Amriika (18 page)

“In every scientist’s life,” Peter Bowra began his introduction at the colloquium, from his wheelchair behind a small table on the stage, “there comes a time when individual phenomena — such and such an equation, such and such an effect, the brick and mortar of the scientific endeavour — cease to hold the mind.” Perhaps this restlessness was due simply to an awareness of one’s own mortality.
But what began to hold the fascination for the mature scientist was the greater picture — the Holy Grail of all the great minds of the past. One could call this Holy Grail the equation of state of the universe, one could call it a unified field …

Bowra’s own research for a single overarching pattern in the behaviour of the universe had brought him, after useless detours in the arid world of Western philosophy, to Eastern mysticism. He had begun to entertain what only a few weeks before had been unthinkable for him: the notion of a supermind, or soul. He was struck by those mystical systems of contemplation that from the beginnings of civilization insisted on a unified view of everything. And so he found himself in the halls of the marvellous colonial-style mansion in Newton — what a happy coincidence, that name! — the ashram of the Divine Anand Mission, whose teachings were partly inspired by Einstein’s search for the Holy Grail.

Satguru went to the podium, which was beside the professor’s table, and greeted the audience with a namasté — a joining of the palms, and a brief bow. Then he recited a verse in Sanskrit, after which, in a British accent somewhat loosened by his stay in America, he gave a brief introduction to Indian mysticism and mythology. When he finished, he nodded to Peter Bowra, and for the rest of the session the two men conducted the proceedings together.

“And so where does the connection come in, between science and mysticism?” the scientist asked. “In the past few weeks we have exchanged notes on our respective disciplines. While our approaches to the secrets of the universe are diametrically opposite, we were struck by some remarkable coincidences. We would like to share them with you.”

Lights were dimmed, a slide image came on the screen: a bubble-chamber photo of particle trajectories; beside it a projection of the god Shiva dancing. The lines and curves of the bubble-chamber image could be interpreted, without too much assistance, as forming an outline profile of the dancer. Many such parallels were shown; between icons and diagrams, equations and musical scores, ideas and ideas.

“We are not saying these different-looking phenomena, the subjective and objective if you will, are precisely the same,” said Bowra. “That would be too simple. What we have shown are just a few data — some patterns, symbols, and images — worth contemplating. This is just the beginning.”

The colloquium was a resounding success. The mere fact of such a bold presumption as that of combining modern science with Eastern mysticism in order to understand human existence was itself remarkable and exciting, a sign of the free spirit of the times.

Ramji and Lyris parted with a brief hug. She left through a side entrance, and he headed for the lobby at the back. There he ran straight into Sona, who held a Styrofoam cup of coffee in each hand, one of which he proffered to Ramji, and an Oreo cookie in his mouth.

Sona said: “Or don’t you take coffee anymore. What’s happened to you, Ramji? You could be mistaken for a guru yourself,” he added, looking Ramji up and down — Ramji with a kurta over his pants, long hair curling at the back of the neck, and a beard.

Sona was in a blue Tech windbreaker and beige Levi’s bell-bottoms. There was a certain acquired confidence, a composure in his bearing which made him seem very much a part of his
milieu now, and no longer the wide-eyed genial foreigner. He too sported a beard, but his was trimmed, a neat goatee ending in a point. Could the American girlfriend Amy have done so much for him?

And now here he was, come to bring the apostate back into the fold …

“Actually, I do have what you might call a disciple of sorts,” Ramji said, “so you could call me a guru I suppose.…” Let him stew for a bit. (He was referring to a young man who had recently gravitated towards him to learn the ropes at the ashram.)

“Playing the Indian card now, are we?” Sona asked.

“Why not? What did you think of the lecture?”

“Why you or anybody else can’t see through this charade — the guy’s a divinity school dropout, for God’s sake! Then proclaims himself a guru —”

“He must have been some good to get in. And divinity school is just theory. Who needs that? People seek the real thing. He’s the son of the famous Anandaswamy —”

“Yeah, conceived while the great teacher himself was demonstrating a yogic position to a beautiful, gullible young woman, I’ll bet. What do
you
learn there — Kama Sutra?”

They crossed Mass Ave to go to the Student Center. The Hare Krishna mendicants were still vigorously at it, twirling about and singing, jangling their tambourines, watched by a small crowd as the late afternoon sunlight streaked in brightly from the west. Ramji felt an old familiarity, a closeness returning between himself and Sona beside him. We’ve known each other forever, he reminded himself, and we pick up where we left off almost without a thought. His concern for me is touching.

“I wanted to get away,” Ramji found himself explaining, “and the ashram has a peaceful atmosphere, conducive to meditation and reflection … even spirituality.…” (If we don’t mention Lyris for now.)

“Escape,” Sona said scornfully.

“Perhaps.”

“Who was the girl with you, back there?”

“I met her on the bus from New York once.”

“She with you at the ashram?” That searching look, it was more than academic now, there was gossip behind the curiosity.

“She introduced me to it.”

“Stinks. Look —”

Sona, the designated mukhi of their little student community of Boston, picked by popular acclaim. He would have made the perfect village headman in some distant past: learned, protective, keeping the fold together — or at least trying to.

“Look,” Sona said, “all this mysticism and devotion this guru teaches, you know we have it in our tradition, we grew up with it — what’s wrong with what we have? You don’t have to run off to find it anew —”

“I just want some space … to be. To be left alone from the past, not worry about what I’m called, and what I’m
supposed
to be.…I am what I am.”

