Cartwheels in a Sari (22 page)

Smiling, I looked at the image of Guru I held in my hand. Surely people would feel what I did when they glimpsed Guru. They would recognize his divinity. For years, perhaps,
they had been searching for a spiritual master, waiting for a sign
—when the disciple was ready, the guru would appear—
and behold their Guru-blue sign. My exigent role as their intermediary between seeker and messiah jolted me into action. Each person I accidentally missed could have lost their sign, delaying their encounter with Guru for decades, even lifetimes.

“La Concert pour la Paix avec Sri Chinmoy,” I bellowed, thrusting the flyers into as many hands, closed or open, as I could.

One man wearing a New York University sweatshirt, after scanning the leaflet, stopped.

“Sri Chinmoy?”

“Yes! Oui!” I cheered joyously.

“Sri Chinmoy?” he asked again, waving the flyer.

Here was the seeker's moment of awakening, hastened by me. My heart galloped during this transformative miracle. I had discovered a future disciple. I couldn't wait to relate my triumph back to Lalita and even to Guru himself. Why not? It was time that he knew his Chosen One was manifesting his mission, awakening the spiritually slumbering country of France.

“That guy who does all the weight-lifting scams in Queens?” he asked in a thick New York accent. “He's nuts. How much are you getting paid to do this? He brainwashes people. It's crazy shit. Don't you know that?” The man crumpled the leaflet and rejoined the moving masses.

Everything fell. I couldn't scrape up a single word to respond. I stood immobile in the pool of new flyers splayed upon the dirty sidewalk. I knew Guru had vocal critics and enemies. Often outside his concerts, anticult groups protested
with pamphlets and signs, and once, during a public meditation at Columbia University, a man burst down the aisle toward Guru screaming threats, before being subdued by Guru's guards. I remembered at the time wanting to dash up and physically defend Guru. I would have done anything to ensure that Guru was shielded and safe. But now, this was different. Instead of rushing to defend Guru, I had been silent, and instead of refuting the stranger's blasphemous claims, I had absorbed them.

THAT EVENING, AS
Lalita drove me to yet another strategy session for concert publicity, she was particularly buoyant, eager to share the exciting news that one Paris disciple's elderly relative had died, and the disciple had donated her entire inheritance to cover concert expenses. Giving Guru money to be utilized as divine kindling to help spread his mission was a great honor for disciples. Over the years as disciples posed for pictures with Guru after signing over their inheritance check, I marveled at their good fortune. When my grandfather Charles, my mother's estranged alcoholic father, died he left only a tiny inheritance to my mother, but she tucked the check in an envelope, giving it all to Guru. Elderly disciples were fortunate to will their property directly to Guru. From real estate to cash, disciples, long after their physical death, found ways to continue to serve and support Guru. Although I was without any real estate holdings, stocks, cash, or even a car to call my own, I, too, planned to leave everything to Guru. It was the least I could do.

When the number of concert reservations barely climbed past two hundred, we needed ways to heighten the public's
enthusiasm. We heard that for the big Australian concert, the Aussie disciples leafleted on stilts, dressed in clown costumes. Never having mastered riding a bicycle without slamming into the sidewalk to stop, I dreaded the thought of teetering six feet in the air on wooden stilts. Luckily, that was voted down. When someone suggested being clowns without the stilts, I imagined myself on the Champs-Élysées in a striped jersey, white face with a single tear dripping from my eye, and a beret. Since no one else volunteered to back the idea, my immediate future as a Marcel Marceau impersonator was dropped. After proposals of giving out balloons—too environmentally destructive—chocolates—too expensive— or flowers—too hippie—were vetoed, the focus returned to leafleting. Marie, who as far as I knew had not given out a single leaflet, suggested that everyone distributing flyers should wear a massive sandwich board and carry a tape player with Guru's music on a constant loop. Everyone agreed, and when two people finally volunteered to make the sandwich boards available for the next day, the room relaxed with congratulatory praise all around for a job well done, as though the concert hall already exceeded its maximum capacity.

For the next two weeks, with waning enthusiasm, I trudged through Paris's districts, germinating seeds for ten thousand seekers with a plywood sandwich board hanging around my neck. Instead of luring the spiritually inclined, the oversized close-up of Guru standing in meditation with both hands clasped atop his heart worn over me acted like a detour sign, giving people plenty of time to swerve and find an alternate route. When the only person who stopped long enough to read both sides of the sandwich board was a man who scribbled his phone number across the leaflet while asking for
mine, I found more reasons to delay my mission as the public's harbinger for Guru's impending arrival. Instead of connecting with the morning commuter rush, I'd sleep past it, figuring I'd catch the evening one instead. Rather than standing on duty for an entire afternoon, I unharnessed the heavy board, propping it against a wall or store while I stopped for lunch, a café au lait, a shopping excursion, or even a movie or two or three. When I returned to discover that the bulky sandwich board hadn't been stolen, I was greatly disappointed. I wanted to abandon it, and sometimes I did, only circling back later through some sense of guilt, and dragging it back home.

As my evenings were spent with crews of two to three women illegally slopping glue onto posters at construction sites, empty billboards, and phone booths while hiding from the police, I questioned the entire manifestation process. The other great saviors of humanity did not have to rely on stilts, mimes, and sandwich boards to find their disciples. When Christ was on earth, his original disciples never leafleted Jerusalem to bring a crowd to his sermons. The Buddha's first followers never dodged the cops while illegally plastering the forests of northern India with posters for the Buddha's upcoming meditation. Why was Guru's manifestation so laborious? How come rather than having seekers stream to Guru as if following an instinctive inner radar, hundreds of thousands of dollars, phone banks, mass mailings, and media blitzes were deployed and still did not seem to be working? Guru's official worldwide disciple count—fastidiously tracked by Guru through mandatory progress reports from Center leaders—was only in the thousands. That left the majority of
the globe still needing to magically sense Guru's light. Not knowing Christ's and Buddha's disciple count during their lifetime, I imagined Guru was already well ahead of both, but for the constant effort Guru thrust into spreading his name, the results, I figured, should have been a lot more impressive.

