The Yoga of Max's Discontent

by Karan Bajaj

  A long note from Anna. She was thinking about their night together and how they had shared something special. Why had he been so abrupt? Would they see each other again? Their brief encounter seemed such a distance away. He closed the email and went on to the next.

  Notes from friends. The word had spread that he had quit his job to travel. People were surprised, shocked, even glad that one frog had jumped from the well. They sent updates of their own lives.

  Just five days in silence and he felt overwhelmed by this sudden influx of information. He inhaled and exhaled six times and shut down his email.

  • • •

  OUTSIDE THE SHOP, he wished he had written a longer email to Sophia and had at least acknowledged Anna’s message.

  “Someone looks like they are missing their girlfriend.”

  Whoa, could Shakti also read his mind? Max turned around. She flashed him a cheeky, flirtatious grin. A tall, toned, auburn-haired astronomer with a cute accent and cuter glasses, Shakti was the ultimate geek fantasy. Yet he felt only a distant, detached sort of attraction for her, and one he had no desire to pursue. All he wanted was to start making progress in his quest. He had left behind far too much to fritter away his time.

  “I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said.

  Shakti walked up and high-fived him unexpectedly. The owner of the hardware-snack-Internet shop stared at them curiously.

  “Good for you,” she said. “I should break up too. This path is lonely. No one understands. My parents will disown me now because I don’t believe I am born because Adam and Eve had apple for breakfast. My boyfriend thinks watching football leads to enlightenment.”

  Max laughed. He felt his tension break. “You’ll find someone in India,” he said. “Like Hari, the handsome film actor.”

  “I do not think he knows difference between Ramakrishna and me,” said Shakti.

  “Is he very serious?” said Max.

  “He has lived with Ramakrishna two times before. I think this time he makes promise to himself that he will not leave the ashram until he achieves enlightenment,” she said. “He never comes to town. He never talks for more than a few minutes even on the tenth day.”

  Max wanted to be like him.

  Shakti pulled her hair out of her ponytail. “For last six months, I speak so little. I feel happy you came. Do not go away soon.”

  Their eyes met.

  “I need to buy some snacks,” said Max, looking away.

  “Why?”

  “I’m still adjusting to two meals a day. Sometimes I feel hungry in the night,” he said.

  They walked up the mud street and turned toward the snack shop.

  “Be careful about food,” she said. “Ants, insects, other things may get into them.”

  Max paused in front of the dangling biscuits. He remembered the snake from the night before. “I saw a snake in the bathroom. Are they poisonous?”

  “What color was it?”

  “Grayish-black with white bands.”

  “That’s a krait,” she said matter-of-factly. “Very poisonous. It won’t bite unless you tease it, though.”

  Max recoiled. “I would never tease a snake,” he said.

  “Yes, but a half-open packet of chocolate biscuits in your bag?” she pointed out.

  Max lost his appetite. “Come on, snakes don’t eat biscuits,” he said.

  “How do you know? Do you have snakes in your bathroom in New York?” she said.

  Max laughed. “I don’t, but I wouldn’t feed them biscuits if they were in my tub,” he said. He turned around. “But now I’m not hungry anymore.”

  • • •

  THEY CHATTERED AND laughed as they made their way back to the village. On the tractor ride back, Shakti asked him how long he planned to stay at the ashram.

  “I don’t know. As long as it takes,” said Max. “You?”

  “I have to decide soon,” said Shakti. “My sabbatical ends in six months in July. I don’t know whether I work toward enlightenment after that or I join back university, marry, and make family. I am more than thirty. If I miss the time, I never have it later. For a man, it is easy.”

  Max didn’t think it was any easier for him. He had quit the job he had worked all his life to get. He was racked with guilt about leaving Sophia. Yet in the moment of sudden silence when he felt his navel lift off the ground that morning he had seen a glimmer of something. Still far away, but more complete, more real than anything he’d known before. Even so, he felt a hollow emptiness in his stomach when they approached the lonesome huts. It was dusk and Max felt more alone than ever. Another ten days of heavy silence. No talking, no comforting sounds of laughter, just the all-encompassing joyless strife toward eternal joy.