“So said Popeye. It’s not so simple, is it. You can’t run away altogether.”

“Perhaps not.”

Sona brooded for a while. They had arrived at the Student Center coffee house and ordered coffee. The place showed evidence of a recent modernist onslaught by an architecture student
project; the tables and most of the chairs had been removed and replaced instead by a tall and coarse-looking multilevel screwed-on structure of wood, red pipes and translucent plastic, provided with seats inside nooks and corners for people to sit in. For those unwilling to undertake the climb to search for a suitable place, there was a large cartwheel that served as a table, surrounded by a few chairs, which is where Ramji and Sona sat. The place was quite deserted.

“Look. We are a community, with a history, language, identity. Would you that it all evaporate into nothingness?”

Surely not into nothingness, but into something else perhaps. But Ramji didn’t quibble. He felt curiously unmoved by Sona’s plea for communal integrity.

“What about your courses — how long do you plan to stay at the ashram?”

It would be nice to tell him: Forever. Or, better: I have renounced life, I’ve become a seeker of truth, a mystic, and I’ll wander from place to place and have a few disciples of my own …

But what he said was, “I’m leaving it. Actually, that lecture confirmed something I’ve known all along. For me, it’s the mind, not the soul; mine is the world of science and mathematics, reason.
I
don’t want beatitude, infinite wisdom, permanent enlightenment. Donnez-moi la confusion et un peu de lumière.”

“Who said
that
?”

“I did. And further — listen, for you are the mukhi — if there is a traditional God out there, I don’t think He has the time or the inclination to hunt me down because I don’t bow and praise him and humiliate myself. If He is there, I give him a nod of respect — which I would give even to Nixon — and go my own way. Vive le Ramji libre!”

“What’s with this French stuff — a new phase?”

“I’m reading Camus.”

“Welcome to the world, anyway,” said Sona with feeling.

Little could he know then what a surprise the world was preparing for him. The politics of dissent he had become engaged in, before he abandoned them for the quietude of the ashram, were soon to catch him in their trajectory, in a manner that he neither could have foretold nor would have chosen for himself. Indeed, over the long term they would never let him go.

I
n early September amidst the excitement of Rush Week, a bomb exploded near Kendall Street Station, destroying a good portion of the ancient building that housed the Institute for Strategic Studies, or
ISS
.

It was a Friday night, a little past sunset, and Kendall as usual at this hour was deserted and forbidding. There was no witness to the explosion when it occurred, save one homeless soul. Out at the front end of campus, though, Mass Ave was festive, a rock band had just wound up its performance on the green outside the Student Center. It was here on Mass Ave that, in typical overkill, five fire engines and six police cars appeared in a jangle of sirens, drawn by a garbled warning phone call and the presence of student crowds. The mistake was realized and the fire engines began a hasty departure, when one of them backed into a police car. Flashing blue and red lights and the heavy breathing of automobile engines as from overgrown beasts added to the bizarreness of the scene. Overjoyed students surrounded the crashed car, and for a moment there looked to be the makings of a riot, with shouts of “Pigs! Off the Pigs!” and the possibility that the car might be overturned, whether
in jest or as an act calculated to inspire a cop into a bullish deed and the crowds into a frenzied retaliation.

Sanity prevailed, however, and someone said, “
ISS
’s been bombed!”

“A couple more bomb threats too,” said one of the two cops, who were emerging unscathed from their badly dented vehicle. “Now if you folks’ll kindly make room …”

The students made room for the two to walk through to one of the other squad cars, then they went quietly, en masse, to Kendall Street to see what had happened. A police cordon was already in place when they arrived, and they stopped obediently behind it, positioning themselves into an intent crowd of watchers on the farther side of the intersection, in partial darkness. Flyers soon appeared among them.

Ramji, who had come with the crowd of watchers all the way from Mass Ave, snatched at a flyer:

There was a shout and the sound of a scuffle behind him somewhere as, apparently, a couple of people distributing the flyers were hauled off by police. At that moment, Ramji found himself reminded of someone he had not seen, had hardly thought about,
in months — Lucy-Anne Miller. He glanced at the flyer in his hand, again looked at those words. Surely not her.…But she liked to talk of the Third World.…Smash the state, bring home the war, enough of the namby-pamby stuff.…According to rumours circulating in the crowd, it seemed one person had been killed by the blast, the panhandler who always used to sit at the side of the building.

Ramji peered before him, towards the bombed building, an old one-storey yellow-brick structure partly hidden from view by police and fire vehicles.

Late Wednesday night a commune in Brookline was raided by the police. Seven people were arrested in connection with the bombing, four of them while they were in the final stages of preparing to leave town.

News of the arrests made the next morning’s headlines. When Ramji picked up the early edition of
Tech Speak
, his worst fears about the bombing were realized. None of those arrested were familiar to him, but: the police were seeking two other suspects, a couple named Lucy-Anne Miller and Jason Perly. The news preoccupied him all that morning. She couldn’t have done it, he would tell himself — not this. But then again, why not? He simply had a soft spot for her, and he hoped that she wasn’t involved. At lunchtime, as he came down the fifth-floor corridor of Rutherford to go to his room for a quick bite to eat and pick up some books, he was mulling over the news once again. Of all the stupid things, to be involved in a bombing and hoping to get away with it. What a waste of a life.

He flung his room door open, and there she was, the object of his current anxiety, seated on his green armchair, one leg over its armrest, looking up from a book: Lucy-Anne. She was wearing brown cords and a green army jacket; the book was
No Exit
. He opened his mouth, checked himself, closed the door.