Cartwheels in a Sari (24 page)

Guru rated the local diners based on the consciousness of the food and the wait staff, and he had his favorite one— Lucille's. Because over the years Guru and his disciples had given Lucille's so much business, they honored Guru by printing a full vegetarian menu named after him. When they
hung a framed picture of Guru in the diner, Guru decided that Lucille's had the highest consciousness by far.

When we entered with Guru, the waitresses rushed to the back room to arrange a long table for our feast. Guru always invited at least twenty disciples each time he went out to eat, enjoying the festivities of a table overflowing with steaming dishes.

Engaged in a perpetual war with his waistline, Guru complained that when he had weighed himself in the morning, his scale revealed that he had gained three and a half pounds since the day before. Since he was so disgusted with his weight gain, he glumly ordered only a hard-boiled egg and hot water with lemon. I was nearly finished with my grilled cheese when Romesh, Guru's messenger, interrupted our luncheon to announce that Joideep had died.

Joideep had been a disciple for more than twenty years. A descendant of a southern aristocratic family, Joideep had the mannerisms of a pampered Broadway star. He had been suffering with kidney disease for more than one year, and during that time, he had quietly vanished from view and became a patient at a live-in clinic in Long Island. Joideep had entered the sphere of those disciples who, for one reason or another, became sick, broken, or damaged, and, as a result, were moved to the peripheries and then off the map altogether.

Guru didn't believe in doctors or doctor visits, leaving all medical matters up to the Supreme and the faith of his disciples. According to Guru, none of his disciples could die without having Guru's express permission. As long as someone remained a disciple, they were safe from a sudden death. Since I was little, knowing Guru would never unexpectedly let death snatch away my family members sheathed me with
comfort. It was one of his many promises that I relied heavily upon. On many occasions after disciples had survived car crashes or muggings, they would relate their harrowing, near-death stories giving full credit to Guru, who had appeared before them, ensuring their escape from harm and saving their lives. Guru relished these stories, and had them transcribed and published in a book.

“Oi? Tell again.” Guru dropped his fork.

“I received a call from the hospital, and Joideep died three hours ago,” Romesh said, kneeling on the sticky linoleum floor.

I spotted a wash of panic and shock on Guru's face. Clearly this was unexpected news. I studied Guru's stunned expression. If, according to Guru, disciples had to have his full permission before leaving the physical body, I wondered how come Guru hadn't known or inwardly sensed Joideep's death? Was this an oversight or was Guru just as oblivious to the secret realms of life and death, the inner worlds and karma, as the rest of us?

While Guru never claimed to be immortal, his own inevitable death or the death of his disciples was something he never discussed. He made it clear that the past was dust, and the future was not our concern; all attention must be fixated on the present. Therefore disciples who fretted about notions of health insurance, life insurance, or wills clearly were not full believers in Guru's protective powers. It was evident to all disciples that those who did become gravely ill or died, obviously had not been good disciples and as their lives withered and vanished, they were quickly forgotten.

I had never really known Joideep well. The longest conversation I had with him was when he called our house to tell my mother that he had seen us in the audience of his favorite
daytime TV talk fest,
The Phil Donahue Show.
For a limited time, Phil Donahue taped his show in Stamford, and once my mother sneaked off with me to attend a taping. At first, my mother felt flustered by Joideep's phone call, as if she had been caught and was sure to be reported for corrupting me, but when Joideep started gossiping about how he felt that the one guest, the older lady having the affair with the teenage boy, really did indeed love him, my mother figured she would not be receiving a threatening message from Guru anytime soon.

WHEN, WHAT SEEMED
like hours later, Guru reopened his eyes, the waitress had silently cleared off and wiped down the table. Guru lowered his voice, so that above the clanking of plates and chatter from the front booths, it was almost impossible to hear him. I scooted my chair in so that my stomach hit the table, and still I leaned in closer to him, needing to hear Guru's response.

“You see,” Guru whispered. “This is what is possible when you are not receptive. It was not his time to go. I had a very special force on him. But he was not in the right consciousness and was not receptive to my blessings. He had not been leading a proper spiritual life, and he was unwilling to receive the protective force I had on him.”

