The Yoga of Max's Discontent Read online

  • • •

  MID-JUNE. STILL NO SIGN of the monsoon that had been expected six weeks before. The eggplant died. The drumstick crop shriveled but still yielded a little. They reduced their food to two cups of roasted millet and a small serving of dry drumsticks a day. Max lost weight rapidly. He made more holes in his belt with the awl-like tool they used in the fields.

  One day he stopped pumping his stomach in the middle of the afternoon pranayama.

  He wasn’t sweating as he usually did in the afternoons. Fuck. He was so dehydrated he didn’t even sweat a drop anymore. Ramakrishna and Shakti were thrusting their abdomens in and out. Did they realize they were in the middle of a drought? They couldn’t burn energy like this. It was dangerous. He couldn’t be part of this madness anymore. He lay back down on his mat and didn’t do the rest of the pranayama or any of the asanas.

  The next day Shakti stopped as well.

  Max stared at her thin body in the fields that day. Was she trying to keep up with him? But he was trying to keep up with her. They would both kill themselves like that. That night he didn’t come out for meditation. He lay still on his bed just as his exhausted body told him to. When he went to the bathroom, he saw that Shakti’s mat was empty as well. Max came back and slept. He saw his mother with a crumbling cookie in her pale, bony fingers. Sophia stretching out her hand to offer him the melting candy. Swirling, spinning blackness.

  One day this will all come back to you, Max.

  Max awoke with a start. His throat choked. Keisha, black eyes brimming with tears outside the clinic in Tarrytown. He had forced her to ride up the Metro North with him so that no one would see them. Just as he had pressured her to abort their child. His chest filled up. Max hadn’t wanted to be a father at seventeen like all the other guys in the projects. He had wanted to go to college so his mother’s sacrifices didn’t go to waste. The mud walls of the hut closed in on him. Max covered his eyes with his hands and tried not to cry and lose water.

  You did what you had to, Max, but one day this will all come back to you.

  She was right. It had come back. This was his penance for destroying Keisha’s life. She had grown up in a strict religious family. They hadn’t told anyone about the pregnancy or the abortion, but her guilt had likely made her run away from home. Was she even alive? Max couldn’t stop the tears anymore. Keisha was so bright, so beautiful. She could’ve run with the drug lords, with their BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes and worldly talk. All the girls wanted them for boyfriends. Instead, she had dated a poor white kid who was trying desperately to be cooler than he was. He didn’t even have to front with her. She had seen how much he enjoyed math and chemistry and had encouraged him to study. Where would he be without her? Yet he’d turned away from her the moment he got into college. How different her life would have turned out if he hadn’t entered it. The pain he had caused was coming back. He had to bear it. He turned over and pressed his aching stomach against the hard bed.

  • • •

  NOT A DROP of rain fell in the next two weeks. The rain was now eight weeks late. Their well water all but disappeared. Even the millet dried up. They cut their food intake further. Max passed the week in a hazy stupor. He woke up with a dull pain in his head every day and did a little pranayama to fill his empty stomach with breath. His guts hurt from severe constipation. He worked listlessly in the fields, feeling nothing—not heat, not exhaustion, not even pain when the millet stalks cut deep grooves in his dry skin, just hunger.

  For the rest of the day, he lay on his bed, caked in sweat and mud, images of eighteen-year-old Keisha’s sharp, shining face filling his mind, stopping him from walking toward the gate.

  • • •

  “ANY DAY NOW it will come,” said Ramakrishna, looking skyward at the flaming sun after completing their spare lunch in the tenth week of the drought on a day when silence broke. “It always comes. Sometimes early, sometimes delayed, but rain comes.”

  He looked so unfazed, so oblivious, that Max couldn’t take it any longer.

  “I have money,” he said in a raspy voice he almost didn’t recognize. His dry, cracked lips hurt when he spoke. “We can get food and water.”

  Ramakrishna shook his head. “I am your host. I cannot accept anything from you. And whatever we have is enough for us.”

  The hunger roared within Max. He opened his mouth to protest but faltered as Keisha’s small, slim body clouded his eyes again. He looked away. Shakti was picking the last of the millet seeds delicately from her plate. A lump formed in Max’s throat. He coughed. “It’s not enough for me,” he said evenly.

  “My doors are always open for you. Might it be easier for you if you come back after a few months?” said Ramakrishna.

  Max felt his face redden. He stared at his blistered toes on the burning red mud and breathed slowly. “It’s just food. Why does it matter where it comes from?” he said.

  Ramakrishna was shaking his head even before he had completed his sentence. “No, no, that is the way it has to be. And we do have enough to live. Fasting is good. It gives the digestive organs a rest. It cleanses the system of toxins. You develop patience and self-control. One who conquers hunger conquers all the senses. Nothing binds him to the material plane then.”

  “But this isn’t fasting,” said Max. “We are starving.”

  “All I can offer you is my share. Please have that from tomorrow,” said Ramakrishna.

  He got up and wiped his plate with dried, burned leaves and left it at its usual place outside the hut.

