Cartwheels in a Sari (18 page)

Oscar waved to me. I hesitated, scanning the throngs of commuters for disciples. I knew that all my hopes for a romantic adventure would end if I got caught and reported to Guru. Besides Chahna, there was not a single disciple I could trust who would not have been thrilled to turn me in for cavorting with a boy. Until we were safely on the subway headed downtown, I didn't even look at Oscar or risk standing too close to him, but he was oblivious, chatting and joking.

Strolling through Washington Square, Oscar wandered to a bench, brushed off an old newspaper, and asked me to sit. Oscar smelled like sawdust and soap, and I breathed it in deeply, entranced by my first real date. Dusk was settling in, and joggers, students, musicians, and tourists cruised the park, each subtly checking out the person who had passed, each more hip than the next in rainbow hair, dashikis, and carefully ripped clothes. I learned that Oscar the janitor was twenty-four, had a degree from Columbia, and was working at the U.S. Mission to save money before going to law school. He had applied to Yale Law and was only days away from hearing if he was accepted. Wearing an old German army jacket over his black T-shirt and black jeans, Oscar was crushingly handsome.

After dinner, we wound through the streets of Greenwich Village without a destination. He filled me in on his post-law school plans for returning to Brooklyn as a lawyer who could defend immigrants against discrimination. His own father, a Chilean immigrant whose English was poor, had been
swindled by predatory landlords and bosses alike. He spoke about visiting a ranch owned by his distant relatives in Colombia that was taken over by drug lords, and of his dead mother. I continued asking him questions, listening to his past, the stories of struggle and hardship. The more questions I tossed him, the longer I could postpone having to reveal anything of myself or Guru. Why risk losing the way that he lowered his chin and lifted his espresso eyes at me? I feared if I confessed that I wasn't even allowed to talk to him, let alone be on a date, he would view me as an oddity, a freak. All of the magic would vanish, and I'd be left with nothing.

I artfully dodged his questions. When he inquired about the origins of my name, I laughed, claiming my parents were eccentrics. When he asked about my childhood, I shrugged, saying I was raised in Connecticut, what more needed to be said? When he hinted about past relationships, I blushed, stammering that I couldn't remember any. My aloof mysteri-ousness intrigued him. At the end of the night, when he insisted on accompanying me on the F train to Jamaica, we no longer needed to talk. His hands held both of mine, and as he rubbed his thumbs over my fingers, my entire being tingled. It was so perfectly simple—a Friday night, coming home from a date. So this was what the rest of the world had. Suddenly, it all made sense to me. I understood why out of the billions of people on the planet, only a few thousand had been able to resist these exquisite pleasures. Even Guru's divinity might not be able to compete. To have experienced having true companionship and then be told for the rest of one's life it was forbidden might be too great a sacrifice. It seemed to me then that Guru's relentless railings against the
evils of human attachment was a misguided enemy. As I clutched Oscar's hands, Guru's blockade against human relationships felt absurd and utterly incorrect. How was this un divine when it felt absolutely celestial?

Oscar leaned his head against mine. I, Jayanti, finally had an ally. Someone had selected me and me alone. Oscar's focus wasn't on Guru—Guru who? What I had or had not done for Guru, my expectations and failures, didn't matter here.

In this foreign world of the normal, nothing felt remotely normal—it was extraordinary. With Oscar, I wasn't lonely, a solo act. I was part of, for the first time in my life, a couple, and I was not about to let go. I wanted this, and I was going to do whatever it took to keep it a secret.

When we exited the subway and ascended to street level, the boldness I had experienced while safely encapsulated on the train instantly vanished. We were now back in the disciple zone, Guru's neighborhood. Passing in front of houses rented by disciples, I moved away from Oscar and sped up, walking a few feet in front of him. He called out for me to slow down, but without turning to answer him, I mumbled that I wasn't feeling well and needed to get home quickly.

I couldn't take a chance of being spotted.

When we arrived near my house, I decided I would just whisper good-bye before darting inside, but Oscar jogged a few paces to catch up to me, then asked if he could come up to make sure I felt all right. I saw the lights were still on in the second-floor apartment. Since I lived on the third floor above two disciple women, any movements and sounds could have easily been heard. I said no. Oscar placed both hands over my ears and drew me in for a kiss. My body shook from
the impact. This, I decided, is what I wanted. At that moment, I didn't care who had seen.

