a bit?

Phaedra Patrick

We know that Miriam led a secret life before she and Arthur married, so there had to be a rather big reason she kept this from him during 40 years of marriage. And it was unlikely to be a happy reason! So when Arthur finally speaks to Sonny, the conversation is serious and upsetting, as it needs to be considering the subject. I actually didn’t know what Miriam’s secret was until this part of the book, and I found out at the same time as Arthur. I had to have faith in my writing and plough on with the storyline in the hope that Miriam’s secret would reveal itself to me, and thankfully it did.

May 2016

Michael Noll Michael Noll is the Editor of Read to Write Stories.

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