  Max stared into Shakti’s sunken eyes. “I’m going to leave,” he wanted to say. He knew if he capitulated, she would too. Shakti wiped off a strand of dry hair from her face and looked away. Hot wind stung his eyes. She must be working through her own past as well. He wouldn’t get in her way. All his life, he had made easy choices. Now no longer. Max wiped his plate dry and left.

  • • •

  FROM THAT DAY, Ramakrishna ate only half a cup of millet a day.

  Max apologized and requested him to have more.

  “No, no, your talk was good. I was getting lazy from habit. I have lived on much less before,” he said.

  • • •

  ANOTHER WEEK PASSED. Max began to worry more and more about Shakti. She had lost at least twenty pounds in the last two months. Her face had lost its color. Her red hair looked dull and her eyes bloodshot.

  One day she didn’t wear her glasses and stumbled through the fields as if she were sleepwalking. Max had never seen her remove her glasses before. She didn’t wear them again the next day. Her swollen eyes popped out of her sunken face. Twice she stopped and adjusted her glasses. Only there was nothing to adjust. Her thin fingers moved up and down her eyes weakly. Max started to panic. It took all his strength to restrain himself from talking to her.

  Later that afternoon, he woke up from a thick sleep to hear Ramakrishna and Shakti arguing in the courtyard. Max walked out of his hut. Ramakrishna was shaking his head. Shakti’s expressions grew more and more animated. A tear trickled down her face. He had never seen Shakti cry. She must be asking for more food and Ramakrishna was refusing as always. Didn’t he know her by now? She was too proud to break silence and ask for more unless she needed it to live.

  Enough. This had gone on too long. The tight knot of Keisha’s images loosened. He’d never forgive himself if something happened to Shakti. It was time to tap into the emergency rations they’d been storing away. No matter how meager the crop they produced daily, Ramakrishna had put a portion away for later. It made perfect sense. If the rain didn’t come in another week, the dry land would turn to cement. Thus far, hunger had been tough to bear. Another week and it would be the difference between life and death. Shakti had likely reached that point. What kind of a saint was Ramakrishna if he couldn’t see that?

  Shakti went inside her hut. Max walked over to Ramakrishna.

/>   “Shakti looks really sick. We should use the emergency rations,” said Max.

  Ramakrishna looked puzzled.

  “The supplies in storage,” said Max with rising impatience. He went to the kitchen hut next to Ramakrishna’s. “This,” he said, pointing to the four brown sacks, two with millet, one each with eggplant and drumsticks.

  Ramakrishna shook his head. “No, no, no. This is for the village. We will give it to them when the tractor comes next.”

  Days of hunger and deprivation rose in Max like an angry force. He coughed to clear his throat. “No, you can’t do that,” said Max. “Shakti is dying.”

  “I think I told you in the beginning, whatever we produce, we give half to the village,” said Ramakrishna.

  Max felt an urgent physical need to lift Ramakrishna by the collar of his long Indian kurta, force him against the wall of the hut, and shake the idiocy out of him. He backed away a step. He couldn’t trust himself not to lift his hand.

  “No, I helped farm too. We can’t give our food away,” said Max, shaking. Tears stung his eyes. “We can’t help anyone if we can’t help ourselves. This is madness.”

  Ramakrishna’s eyes didn’t waver. His face had lost none of its luster in the days of deprivation. “This is how it has to be,” said Ramakrishna. He turned around.

  Max could no longer restrain himself. He grabbed him by his shoulders. “She is dying, don’t you understand?” he said, shaking him. “Shakti could die. We can’t let her die. Please.”

  “Don’t be crazy, Max. I am fine.”

  Max turned around.

  “Your glasses?” he said weakly.

  “A screw comes loose,” she said.

  “You were asking him for food?” he said.

  “Not for myself,” she said.

  She was having the same discussion with Ramakrishna as he had just had. Max took his hands off Ramakrishna’s shoulders.

  Shakti turned to Ramakrishna. “Can we cook now?”

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” said Max.

  “Not at all,” said Ramakrishna. He paused. “I know this is difficult, but what we have is enough.”

  • • •

  THEY ATE THEIR scant meal in Ramakrishna’s hut, tucked away from the blazing sun.

  “I want to leave,” said Shakti at the end of the meal.

  Ramakrishna nodded. “A tractor will come on the third day from today. You can leave then.”

  No tractor had come for the last month, probably because the village was enduring the same drought. But they didn’t ask how he was sure one would come in three days. They just knew it would.

  Max hesitated. “I will leave too,” he said.

  “I understand. My door will always be open should either of you want to come back,” said Ramakrishna.

  Shakti smiled at Max when Ramakrishna left, then burst out in dry sobs. Max wanted to cry too, because he knew she wasn’t crying for the hunger or the thirst. They would pull through another week. She was crying for the loss of a guru who had given them a glimpse of truth and could light the entire path for them. But leaving, they both knew, was now inevitable. Max put his hands in hers and held her close, feeling her burning skin under him. They had never touched before. Ramakrishna had never explicitly forbidden them, but touch meant desire, a narrow craving that tethered one to this limited life. But today, to touch another burning, throbbing body was to feel alive again. For everything around them—the land, their crops, the spare insects, even the resident frogs and geckos—had all shriveled and burned to death.

