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.

Now, I think of my writing as having two foundations: entertainment and meaning. The meaning portion is really me trying to answer my questions. The entertainment aspect of it is how I make a story that can make people turn the pages.

I think it is really a personal journey of purification, rather than whether something external is going to be good or bad. Anything external will always live in that polarity - a combination of good and bad.

When I came to the U.S., Kraft sponsored my green card, so I was at Kraft foods and I owed them, I felt. But then as my life purified more and more, I felt that that corporation was not doing the right things for the world. That led me to a company that makes organic baby products. It is very pure in its actions and how it deals with others.

What helped me a lot was that I chose an American lead protagonist, because that liberated a lot from my own knowledge. If I had approached it from the perspective of an Indian main character, I think I would have assumed a lot of knowledge and I would have resented the presence of the author.

I wanted to write something that was very entertaining to read. The hardest part of this novel [The Yoga of Max's Discontent] was how to make a deeply spiritual transformation journey page-turning and adventurous. That was the hardest part to crack for me.

I think his karma became to serve in nature and not to serve in the world, while I think my karma is to be in the world.