Growing up in small-town Oklahoma, Kirtan Nautiyal resented how his Indian heritage set him apart. It was only years later, searching for a sense of home, that he would start to question all he had assumed about what his immigrant parents had taught him.

Inspired by the circular Hindu ritual of the aarti, this profound memoir in essays chronicles Nautiyal’s attempt to return to his cultural inheritance on his own terms. Along the way, he rediscovers family history in the Garhwal Himalaya, reconnects with his childhood fascination with the American Civil War, and delves into the lives of forgotten Indian American writers and scientists—including his own deeply private father. As he treats cancer patients in his career as an oncologist, endures painful years of infertility with his wife, and, ultimately, loses his father after a years-long decline, he begins to see how the Hindu practices of his youth may hold the peace he’s been searching for. Written with remarkable vulnerability and surprising humor, We Are Not These Bodies reveals one Indian American’s effort to reclaim his tradition in a time of rising anti-Indian and anti-Hindu sentiment.