In "Stalking God: My Unorthodox Search for Something to Believe In," corporate lawyer Anjali Kumar takes us along on her quest for spiritual meaning and purpose in the universe. It’s a book that anyone seeking anything can relate to. And where it ends up is downright profound.
I’ll be honest — at first, the idea of a spiritual journey quest book didn’t inherently appeal to me. While Kumar starts her book with the startling realization that she’s lost in the spiritual wilderness, I myself am happily tucked under a warm blanket of spiritual blankness, sitting near a roaring fire of not giving a shit. It’s not that I don’t care if there’s a God or something bigger out there, I just have other things to focus on —and if there is a God, I reckon she/he/it isn’t really bothered by whether I’m paying attention to her/him/it or not. Because I also figure God has other things to focus on, too. To me, God has always felt like that second cousin twice removed who I love and wish the best for, but don’t really think about much and for all I know could be dead, I haven’t Googled recently to find out.
Meanwhile, Kumar was an attorney at Google and was used to Googling everything, figuratively and literally — used to always having the answers to whatever questions came up. So when her daughter was born and Kumar realized she didn’t know what she would eventually tell her about God and existence and belief — Kumar herself having been raised in a hodgepodge of religions — she set out to answer for herself what Google could not. And thus begins an uproarious romp through the spiritual fringe of the universe — not the mainstream religions, which Kumar thought she had already exhausted, but, as Kumar writes, "looking elsewhere and everywhere." She has her aura cleaned by a virtual healer, participates in a potluck dinner with a coven of witches, tries to sweat her way to enlightenment in a Mexican sweat lodge, and hires a medium to convene with the dead. "Nothing was off-limits or too unorthodox," Kumar writes. She documents trying to find the spirituality in so-called spiritual pursuits like Burning Man and Soul Cycle, and traveled all the way to Brazil to confer with one of the world’s most infamous faith healers, a guy named John of God who millions of people from around the world — including Oprah — have visited. She even drinks his patented blessed water, which apparently sells for $3 a pop.
Mostly, Kumar’s book is just fun. In one vignette, a guru named Paramji — whom she describes as looking like an Indian Santa Claus — tells her that she was named wrong and should change her name to something beginning with Bu or Bhaa or Pha or Dha. He tells her this before literally climbing on top of her and chanting into her throat as other people sit positioned at her chakras to echo the chanting, in what is supposed to heal her yoni, aka, basically, her vaginal energy. It’s a hysterical scene, like many in the book. But when you stop and think about it, it’s unsettling. Here’s a dude guru telling a woman she’s somehow inadequate or incorrect from soup to nuts, so to speak.
At the same time I was laughing, I started wondering how many of these spiritual gurus are sought out by women who believe there’s something wrong with them, not because there actually is, but because society has told them there is. How much of our seeking culture stems from our perpetual sense of inadequacy? This is true of fitness and fashion crazes, yes, but seems especially pertinent to the realm of spirituality, something that inherently can only be found within. And yet, so many of us spend so much effort and agony — not to mention money — trying to grasp it from others. This is what actually needs fixing.
Kumar’s book left me wondering why we crave deeper meaning and whether that’s ultimately a good thing — a way for us all to connect to some bigger purpose and to each other — or a scam, forcing us to bury ourselves in mountains of self-help to get at some itch we can never quite scratch. "Stalking God" left me less curious about what the answer is than why we all, fairly universally, ask the question. What does that say about us as people?
Ultimately, Kumar addresses this in what is perhaps the most transcendently spiritual part of the book, and writes beautifully and, well, spiritually about the surprise lesson she ended up taking away. I won’t spoil it for you. But while the entire book is enjoyable as a breezy travelogue about the weird experiences Kumar collects and her witty observations about them, the end of the book is as intimate and attention-getting as an Indian Santa Claus chanting into your chakras; an arresting revelation about humanity that has stuck in my mind ever since. Personally, I don’t know what I would call this. But if you called it spirituality and meaning, you wouldn’t be wrong.
You can buy "Stalking God: My Unorthodox Search for Something to Believe In" here.