THE NEXT MORNING
Guru was back at the tennis court. When I arrived late, Guru already had the disciples form lines and slowly, in procession, soulfully walk up to Guru's throne area and then back across the court in deep meditation. I knew the importance of maintaining the appearance that everything was normal, that I was Guru's first-class disciple, so I smoothed back my hair and clutched my folded hands upon my chest with utter devotion. Yet all I could visualize was Oscar's face, hair, eyes, and hands. I found myself veering away from the line and nearly collided with a woman in the next row who gave me a puzzled look. I slowly sidestepped back to my spot, as though I had been in a spiritual trance. When I was at the front of the line, facing Guru, I tried to block Oscar from my thoughts, but the remembrance of his lips, his smell, filled me. I couldn't extinguish him long enough for the three seconds it took to walk past Guru and turn away. Instead of shame, my failure triggered defiance. If Guru knew about Oscar, so be it. I was in love, and it didn't feel wrong.

After the meditation, Guru called for prasad, then he tapped on the microphone. We sat on the grainy clay of the tennis court in a half circle around Guru's raised, carpeted throne area that had been built into what now resembled a large outdoor bungalow.

“Dear ones,” Guru said. The microphone squealed with feedback.

“Oi.”

Gagan, a balding thin disciple who was always seen chatting and playing with the children and who used to chase me around when I was little, tickling me until I cried for him to stop, was the official high-tech sound person. He darted up to Guru's microphone, switched on a button, then tampered with endless knobs at his station in the far right of the court, where black wires and speakers clotted together. Guru waited a minute, then started again in a low voice, which always signified a serious matter. When Guru was joking or telling stories, he spoke in musical tones interspersed with grand hand gestures.

“Beware,” Guru warned. “Boy disciples, girl disciples, beware. Your lower-vital lives are destroying your spiritual lives. This free mixing, boys and girls, is inviting temptation, which is poison, only poison. To mix openly about rubbish is forbidden. To be a true disciple, you must protect yourself. Be vigilant against the vital life. This type of interaction, mixing together, is dangerous, dangerous, dangerous. Boys and girls should not mix unless it is absolutely necessary. If it is manifestation work or a Center activity, then, and only then, should there be talking. Otherwise, boys stay with boys, and girls stay with girls. When boys and girls must be together for Joy Days or other activity, do not, do not, do not look directly into the eyes. Look at the third-eye area. Look at the feet. But do not look directly into the eyes. This is for your own protection. The hostile forces, the lower-vital forces are powerful, most powerful. You must be always on your guard. Pray, pray to the Absolute Supreme for purity, for protection. Keep your spiritual life always guarded as the most important jewel.” Guru stopped talking and slipped into meditation.

I knew what this was about. A local male disciple had run
away with one of the women in Lalima's singing group, the elite group of disciples, which included both Prema and Isha. The pair's secret affair and subsequent elopement had outraged Guru, because after interrogating all the disciples who had interacted with them, a few had spotted the two chatting together at the back of the tennis court or in front of the divine-enterprises. Guru's rules against socializing with the opposite gender and encouraging reporting on delinquent disciples had clearly broken down, and Guru was determined to revive them.

“When you see your brothers and sisters harming their own spiritual lives and that of the disciples that they are throwing their vital-poison into, then it is the duty of all to help by reporting them to me. Before it is too late, and they have drowned in the ignorance-sea, you can save your dear ones, your spiritual brothers and sisters. All of you must report to me if you see this kind of thing. It is to save the lives of your nearest and dearest ones.” Guru stood up and slowly exited.

I felt exposed. Somehow Guru knew. My enthusiastic defiance now deflated, I scanned the rows, trying to ascertain how I had been found out. As people shuffled out with downcast eyes and great despair at having disappointed their spiritual master, I reviewed all events since having met Oscar to pinpoint a moment when I might have gotten caught. As I remained seated, it finally dawned on me that Guru could not have been talking about me. His grim focus had been on scandalous relationships between disciples, and for that, I was one hundred percent innocent. I had never tempted and lured another disciple away from Guru and the spiritual life.

