Karan Bajaj is an Indian American author of three contemporary Indian novels, Keep Off the Grass, Johnny Gone Down, and The Seeker. Bajaj's first novel, Keep Off the Grass, which became a bestseller with more than 70,000 copies sold in the year of release, was a semi-finalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and was long listed for the India plaza Golden QuillAward. Together his novels have sold more than 200,000 copies in India.
Keep Off The Grass was Bajaj's first venture into writing. The story is about a psychedelic road trip of a 25-year-old Yale graduate through the length and breadth of India. The journey is made by a brilliant youngster named Samrat, born to immigrant parents in the U.S. who decides to go out in search of his roots. Along the way Samrat, the protagonist, ends up in prison for possession of marijuana, develops a drug addiction, meditates in the foothills of the Himalayas, has a one-night stand with a hippie in Dharamsala and meets flesh-eating Aghoree saints on the banks of Varanasi.
Future film
Kunal Kohli Productions, UTV Productions, and Mosaic Media Group bid for the film rights of the book. They were eventually sold to Mosaic Media Group. Ben Rekhi has been signed up as director. The director has stated that the film will be "like an Indian version of The Motorcycle Diaries".
''Johnny Gone Down''
Bajaj's second novel, Johnny Gone Down, is a thriller published by HarperCollins-India in 2010. Bajaj described the novel as focusing on the "bizarre, almost surreal series of events that transform an MIT graduate into first a genocide survivor, then a Buddhist monk, a drug lord, a homeless accountant, a software mogul, and a deadly game fighter over a period of twenty years."
Feature film
Tim Schroeder of Cahuenga Motion Pictures has signed on as the director of the Johnny Gone Down film, scheduled for release in 2016.
''The Seeker''
Bajaj's third novel, The Seeker, was published by Penguin Random House India in June 2015. The novel is about an investment banker in New York who embarks on a quest to become a yogi in the Himalayas. It was inspired by Bajaj's one-year sabbatical traveling from Europe to India, learning Hath yoga in an ashram in India, and practicing meditation in the Himalayas. The book opened to strong reviews in India and was a bestseller at launch with several reviewers comparing it to Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. The Statesman called it "engaging, convincing, realistic and highly readable", noting that The Seeker was released five years after Johny Gone Down in 2010 and the author took this break to refine his writing which is truly reflected in The Seeker.
''The Yoga of Max's Discontent''
The Yoga of Max's Discontent was published the Riverhead Books imprint of Penguin Random House in May 2016. This is Bajaj's first international release. The novel is about an investment banker in New York who embarks on a quest to become a yogi in the Himalayas.
