The Yoga of Max's Discontent

by Karan Bajaj

  Ji, the Indian suffix of respect he had read in the guidebook but struggled to use, came without effort now.

  The man nodded.

  “I’ve come from far to see you,” said Max.

  “Did you walk from the village?” said Ramakrishna.

  He spoke in perfect English but pronounced his words softly, politely, reminding Max of Viveka. Just fifteen days ago, but it felt like a different lifetime.

  Max nodded.

  Ramakrishna closed his eyes. “Mahadeva. Strong, self-willed, and obstinate,” he said as if to himself. He opened his eyes. “You may rest now, if you prefer.”

  Max put on his shoes and followed him toward one of the huts. A toned, auburn-haired white woman in her late twenties swept the dust off the packed orange mud in the courtyard. She looked up at them through her scholarly horn-rimmed glasses.

  “This is Shakti,” said Ramakrishna, extending one long flowing hand in her direction. “And this is Mahadeva,” he said, gently touching Max’s shoulder.

  The woman nodded at him without expression.

  Mahadeva. Max’s eyes burned from the salty, stinging sweat that poured down his temples. The blisters pressed against his shoes. No, he didn’t need a new name. The woman resumed sweeping with complete concentration. Max stared at her. He wasn’t a typical Westerner with a daddy complex looking for a guru to control his life. If he was going to learn something, he could learn it under his own name. What did this name and identity business matter in the spiritual world anyway? He’d bring it up once he knew the guru better.

  Max stooped but still managed to bump his head against the hut’s mud wall. A chunk of dried grass and twigs fell on his neck. Max wiped it away and entered the thatched hut.

  Two colored pieces of cloth partitioned the bare hut into three parts.

  “Hari is on the left, the middle is empty. You can take the space on the right if that is convenient,” said Ramakrishna.

  The roped wooden bed on his side of the partition was covered with a clean white sheet, freshly made as if they were expecting him. Had Anand called? But he hadn’t seen a single phone cable anywhere in his twenty-mile hike. How did the man know he was coming then? Max shivered despite the heat.

  “May I get you food?” said Ramakrishna.

  Max shook his head. All he wanted just then was to be alone and put his head on the thin pillow.

  “We stay silent here for nine out of ten days. This is the fourth day of this cycle. If you need something, please come to me in the other hut. Tomorrow I will explain more if you prefer,” said Ramakrishna.

  Max thanked him. He left. Max flicked the switch for the small lightbulb on the ceiling. No light came on. He took his shoes off, examined his swollen, blistered feet in the light shadow of dusk, and lay down on the hard rope bed. The mud walls and the straw roof gave some respite from the heat. He sweated less. A gecko darted toward the dark bulb on the ceiling. Max closed his eyes to stop himself from crying. He felt so lonesome.

  • • •

  A SHARP PINPRICK awoke him. Buzzing. A mosquito. Max clapped it. A hundred more attacked him, stinging his face, hands, and arms. He wrapped himself like a mummy in the bedsheet and closed his eyes.

  Malaria.

  Max sprang out of bed. He hadn’t had any of his antimalarial pills since arriving in India. He’d be fucked if he fell ill in this wilderness. Max got the pills from his backpack and gulped two down with a bottle of water. Two-forty AM. Morning was still a long time away. Max went back to bed and slept immediately, unbothered by the buzzing, stinging mosquitoes.

  The wall shook.

  Max woke up groggily.

  Someone rapped on the partition wall again.

  Three-thirty AM. Who was it at this hour?

  “Mahadeva,” said a deep voice.

  Were they all psychos? Like a mad cult? They could kill him in a ritualistic sacrifice and no one would ever know except perhaps Anand, who could be part of the cult himself.

  The mud wall shuddered again.

  He clenched his fists, then remembered Ramakrishna’s glowing face from the night before. Relax, don’t be an idiot. He opened his fists. “Yes, I’m awake,” said Max.

  “Time for yoga asanas.”

  Now? Max got up and pulled the separating sheet aside. A broad-shouldered muscular giant with curly hair and bright green eyes stood in the middle room.