  20.

  The tractor came early in the morning on the third day. The driver had aged considerably from the last time they’d seen him a month ago. His dry, papery skin was covered with thick grooves, his lips were cracked, and he seemed to have shrunk to half his size. Max shook his burning hand, relieved they were carrying food for the village. He felt ashamed for throwing a tantrum. But Shakti and he were starving too. Just loading the food sacks and backpacks in the tractor made his head spin. They bent down and touched Ramakrishna’s feet, then folded their hands, thanking him for his teaching and hospitality. Max felt a pang of concern about leaving him alone without emergency rations. But he knew Ramakrishna would manage as he had for all these years. They drove away in the sputtering tractor.

  The tractor ran out of fuel a few miles before they reached the village. The farmer apologized. There was no gas in the village. They would have to walk. He himself was too tired to walk. Could they ask the villagers to make something from the food sacks they were carrying and send it back? He lay down under the tractor to protect himself from the blazing sun. Max promised he would come back himself with food. They hoisted their backpacks and loaded the food sacks on their heads, beginning a slow, stumbling walk to the village.

  They stopped for a break midway and sat down on their backpacks, sweat pouring down their temples. Max licked his lips. Salt. He licked some more. Any food would do. Soon he would eat more. Chocolate biscuits and orange juice. Apples, bananas, rice, bread. Blood coursed through his veins. Max took off his shirt and wiped the sweat off his face.

  Shakti looked around. Seeing just miles of desolate land, she removed her T-shirt and sat in her bra.

  “Where you will go next?” said Shakti, opening her ponytail so that her hair fell over her naked, tanned shoulders.

  Max cupped his hand over his eyes to shield them from the blinding sun. “Not back home,” he said. “Maybe Varanasi. I read that it’s India’s holiest place. Anywhere I can find a teacher half as good as Ramakrishna. You?”

  “Back to Milan,” she said. “My sabbatical is almost over. First, I thought I would not join the university, but now I want to.”

  “Come with me,” said Max.

  She shook her head. “I feel like this for some time now. I do not want this. I want life. I want family. Imperfect. Comfortable. Beautiful.”

  Max’s eyes watered from the hot wind. He would probably never see Shakti again. An aching loneliness filled him. Yet another friendship left halfway. “Even I don’t know if I want liberation,” he said.

  “You do,” she said.

  Max had the sudden urge to pull her sure face closer. “Will you have a family with your boyfriend?” he said.

  “Maybe yes. Maybe no. Finding a man is not difficult for me.” She smiled.

  She tossed her hair back, a stream of sweat dripping from the side of her neck to her naked torso. Max stared at the tops of her soft white breasts against her tanned skin.

  “Not difficult at all,” he said. “You are beautiful.”

  “Yogis do not look at woman like that.” She laughed.

  “I’m not a yogi then,” he said.

  He came closer. His lips found hers. He tasted water, salt, and blood in her chapped skin. He put his hands on her waist and pulled her closer to his naked chest. Her burning skin pressed against him.

  “I am messy. I am dirty. I smell. I do not feel attractive,” she said.

  “I love your smell,” he said.

  He spread his shirt below them, put her on it, and tugged her cargo pants off. He buried his face between her legs, smelling sweat mixed with dry earth. She moaned. He moved up and down her lean, hard body, licking, kissing, touching, nibbling, biting, his desire fueled by starvation.

  He stopped and lay down still on her, feeling her writhe below him. She circled his cracked sore nipples with her tongue, caressed his raw skin, rubbed her fingers over his dry, torn hips, and drew blood from his cuts. He gasped with pain and pleasure and entered her.

  They fucked hard as the sun beat upon them.

  Again and again they went up, down, his face in her buttocks, her mouth working his penis, fucking, sucking, living, the months of abstinence and denial seeping away from their hard, weary bodies until their skins peeled from the unforgiving wrath of the sun and
they cried out in pain.

  He shifted position and took her from behind, aroused once again by the red-brown hair falling over her shoulders, the fullness of her breasts and her hard waist.

  They screamed together when he came.

  They collapsed into each other’s arms, a sweaty mix of dust and blood, and lay there still and silent, unconcerned with the beating sun.

  “I want this every day. I like this. I do not like yoga,” she said after a while.

  “Come with me. We can have this every day,” said Max.

  She got up, pushed her hair back, and started clasping her bra.

  Max forced himself up as well. A thousand prickly, throbbing, alive sensations coursed through his body. “Come with me,” he said again.

  She snorted. “I give us one week, maybe two. You will disappear after that. You want yoga, not sex.”

  He put his shirt back on and tousled her hair. “How do you know everything?”

  “I do not know everything, but I know you, Max. I see you work. I see you do yoga. You are a parivrajaka, an eternal traveler, a yogi with no home who will not rest until he sees God face-to-face,” she said. “I am not like that.”