  Indeed, sir, the yogis don’t want any contact with people.

  Max thought of Viveka quietly wiping the snow from the roof of his cart and Ramakrishna’s silent face in the morning. He also would have to find peace within himself.

  17.

  Max awoke sweating for the fifth night in a row. His heart clutched. Another nightmare. A dark-skinned man electrocuted himself by climbing up an electric pole standing on the corner of a busy street. His face turned grayish-blue. His flesh burned. People screamed when his rigid body fell to the ground. It was like the first night. In that dream, a young man with close-cropped hair had set himself on fire. Max’s ears still rang from the screams of people surrounding the man. On the second night, a group of women in black headgear wept around a dead body. The next night was less gruesome. A thin old man sat in front of a television in a dark house and ate from a cracked bowl of rice, smiling eerily. A horrifying image each night, all different but each tugging at his heart, making him cry out in pain and grief. Yet he was also just a little distant from the people he saw—unlike the Scottish Catholic priest, the woman looking skyward, and the man kissing the amulet whom he had seen during his near-fatal hike up the Himalayas. These people weren’t him in past lives. They were familiar yet separate from him. Was he remembering forgotten images from the gang wars in the projects because his meditation had deepened?

  On the first day of the ten-day cycle, he had sat still and meditated on the infinite consciousness within just as Shakti had suggested. But it hadn’t worked. His mind still distracted easily. The object of concentration was just . . . too infinite. He needed something tangible to concentrate on. Perhaps a symbol of the infinite, he reasoned, and focused in his mind on the image of the Buddha, the man who claimed to have crossed the boundary from the finite to infinite. The Buddha’s contented eyes and inward-looking gaze occupied his attention. He didn’t cross and uncross his legs, stoop forward, or bend backward. Soon Max’s mind migrated from the man to his qualities. He now concentrated on the Buddha’s blazing determination instead and felt inspired after every meditation. Something clicked. It was as if he was becoming a small part of what he was meditating on. And as his meditation became more certain, his asana practice evolved too.

  That day, the sixth in the cycle, during asanas, he felt a sudden urge to bend his knees when he was standing inverse in Sirsasana, the headstand. He bent his knees but instead of coming down, he arched his back and slowly brought his legs behind his back. Lowering his feet farther, he touched the back of his head with his toes. A satisfying stream of blood rushed to his spine. He removed his wrists from the ground and caught hold of his big toes. He’d been in that pose for just a few seconds when he was struck by the impossibility of his whole body bent backward in a circle supported only by his head. God, he would break his spine. He was crushing his neck. He was choking. His eyes watered. He panicked. He pulled his feet up in a rush, flailed, and fell—into the able hands of Ramakrishna.

  “Relax, breathe, relax,” said Ramakrishna.

  He glided Max down gently.

  “Push your chest out,” said Ramakrishna.

 
Max thrust his chest forward and exhaled. He opened his eyes. His spine tingled. His head buzzed. The world felt fresh, different, alive. Both Hari and Shakti were staring at him.

  “What is that?” mouthed grim-faced Shakti, who hadn’t acknowledged his presence with as much as a nod since the silence started.

  “Sirsa Padasana, touching your head with your feet,” said Ramakrishna. “One of the toughest poses in the eighty-four classic asanas. Excellent for strengthening the spine, but do not attempt on your own yet. Please ask me to help you if you want to try.”

  Neither Shakti nor Hari wanted to try. Max didn’t either when he realized what he had just done.

