In the first 27 years of my life, I never had written a single non-technical word. I went to engineering college and went to business school. I never knew I could write fiction of any form.

The first novel that I wrote was because I was having very interesting sorts of experiences, for Indians of my generation.

I have been meditating for many years now, but I think for quite a few years my relationship with meditation was very intellectual. I would do meditation for all the usual things that you would think about, to be more calm, be more productive, relieve stress.

There is a role for growth and experiencing the world, and pushing the boundaries of that, and then there is a time to bring it within. All people are at different stages of that journey.

In the West, it is the opposite, like you are using these practices [meditation and yoga ] to further your ego by being more productive, being more this, and getting more out of your work and earning more money. In the East, the whole idea is that you are dissolving your essence through these practices.

A lot of the book [The Yoga of Max's Discontent] is about karma and rebirth. Things like that are very attuned to my life as an Indian, but when I approach it from a perspective of a Westerner, then I have a skeptical, yet kind of novice view on it. I think that choice really liberated the story to be its own story. A lot of the conclusions that Max reaches on his own are not mine at all. So, I think that allowed the story to take on its own momentum, to have its own propulsive force.

There is no absolute truth that the guy sitting in the cave in the Himalayas is useless, because he is at that point in his journey where he has experienced everything in the world and does not have an attraction to it anymore.