  “Hari?” said Max.

  The man nodded.

  “Okay, coming,” said Max.

  He took a cue from Hari’s red T-shirt and loose pants and pulled out a cotton T-shirt and baggy shorts he had bought in Mumbai.

  • • •

  MAX WALKED OUT into the black night lit up by two oil lamps kept on the long wooden bench. Ramakrishna sat cross-legged in the packed mud wearing a bright white tunic and an orange cloth around his waist. Three rubber mats lay in front of him. On one sat Hari, on the second, Shakti, and the third was ostensibly for Max. Max sat down on the thin gray mat, mirroring Hari and Shakti’s cross-legged pose. His thighs screamed. He shifted position, pushing his knees out and bending forward, but remained uncomfortable.

  “First we do pranayama, expanding one’s vital energy using the breath,” said Ramakrishna.

  He demonstrated while he instructed, likely for Max’s benefit. Inhaling deeply, he thrust his abdomen out, then pushed it in sharply. He repeated the in-and-out motion two hundred times. Immediately after, he retained his breath for ninety seconds. They repeated the cycle three times, retaining the breath for longer and longer, going up to three minutes.

  Max sputtered and swallowed, trying to follow along. He managed the in and out motions but couldn’t retain his breath for more than a minute and a half at a time.

  Next, they applied bandhas, or breath locks. Max had read about this ancient yogic breathing practice to improve blood circulation in a book he had picked up in London. Now he followed Ramakrishna’s instructions closely. First, Max took a deep breath in, then pushed his chin against his throat so that inhaled air couldn’t come up the neck. Simultaneously, he pulled his perineum—the region between the navel and the anus—toward the spine so that the breath couldn’t leave his abdomen. The fresh inhaled oxygen was now trapped in his torso. As the logic went, until one released these breath locks, the oxygen circulated slowly, deliberately, in and around the heart, liver, lungs, intestines, bladder, and pelvic area, rejuvenating every nerve, every vein, every cell in them. Oxygen was energy. Energy was life. If one applied bandhas long and well enough, the oxygen would revitalize the cells, slow the body’s aging process, even reverse it. The yogi’s body would become a complete, self-generating system in itself, not succumbing to age, sickness, or decay; the yogi would conquer time, as it were. Maybe that’s why Ramakrishna’s face shone like a lamp and the Brazilian doctor’s perennial youth was mentioned in every blog post. But there was a logic flaw somewhere because . . .

  Blood rushed to Max’s face and his heart thudded from the influx of fresh air. He just couldn’t think anymore.

  “Lie down, my child. Corpse pose,” said Ramakrishna.

  Max lay on his back, spreading his hands and legs apart like a corpse, stealing a glance at his able compatriots, who had moved on to the next breathing exercise.

  • • •

  NEXT HE LEARNED sun salutations, a series of stretching and bending exercises that worked every part of the body from the tops of the arms to the backs of the legs, in an elegant dance.

  After ten, eleven, twelve sets, his heart again threatened to burst out of his chest.

  He lay down, watching the others complete eight more sets. This was so different from the one yoga class he had attended at a studio in Chelsea. It had been taught by a slender, smiling woman chanting Oms and urging the class to go deep within and feel their vibrations and energy fields. He had dismissed yoga a
s too soft and New Agey. Now he was dizzy from the effort. His stomach felt hollow and the nagging ankle and knee pains from the hike had flared up.

  The “warm-up” was now over, said Ramakrishna. They were ready to begin the asana practice.

  Begin? They must be an hour in already. A wave of dread surged through Max. The black night had given way to a full sun. Hot air stung his eyes. Orange mud, rivers of sweat on the mat, miles of desolation around him—how many days could he do this? Where would it take him? He hadn’t traveled ten thousand miles just to sculpt his muscles.

  “We’ll start with Sirsasana, the headstand,” said Ramakrishna.

  Shakti and Hari bent forward, planted their elbows on the ground, propped their head between their palms, and lifted their entire body up, standing inverse in a straight line.

  I’ll never be able to do that.