  • • •

  TWO DAYS LATER, something similar happened when he was in Salabhasana, the locust or grasshopper pose. He lay facedown with his hands clasped under his stomach, chin touching the floor, eyes looking ahead, legs hoisted up, feeling none of the lingering back pain he had experienced in the initial classes, when some impulse made him kick his legs up higher. Without instruction, he pulled them higher and higher until they were vertically above his head and just the top of his chest lay on his upper arms. It didn’t feel comfortable, so he arched his legs farther back and brought them down so his heels rested in front of his face. He straightened his knees. His chest lifted from his arms. He stared incredulously as he was inverted into a circle once again. From the corner of his eye, he saw Shakti and Hari stand up and watch him.

  Lift up your legs. Now. His spine would snap any moment. But it didn’t. He was shocked by how natural the position felt. Until he started to choke. His chest was exploding. He lifted his legs in a rush when Ramakrishna stopped him.

  “Go back,” said Ramakrishna.

  Max pulled his legs back in front of his face. He was staring at his heels again.

  “Hold,” said Ramakrishna. “Circulate the breath, don’t exhale.”

  Max lay upturned for a minute, maybe more, following Ramakrishna’s instruction, feeling the fresh oxygen reach the depth of his abdomen. His panic subsided. He could do this for longer. He closed his eyes.

  “Now exhale and come up,” said Ramakrishna.

  Max released his breath slowly. He lifted his legs back, softly touching the ground without thuds or crashes. His body shook with energy. A stream of warm air flowed from his pelvis to the top of his head and back down to his pelvis. His head buzzed. The world was his to take. He could do anything. He breathed deeply to calm down.

  Hari and Shakti broke into spontaneous applause. Ramakrishna smiled broadly.

  “Viparita Salabhasana, the inverse of the locust,” he said. “The ancient yogis derived all asanas from nature. The grasshopper has the strongest abdomen among insects, hence the pose. Do the Salabhasana regularly for abdominal strength, but try the inverse only if your flexibility is exceptional.”

  Max didn’t think his flexibility was exceptional. He struggled with some basic poses like sitting forward bends and half spinal twists, poses that Hari and Shakti did with immaculate grace. How had he known these advanced poses that Ramakrishna hadn’t taught and he’d never seen? Please, not past lives again. No matter the science, the whole idea of reincarnation was still too much of a cliché. A hippie came to India, did some backbends, and started seeing events from his past life. But something else was happening; something physical was changing in him. His body pulsed with energy after the bandhas. He didn’t sweat buckets in pranayama as he used to just a week ago. He worked for hours in the burning sun, softening and breaking each piece of hard earth as if it were alive, a physical foe, but slept only two or three hours every night. For the rest of the night, he was awake, reading books other travelers had left behind on yoga, spiritual searches, Buddhism, and Zen—and of course, sweating from his inexplicable nightmares.

  Max didn’t sleep at all the night before silence broke. One moment he was meditating in the courtyard, the next moment someone was shaking him. He looked up at Ramakrishna.

  “Do you want to join us for asana class today, Mahadeva?”

  “Now?” said Max, surprised.

  Ramakrishna smiled. “Same time every morning.”

  Max skipped a breath. It couldn’t be morning. He had just sat down to meditate. He saw Hari and Shakti sit on their yoga mats. Had he really meditated the whole night? Nine hours straight from seven PM to four AM? He couldn’t sit cross-legged for that long, let alone meditate. It must be his body’s subconscious response to avoid the nightmares.

  “I’m coming,” he said.

  His mouth was dry. He circulated the saliva in his mouth.

  Back in his hut for a change of clothes, he felt no tiredness, no watering of eyes, no nervous energy pulsing through him. He felt none of the side effects that he experienced from sleepless nights back home. It was as if he hadn’t needed sleep at all.

  • • •

  MAX REMAINED DISTRACTED through asana class that day. When silence broke at the end of class, he was surprised he didn’t want to go to town. The idea of talking to Shakti, checking the Internet, hearing from Sophia, getting new information from the world, overwhelmed him.

  “Hurry, get ready,” said Shakti, laughing. “Tractor comes any time.”

  Max hesitated. His body quivered from the morning asanas. He just wanted to be alone, silent, still. A hollow fear arose in his gut. What was happening to him? The nightmares, the sleeplessness, this desire to keep silent after nine days of silence, it wasn’t normal. Too much, too quick. He had to get away from this bubble.

