Maya: A Novel

This world is Maya – an illusion said the ancient Indians and so did Plato. Is this true? Software developer Viren is living the American dream in Sunnyvale, California. His anthropologist Uncle’s death in a remote region of Chhattisgarh forces him to travel to India. His Uncle who lived amongst strange tribes was the only family he had ever known. In Chhattisgarh, the long-subdued demons in his mind begin surfacing. The suppressed trauma of his mother’s suicide and estrangement from his father threatens to overwhelm him. His journey transmutes into a voyage into the self – a delving into his existential angst. Here in the backwaters, he is juxtaposed between two different worlds and two different eras. One day Viren stumbles across Maya, a mysteriously alluringly woman living alone in a dilapidated fort deep in the wilderness. He is bewitched. Maya is spiritual and deeply mystical having meditated in the Himalayas. She had supernatural powers beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals, yet Viren finds her entirely enticing. Their intense metaphysical conversations force Viren to question everything about life. Is there an underlying unity between the ancient and the modern? Is his attraction for her merely the illusory nature of this world? Or is there a deeper meaning to human existence?