  Max knelt down on his mat, his mind an agitated knot. He didn’t need to stand on his head. His body was fit. He had quit his job to learn Eastern philosophy, life’s why and how, not to twist and turn his body. He’d leave that day itself.

  “You can also try this. Just be here. Thoughts cannot depart to other dimensions in asana.”

  Max looked up at shiny-faced Ramakrishna. He wanted his stillness, his certainty.

  “Now, place your elbows on the ground, chest width apart, and interlock your fingers.”

  Max followed Ramakrishna’s movements. He planted his elbows on the ground, then his wrists and his head. His back arched. He walked a few steps forward. His legs lifted from the ground. Just a few inches up, not all the way straight up like Shakti and Hari’s, but at least he was in the air.

  “Just stay here. Feel the weight on your elbows. Tighten your abdomen. Don’t go any higher today.”

  Max didn’t want to go anywhere ever. Cool waves of air went down his body. He felt silent, awake. He closed his eyes.

  “Now come down slowly.”

  Max came down to the mat. Shakti and Hari were still in the air, balanced on just their elbows and heads. Max took a deep breath and looked up at the blazing sun. He’d been similarly outclassed before. In his second week at Trinity, the English teacher had asked everyone to read aloud their homework essay about a family vacation. Other kids had written about visiting indigenous tribes in the Amazon, going on museum tours in Florence, building churches in Guatemala, and rescuing elephants in Tanzania. Max had written about a lunch his mother and he had in the Boathouse Lakeside restaurant in Central Park after saving up for a year. His classmates had stared at him in surprise and he’d had a crushing feeling in the pit of his stomach that he would never be able to catch up with them. But he had. He just had to work harder than everyone else.

  • • •

  FOR THE NEXT two hours, Max worked in the same state of feverish suspension he had worked years ago to get into Trinity and Harvard. He drowned out all his thoughts. There was no future, no past. This moment was all there was. This was his one chance, so he had to give it all he had. He followed the others, going from lifting his body supported only by the tips of his shoulders to inverting into a plowlike position with legs stretched beyond his head, arching the upper back like a cobra, lifting his legs up like an insect, and making them taut like a bow. Up and down, backward and forward they went, stretching and elongating the spine, exhaling stale air, inhaling streams of fresh air, rejuvenating all parts of the body. He kept pace, picking himself up when he fell behind, and fought the pain to hold each pose like Ramakrishna insisted.

  “Hold the pose, hold the pose. Longer, longer,” said Ramakrishna, soft but firm. “Asana means steady pose. You build concentration by holding. Hold. Concentrate.”

  They lay down in corpse position at the end. Max relaxed, loosening his mind, thinking about what he was doing once again.

  Ramakrishna made them apply the two bandhas once more. Max understood the logical flaw that was bothering him now. Hemoglobin carried oxygen to the blood cells. Trapping air in the abdomen wouldn’t increase hemoglobin production. The oxygen held in his torso wasn’t going anywhere else in his body. Ramakrishna told them to stop after five minutes. Max lifted his head. Seven AM. The class was over three and a half hours after it had started. He got up. The discomfort in his spine was gone. His knees didn’t hurt. He walked a few steps. The blisters on his feet didn’t press against his skin. The pain from both yoga and the twenty-mile walk from the previous day had receded. He shook his head. It couldn’t be the bandhas. How could the trapped oxygen travel all over his body? He was thinking about body chemistry again when Ramakrishna called him to his hut. Hari and Shakti disappeared without looking in his direction. Hari and Shakti. Funky names. Now he had his own funky new name to deal with.

  • • •

  MAX SAT CROSS-LEGGED facing Ramakrishna on the mud floor inside Ramakrishna’s thatched hut.

  “May you be feeling well?”

  Max nodded. “I’ve barely done any yoga before.”

  Ramakrishna smiled, making his face glow so much that Max almost had to turn away.

  “You have done yoga before,” he said. “These postures are but one very small part of yoga. Breathing attentively is yoga. Complete absorption in your work is yoga. Thinking about others instead of yourself is yoga. Anything which makes you forget your small self and become one with the infinite is yoga.”