  “Yes, coming,” said Max.

  They followed the same steps—the tractor, the walk through the same unending orange land in the same heat. Max talked, laughed, tried to feel like himself, but his thoughts were occupied by his heels in front of his eyes in Viparita Salabhasana.

  • • •

  HE CHECKED HIS email again. A note from Sophia marked Urgent. He opened it immediately.

  I need to know you are safe. Just tell me you are still in India and have not wandered off to Tunisia . . . this has gone on too long, Maxi.

  Puzzled, he opened another message from Andre.

  Sophia is worried u r in Tunisia because u always wanted 2 go to Africa again. I told her even u r not so stupid. Write back Ace.

  Similar messages from Keith and Tina, his friends from Harvard.

  What was happening in Tunisia? He couldn’t load the online New York Times, CNN, or Yahoo!, so he asked the shopkeeper for the name of the national newspaper. The Times of India website loaded slowly. The cover page came up amid a hundred pop-up ads.

  A smiling photograph of a Middle Eastern man with closely cropped hair. Another picture of women wearing black headgear walking on a street.

  Max scanned the headlines, a distant, vacant chill rising in him: HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE PROTEST IN TUNISIA’S STREETS. BEN ALI THREATENS STRICT ACTION AGAINST DEMONSTRATORS. ANOTHER MAN ELECTROCUTES HIMSELF IN SIDI BOUZID.

  He opened the links mechanically. Brown faces shouting in protest, policemen in black fatigues with rifles in their hands, a jeep overturned, a burned man in a hospital bed, another man’s grayish-blue electrocuted body.

  He had seen every image before.

  They were the people from his dreams.

  Day 9 of the civilian rebellion in Tunisia. The revolution had started the same day his nightmares had.

  Max rubbed his face. His skin had gone cold.

  “Very sad in Africa, sahib. But good also. You wait and see, same thing will happen in India,” said the shopkeeper.

  Max contracted his abdomen and exhaled deeply. Numbly, he wrote back to Sophia and Andre.

  I’m in a small Indian village and nowhere near Tunisia. This place is a million times safer than New York so don’t worry for a second.

  Again he went back to the Times of India website and studied the chronology of the protests. No, he couldn’t have read of it bef
ore. There was no inkling of an uprising in Tunisia before a fruit seller burned himself in front of a government building. He couldn’t have guessed it from his trip to Africa. After Kilimanjaro, he had always wanted to go back, but only for a walking safari in a jungle. He knew absolutely nothing about Tunisia and its politics. What was happening?

  “My mother tells me about Tunisia. She is worried. She doesn’t know India and Tunisia are in different continents.” Shakti was standing behind him, watching the screen.

  Her smile disappeared. “You look white like ghost,” she said. She bent down. “You have friends and family in Tunisia?”

  Max shook his head. His throat was dry. It was just simple déjà vu, wasn’t it? Nothing to be alarmed about. Right?

  “The pictures are hard to see,” said Shakti.

  Max turned around. “What pictures, Shakti? I saw the whole thing. I felt it,” he said. “I smelled the man’s burning flesh. I heard the women shouting in the street. I saw a man electrocute himself. And I saw other things that aren’t in the newspaper. A man eating his dinner, smiling when he watched an overturned jeep on TV. A teacher writing the electrocuted man’s name on a school blackboard.”

  “What do you mean you see it, feel it?” she said.

  He stood up, wanting to be alone again. “I don’t know. I’ve not been myself for a few days,” he said.

  • • •

  THEY WALKED DOWN the narrow mud road.

  “I saw those people in my sleep every night since it happened,” he said.

  “Your sleep?”

  “In my dreams,” he said. It sounded strange. “They were the same people, I’m sure.”

  She stared at him. “So it happens to you. I do not know anyone who experiences it directly.”

  He stopped. “Experienced what, Shakti? What happened?” he said.