Excerpt from The True Happiness Company by Veena Dinavahi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

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June 2011

I didn't know what to expect from the True Happiness Company—crystal healing? bloodletting?—but I didn't expect Bob Lyon.

Amma first found Bob on one of her infamous late-night Google searches. Amma—my very sweet, very bright former cancer research scientist mother—has two master's degrees, in biochemistry and biotechnology. She also once nearly accepted a job scooping eyeballs out of dead bodies, despite the fact that she faints at the sight of blood. People think it's easy to know yourself, your boundaries and fears and limits, but decision-making is a convoluted process. Necessity has a way of overpowering all other considerations. A frequenter of Tony Robbins seminars and an inspirational speech addict, Amma has a long-standing history of finding sketchy people on the Internet and paying them too much money to do whatever they promise to do: turn our sad, dying lawn into a lush blanket of green, teach her how to get rich quick in the stock market or, in this case, save her daughter's life.

She called Bob on her way to work.

"Pull over," he instructed. "Pull over right now."

Alarmed, Amma pulled over on a side street of Baltimore.

"If you do not bring your daughter here, she WILL be dead."

It is one thing to have a worst fear nebulously haunt the back of your mind and quite another to hear it pronounced as an inevitability by a strong, commanding voice who has published more than a dozen books and hosted seminars worldwide. Emails were exchanged. An appointment was made.

I didn't know it at the time, but Amma hadn't found Bob's website on her own; she'd first found a blog written by a woman whose son had been suicidal. Amma called her, and the woman said, "Take your daughter to see Bob Lyon now."

If you are a parent, if you have ever been confused and desperate and aching for your children, then you know the tug of a fellow mother's heartfelt advice. Amma made all her parenting decisions based on these kinds of recommendations; I ended up playing the violin because she sat next to a woman at my first orchestra concert who insisted that once you allow a child to quit one thing, they become a quitter for the rest of their lives. I was in the third grade and spent the next ten years taking private violin lessons in the home of a woman who collected hot sauce and owned eight cats. Shelves and shelves of hot sauce filled the entryway, the living room where I had my lessons, and the kitchen, of course. This teacher fed squirrels out of her hand on her back porch during my lesson while I dreamed of playing the flute. When I asked Amma years later why I hadn't been allowed to switch, she shrugged and answered, "I sat next to this woman who said ..."

If the confident word of a stranger could dictate what instrument I played, imagine how much more weight it carried when Amma was faced with a suicidal daughter she could not seem to save.

The first thing I said to Bob Lyon was, "I don't have to do shit," as I flounced into the soft corner creases of a once-white couch in his living room.

At least, that is his version of our first meeting: me waltzing into his home in back-country Georgia and cursing before he can get a word in edgewise. Though I'm certain he spoke first, I've since forgotten what he said that put me on the defensive. At age nineteen, I didn't typically curse at adults—part of that Indian "respect your elders" thing—plus cursing tended to go over poorly. But Bob Lyon was unperturbed.

"No," he said. "You really don't."

I flinched. His response was disconcerting because he was the first adult I'd met who I couldn't unnerve. Had he not spoken first? Was I making it up? Was I the kind of person who dropped expletives unprovoked? This feeling of disorientation—this constant second-guessing of myself—pervaded our entire relationship. My memory buckled under the force of his confidence.

Excerpted from The True Happiness Company by Veena Dinavahi. Copyright © 2025 by Veena Dinavahi. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.