I quickly stood up, brushing the dirt off my sari. I could
proudly admit that I had never, not even once, imagined one of the disciple boys as a potential boyfriend. To me that was incest. They were brothers, uncles, and cousins in what felt like the truest sense. Over the years, many disciples had fallen in love and run away. To me, they were traitors, abandoning Guru and stealing disciples’ spiritual life. I promised Guru that I would be on the lookout for any such perversity perpetrated by those around me. I hadn't caused this problem for Guru. On this count, I rationalized, I was clean. I was safe. I nearly skipped home to lie in my bed and think about Oscar, counting down the hours until it was Monday morning.

AT WORK, I
couldn't concentrate. Documents were shoved into the wrong files, phone messages were lost, and envelopes were mislabeled. I didn't care. When I wasn't writing Oscar's name over and over on my lined manila pad, I was planning how I was going to meet him for lunch or after work. By Thursday, I invented excuses to leave my desk for errands, and I headed into the storeroom in the basement, where I'd sit on top of dusty rolled carpets and make out with Oscar. I confessed my love to him, feeling glamorous and worldly, like a character from a film. When he asked to come over to my apartment Friday after work, I said yes without hesitation. Only later I contemplated the sticky logistics of trying to bring a boy into a house full of disciples in Guru's neighborhood.

Since Guru's lecture about boys and girls not mixing, disciples patrolled the neighborhood seeking transgressions to report—a female and male chatting at the Laundromat or grocery. All interactions not specifically limited to a brief
update about Center business or manifestation plans threatened both perpetrators with the risk of being thrown out of the Center either temporarily or permanently. The tennis court guards, the majority of whom had known me nearly my whole life, no longer joked, looked me in the eyes, or even waved hello to me. Once when Ketan drove me home from Guru's house, we passed a newer male disciple, who, after seeing Ketan in the car with me, reported him. Guru's messenger, Romesh, had to explain that Ketan had a sister, mother and aunt in the Center, and that interacting with family members of the opposite sex was still permissible and did not yet merit reporting.

In this climate, it was too dangerous to have Oscar inside my disciple-packed house. If I continued to restrict my dates with Oscar to areas like Greenwich Village where disciples never went, and if they did, it might be a case where I could end up reporting them, then everything would work smoothly. I convinced myself that having Oscar wouldn't be a problem if I kept clear boundaries that separated my Oscar-life from my Guru-life—neither would have to know about the other. I refused to admit that I might have to choose, that I was creating an impossible reality. Instead, I focused all attention on continuing to reap the benefits, the fantasy of having both.

When I called Oscar, instead of retracting the invitation to my house, I ended up confirming the time and date. It wasn't fair that we could never meet in private. Traipsing through the West Village provided a colorful backdrop for dates, but we needed time alone. Since Oscar lived with his father in Brooklyn as a way to save up money for law school, and his father rarely left the apartment except for doctor visits, his home could not serve as an intimate retreat for us. The more
I was with Oscar, the more I craved. I wanted to make up for everything I didn't know about men, for all the missed flings, dates, and romances. I did not want to settle. I didn't care. I was going to find a way.

When Ketan told me the next day that he would be in Minneapolis until Sunday because he was involved in organizing one of Guru's massive public concerts—Guru now only wanted to perform in filled halls of seven thousand or more attendees—I had my solution. It was perfect—Ketan's place. Ketan lived in the two-car garage behind my parents’ house in Queens that my father had transformed into an illegal dwelling—a loftlike cottage. It was secluded, separate, and private. Perfect.

That evening, I carefully lied to my parents that the meditation was canceled, so they would stay in Connecticut. I then called Sarisha with the news I would be in Connecticut visiting my parents, which excused me from both the function and the subsequent gathering at Guru's house. I parked my car at the far end of the block to aid my alibi of being out of state. Before making my way down to Ketan's apartment, I called his phone to double-check that his place was empty. Occasionally he had visitors, mostly devoted tennis court guards who popped over to watch endless trashy videos on Ketan's massive surround-sound entertainment center that he had bought for working on special projects for Guru. When no one answered, I peered out my window that overlooked the garage. Everything was dark. Not wanting to risk making multiple trips, I lugged all I needed in one wobbly effort, looking wildly in all directions to make sure I wasn't spotted. I shut the blinds, pulled the curtains across the windows, and silenced the ringer to Ketan's phone. I hid Ketan's
piles of clothes and clutter into garbage bags and shoved them inside his single bulging closet. I showered, overdousing myself with new perfumes and lotions, and wore my favorite purple silk dress.