Man on Fire

I was beating the life out of Bibhuti with a baseball bat when my first monsoon broke....

John Lock has come to India to meet his destiny: a destiny dressed in a white karate suit and sporting an impressive moustache. He has fled the quiet desperation of his life in England: decades wasted in a meaningless job, a marriage foundering in the wake of loss, and a terrible secret he cannot bear to share with his wife. He has come to offer his help to a man who has learned to conquer pain, a world record breaker who specializes in feats of extreme endurance and ill-advised masochism.

Bibhuti Nayak's next record attempt - to have 50 baseball bats broken over his body - will set the seal on a career that has seen him rise from poverty to become a minor celebrity in a nation where standing out from the crowd requires tenacity, courage, and perhaps a touch of madness. In answering Bibhuti's call for assistance, John hopes to rewrite a brave end to a life poorly lived. But as they take their leap of faith together, and John is welcomed into Bibhuti's family and into the color and chaos of Mumbai - where he encounters ping-pong-playing monks, a fearless seven-year-old martial arts warrior, and an old man longing for the monsoon to wash him away - he learns more about life, death, and everything in between than he could ever have bargained for.