  Max was strangely tongue-tied. As always, he had questions, but Ramakrishna’s presence was so peaceful, so complete, that Max didn’t feel like listening to his own rambling, dissatisfied voice.

  “You did asanas well. You have a gift,” said Ramakrishna.

  Max tried to hide his astonishment. He felt lumpy and light-years behind Shakti and Hari.

  “Your eyes are restless, though,” said Ramakrishna.

  Max stiffened. Coming from a soft, polite mouth, the words felt like a slap. He looked at the fissures in the mud wall of the bare hut.

  “So much agitation. So much loose energy. If you are unable to silence the mind, you will make very little progress here,” he said. “Do you plan to stay here for a few days?”

  No, I want to go back to the world where people thought I was calm under pressure, not someone with restless eyes syndrome.

  Max nodded.

  “Very good. I will learn a lot about asanas from you, even though the idea may strike you as unreasonable now,” he said, his back erect as a column while Max stooped and shifted, trying to find the perfect alignment to sit comfortably cross-legged in. “We do asana practice from three-thirty until seven every morning, then again in the evening from three to six-thirty. In the day, we work in the fields. After dinner, we do three hours of meditation before bed at ten.”

  And sleep?

  “Four or five hours of sleep are enough for a yogi. As you progress, even that will be too much. You can use that time to read some of the books that people have left behind if you choose.”

  How had he known the question that Max hadn’t said aloud? Could he read his mind? He tried to empty his mind of all his rambling, restless thoughts.

  “Many things will happen to you here, Mahadeva, some hard for the rational mind to understand. Take them for what they are, signs pointing toward the path, not the path itself,” said Ramakrishna. “Look for answers within. I can see you like talking, debating, questioning. Nothing agitates the thought waves more. That’s why we speak only once in ten days here, the same day we deliver food to the village. You can do any chores you want in Pavur town that day as well.”

  Contrary to Ramakrishna’s impression of him, Max wasn’t intimidated by the silence. Lately he had become more and more aware of the inability of words to express thoughts that truly mattered. Complete silence appealed to him. Today was the fifth day of the cycle. He had five full days to show his worth.

  “We deliver food?” said Max.

  “Half of whatever we grow goes to t
he village, no matter how little or how much we produce,” he said. “Going beyond the narrow reaches of family and friends and feeding a stranger before feeding yourself is necessary. It purifies you, simplifies your life.”

  Max nodded. He paused. “Actually, I’m sorry, I meant do we walk to the village to deliver the food?”

  Ramakrishna smiled. Again, his face blazed, lighting up the dark hut. “Walking will also become simpler soon. But we don’t walk to the village. The food sacks are heavy. One of the village tractors will come by.”

  “I’ve never worked on a farm before,” said Max.

  “It requires some strength, some dexterity. You have a little of both,” said Ramakrishna. “Your posture is loose and you are heavy. As you shed weight, become tighter, it will become easier.”

  I’m not fat. I’m a marathoner. But the face in front of him seemed to speak only truth without caring how it sounded. Max straightened his spine.

  “May you have other questions?”

  Max started to say something, then stopped. He didn’t want to be judged for his restlessness again. Ramakrishna smiled. He probably knew what Max wanted to ask anyway.

  “What is the point of all of this? Just what exactly are we trying to achieve?” said Max in a rush.

  Ramakrishna shrugged. “People tell me different things. I don’t teach anything, Mahadeva, I just live here. So you alone decide what you want and understand what you get. For me, yoga is both my path and my goal.”

  “And the name, Mahadeva, is it necessary? Can you just call me Max?”

  “I will defer to your wishes on that, Max. However, Mahadeva is a good name. It means the powerful one,” said Ramakrishna.

  But Max wanted to transcend his ego, not transfer it to a different name.

  Throw away the trinkets. Be a yogi, Max. “Mahadeva is fine,” said Max.

  “That is all,” said Ramakrishna. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “You should know I have not reached the end of yoga myself. My mind is not still enough to perceive the subtlest truth within. You have to decide whether you want to learn from an imperfect teacher.”