Christopher J McCandles was a young American from a rich family who, just after graduation in 1990, donated his life’s savings of 24,000 dollars to Oxfam International, packed his rucksack, and hitch-hiked to Denali National Park in Alaska to finally die in the woods there. People found a journal along with the body in a rusted, abandoned truck that he probably called home during his 113-days of “finding the meaning of it all”.

Based on the journal and interviews with people he met on his way to what he called an “Alaskan odyssey”, Jon Krakauer wrote a book Into the Wild and subsequently a film was made in 2007 with the same title by Sean Penn.

Many Americans love the way McCandle spent his short life. Up north, many Alaskans hate him for dying in a place where help was just two miles away in the Park Ranger’s cabin. If there was an award for stupidity of the century, the judges will be sorely be tempted to honour this 24-year-old deceased crackpot.

McCandles was fed up with a hypocritical society around him. He trusted nobody. He had a view that people are selfish and only make or break relationships for money and material comfort. He looked at all directions and the skyline of American cities nauseated him. When he searched for a nice green, flowering tree, he saw drug peddlers and whores. His parents often quarrelled. He was bored with credit cards, cars, friends and booze.

His case was not a new addition to the bankruptcy of well-being in America. Many youngsters in the US gladly shoot classmates and teachers when fed up with society. For it was a civilised thing to do rather than shoot people, McCandles thought he could run away to the woods and find God there, away from civilisation and all the ills of the modern world.

But he used a rifle to hunt for food, read books to discover edible plants, kept a journal which hermits are not supposed to do. He even killed a moose but could not preserve its meat. He set out to live a life of simplicity. He died living the life of a hypocrite.

Which is why, instead of going through all the trouble, he could have visited India if he was so desperate to meet God and find the light. Haridwar would have impressed him. The Kumbh Mela would have made his eyes pop out of the socket. There are ashrams in untold numbers in discreet places across India. McCandles could have come to the melting pot of the world’s spiritual needs.

But running head on into the same hypocrisy from which he tried to flee was indeed stupid, like so many other Americans. What was the need for abandoning a life of reason in a big city in Virginia? Nothing explains his dilemma better than the simple observation that people of his generation, bored with everything modern, are attracted to exotic locations where they hope to find something different.

Otherwise how else can one explain all the vice descending on Goa’s virgin beaches wearing saffron robes and chanting “Hare Krishna”.

Heart disease and diabetes are not society’s deadliest killers. Hypocrisy is. McCandles died of eating hedysarum boreale mackenzii, a poisonous wild sweet pea plant. Had he kept God aside for a while and used science, he would be here to tell his story.