Guru did not say another word in the car, but instead of going to Guru's house, Asutosh, the driver, pulled over in front of my apartment. The ride was over.

That night at the function Guru taught new songs, sold a book of rhyming aphorisms, handed out the prasad, and even joked with Asutosh about losing to Gitali at that morning's
road race. I never heard a single mention of Joideep's death that night or ever again. I was shaken. I saw that Guru had been ignorant of Joideep's death. And whether Joideep had been receptive or unreceptive to Guru, I witnessed Guru's alarmed expression, as though he had just been publicly exposed. Guru had not known about his death, and I didn't believe that it was just a simple oversight. It was larger and complicated. Realizing that Guru's promise of his occult powers to hold us all safe and secure seemed false, I wondered what else about him might be, as well.

A few weeks later, the official story was that Joideep had left Guru's Center a long time ago. Although I knew it was not true, I remained silent.

PERIODICALLY MY MOTHER
brought me news from the “outside” world in the form of a home-design magazine, paperback bestseller, or my Connecticut mail, which usually consisted of credit card offerings, discount coupons for roofing materials, or nonprofit membership drives. One Wednesday, my mail contained an alumni newsletter from Greenwich Academy, along with a request for a donation and the completion of an update form. I stared at the smiley photos of my former classmates on a beach standing beside their fiancés, read through news about their acceptance into graduate programs, and their offers from Fortune 500 companies to top managerial positions. Though I certainly did not miss anything about Greenwich Academy, or my classmates, their accomplishments suddenly made me feel deficient. Even when I had been disguised as one of them, I had always understood that I was wholly different, an entirely separate species, and convinced
myself of the futility of attempting to compete or even compare myself.

But now as I looked at the empty form, I grabbed a pen to fill it out.
What is your greatest achievement since graduating from G.A.?
I abandoned the love of my life, my Yale Law school-bound soul mate, to be Guru's good little girl and fulfill my destiny as his chosen disciple.
How has your life changed since G.A.?
I now live three blocks from Guru in Jamaica— dubbed the second-highest crime area in New York City five years in a row—and am a full-time “vagabond.”
What are you looking forward to the most?

I stared at the form and felt the question burrow deep inside.

What are you looking forward to the most?
Nothing, really.

I ripped the form into tiny pieces. On the alumni newsletter, I crossed out my address and wrote in all capitals, RETURN TO SENDER: MOVED TO UNREACHABLE LOCATION.

THE REPETITIVE LOOP
of my routine made each day blur into the next. I was assigned by Guru an endless cycle of busy-work that kept me perpetually serving him. After months spent at the tennis court, listening as the guards counted aloud Guru's stomach crunches and repeating aphorisms about the “compassion-feet” of the master, I felt myself withdrawing from everything around me. It began subtly, as if my eyesight ever so slightly had weakened, and my clear, sharp determination, once perfectly focused, now was slightly blurry. A foggy haze seemed to inhabit my head permanently, making it difficult to memorize new Bengali songs, even when I
mouthed the words repeatedly. My ability to understand what I read was also smeared. I read and reread the same page of one of Guru's
Ten Thousand Flower-Flames
poems, and did not have the faintest idea what it meant: what was “oneness-fountain-bliss-joy” anyway?

I descended into a slow, draggy state where I felt tired constantly. It was harder and harder to wake up for morning
bhajan
practice. When I did make it over to Isha's, I sat in the back, leaning against the wall, and dozed in and out of the songs in praise of Guru. Often, I crawled back into bed, missing Runners Are Smilers altogether. When I finally did wake up, it was in the late afternoon. I knew that Guru would still be at the tennis court, but instead of rushing over, I stayed in bed, eventually rising at dusk to make an appearance at the evening meditation, where I would sit in the back, but nothing made me feel awake or inspired. I didn't know what was wrong with me. Something deeply fundamental had changed, and even though I was living in the apex of Guru's ashram, I felt distant and inaccessible. When the gathering ended, I'd squeeze into Guru's packed, overheated living room and numbly watch videos as Guru lay fully reclined in his chair having his feet and legs massaged. Tuhina, as the official videographer of the Center, was given the special task of providing wholesome entertainment for Guru's house. Guru declared many of the old sitcoms that she brought rubbish, but even for the few that Guru enjoyed—a continuous rotation between Hindi films based on the Mahabharata,
Car 54, Where Are You?
or
The Honeymooners—
Tuhina censored any and all objectionable material. On the rare occasion that a movie or show had a scene that passed the censor unnoticed, a near riot occurred.

