I was living in Cambodia at the time, in the Khmer ghetto surrounding Boeung Kok Lake in Phnom Penh, writing my first short story. I had just finished reading Golf in the Kingdom by Michael Murphy (the recognized classic of the genre). And I came downstairs 
from my little rented room hot, wanting to talk to somebody about it.
The first person I ran into was Pico Iyer, the well known travel writer. He was in the Same-Same Cafe visiting a mutual friend who ran it, the American monk in his book Lady and the Monk.
Pico said he’d heard of Golf in the Kingdom, and knew it was a classic of the genre. But he hadn’t read it. And while the monk and I shot pool, I told Pico that I thought golf-as-life was a great idea, and that I liked the book. But I didn’t think the author had the spiritual journey quite right (you make less of the ego, not more of it). Later, when alone and out walking I wondered, What if the story took place in India, where they have the spirituality thing right?
Since then I’ve been hard at work on this large project, traveling many times to India for research.
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