Once, before Eddie Murphy came to meet Guru, Eddie Murphy's film
Coming to America
was shown at Guru's house. When Eddie's character locks lips with the beautiful waitress, Isha threw her hands over her eyes to block out the obscenity. Imitating Isha's shocked reaction, all of the women sitting behind her followed suit. Some even one-upped her by standing up and storming out onto the porch in disgust. The men's side dropped their heads in shame, all suddenly finding the Guru-blue shag carpet intently interesting. Tuhina, with blaring red cheeks, sprinted up to the big-screen TV, and stood directly in front of it with her arms and legs spread to block out the entire screen. She fast-forwarded until she felt that it was safe once more.

“Oi? Tuhina, all right?” Guru said, twitching his eyes open.

I found myself irritated at the dramatic posturing all around me. Was the spiritual foundation of my brothers and sisters made of tissue paper? Were they so weak that viewing a single kiss would tear apart their twenty-something years of commitment to their inner lives? Their fear of temptation, I found, was a sign of spiritual immaturity, a weakness. If they were true disciples, then they, too, could not only watch kisses but go out themselves and kiss, long and hard, and ultimately still return to their guru. I looked around the living room of the Avatar of the Era, and I suddenly longed for Oscar. I fantasized meeting him for dinner only to pick up where we had left off more than one and a half years ago. In the backseat of my car, in slow motion, our heat would steam up the windows until all of our actions would be concealed.

Although my rendezvous occurred only in my imagination, it felt as though my entire Oscar memory coffer had
been, once again, taken out of storage. Days later, I dialed a few digits before hanging up, shaking, from my simultaneous fits of desire and weakness. Each aborted attempt ended with me in front of my shrine, begging forgiveness from Guru. It shamed me that after all my promises, I had regressed to the point where every time I saw a man with broad shoulders and black hair, I'd swear Oscar had tracked me down and was there to whisk me away. But Guru didn't seem to notice; instead, he gave me special prasad and boasted about my spiritual progress, which made me feel worse. As I filled diaries writing poems to Oscar, Guru wrote poems and songs for me. As I longed to take a Greyhound bus to see Oscar in New Haven, Guru flew me with him to Australia and New Zealand, where we met heads of state. Often Guru sweetly reminded me that the Supreme was my boyfriend, and a few times, he inserted the bonus fact that the Supreme was “extremely beautiful,” but the only face I'd imagine was Oscar's, complete with his dimple and dark, pleading eyes.

Guru's delight with me bordered on the ridiculous. Either he was utterly oblivious, publicly proving that he hadn't a stitch of inner occult vision, or he was fully aware of all my decrepitude, therefore proving his boundless compassion. Both possibilities embarrassed me. The latter, somehow, made me feel worse. I was his; he had selected my soul, and he had a closer connection to my own soul than I did. Without Guru making me aware of my soul, I would never have believed I had one. I never felt anything bathed in divine light inside me; I didn't even feel anything slightly dampened by the divine. Inside, I merely felt hollow. I wished Guru would call the whole thing off—publicly rescind my Chosen

One status, proclaim once and for all that my entire life had been his error, a mistake. But as I waited to be exposed, Guru continued to praise my high consciousness. And as Guru always set the pace, from Ketan to my parents, everyone seemed filled with respectful awe of me, the supercharged aspirant. I had followers and fans, admirers and well-wishers, but neither Guru's teachings nor his mandated lifestyle felt natural to me. I had everything I didn't want. It was all a sham.

ONE SATURDAY NIGHT
it poured, and the meditation was canceled. Chahna's parents returned to New Jersey, and I invited Chahna to spend the night.