Two weeks before the big event, Uttam solemnly announced that because they had procured barely one thousand reservations, Guru had canceled the concert. It was over. Guru blamed the French disciples’ lack of aspiration and dedication as the cause of their abysmal failure, adding that he refused to travel to France until they could prove themselves worthy of his visit. Because the cancellation was so close to the event, the concert hall and all the rental equipment suppliers, including lights and sound, refused to refund a single franc. Hundreds of boxes of full-color posters sat in a garage along with thousands of leaflets. While I was now permanently relieved of flyering and postering duties, the fact that I was partly responsible for yet another fiasco only confirmed what I had achingly suspected my entire life—the impossibility of trying to fulfill Guru's demands.

I didn't want to be in Paris anymore. I decided to resurrect my Eurail pass and head somewhere, anywhere, maybe Switzerland or Scotland. I quickly packed, wanting to evacuate the site of this latest wreck, leaving others to clean up the mess. I had lost only a few weeks, but for others the loss was much greater, like Lalita, who had lost the chance to please Guru, or like the disciple who had lost her entire inheritance. For all of the effort and sacrifice, again, there was nothing to show for it. Guru was an expert at manipulating those who loved him the most to get what he wanted, but his tactics
didn't seem fair. While Guru changed his mind on a whim, the disciples silently absorbed the multiple harsh repercussions.

When Lalita asked if I wanted to head to London to assist with the latest project, acquiring for Guru the lofty and revered title “Lord” from the queen of England, without hesitation I declined. Even if Guru had had a vision where Krishna appeared before him and told him that since Krishna was referred to as Lord Krishna, as a fellow avatar Guru should be officially dubbed Lord Chinmoy, I had had enough. I knew Guru had assigned his top British public relations team to begin work on this latest urgent assignment, and even if he had not, I did not care. I was tired in a deeper and more profound way than I ever had been before.

For months, I passed through most of the meditation centers in Europe without becoming involved. I knew I could no longer cheerfully reassume my role as the Chosen One. Not wanting to leak my own punctured aspiration upon the disciples, I was politely quiet. Luckily, in the Center being quiet was often understood as being spiritually absorbed, which held my cover. Volunteering for a few hours in divine-enterprises, I'd then wander around the country that served as my temporary shelter, not bothering to learn even the basic greeting in its language. Instead of feeling isolated by the language barrier, I now welcomed the buffer that it provided me. Not absorbing other people's daily chitchat freed me to dwell solely in my own realm. It didn't matter. Nothing really mattered. I barely contacted my parents or even Chahna. Numbly stumbling from one city to another, I had nothing to report, nothing to tell.

One afternoon I missed my train connection to Italy,
which left me with an unexpected layover in Nice. I checked into a pension across the road from the train station, and then explored the city without any map or guidebook, preferring to blend in, not caring if I ended up lost. It made no difference to me. I had no actual destination. At the end of a narrow, windy street stood an old stone church. I was about to turn and head in the opposite direction, but the fixed structure, weathered and worn, brought me to a stop. Against the conservative gray facade, its stained-glass windows leapt out, their jeweled tones flirting with the few remaining sunbeams. Besides the massive grand cathedrals that bustled with lanes of tourists snapping frantic photos, I had never bothered entering the endless numbers of humble small churches that flanked most of the cities and villages. But with hours to spare and what appeared like rain fast approaching, I heaved open the unlocked carved arched door.

Inside, my own footsteps echoed. Dark and cool with frankincense, the church was empty. I loitered near the door. An invisible organist played minor chords, sustaining notes that vanished through the vaulted ceilings, which convinced me to stay, at least to listen to the music. As I walked forward, I saw that the marble floor was worn uneven from centuries of footprints and prostrations, leaving a visible path to each of the smaller shrines and a direct line down the central nave. Before me the wooden pews stretched vacant. I took a seat in a center row. I imagined that once they were plush with red velvet and filled with the devoted hunched over in prayer. From hundreds of miles away, pilgrims had journeyed for days, sacrificing food and comfort, to crowd inside these sacred stone walls. This was their spiritual center, the essence of their personal connection to the Supreme. Perhaps in a
filigreed coffer rested the relic of a beloved saint, a fragment of an elbow, a few threads of a vestment that surfaced to the public's eye but once a year. Without ever even touching the case, they feasted on the glory of being in the same hallowed space as the holy remains. Perhaps hanging from the front altar originally was an elongated Christ, arms spread wide, skin a pale green, head slightly tilted forward, listening to every prayer. In the empty, ancient space, all alone, I felt the company of the seekers who had sought refuge there, chanting, praying, prostrating before the altar, yearning just for one moment for a revelation, a visitation, a vision, or a single whispered instruction from their Lord. Christ had left the earth countless years prior to the church's erection. His own blessed form had never sat at the front of the congregation, and his voice had never reverberated throughout the structure. What would those villagers have given for even a glimpse of their Beloved? If they had had the opportunity, the option of having their avatar alive and teaching, they would never waste a single second. They would have uprooted their lives and devoted the entirety of their existence to him without a second of doubt or delay. And I? My beloved guru was in his sixties, and even though he forbade us from projecting about the future of the Center, in his human incarnation, Guru was mortal. What was I doing? Why was I wasting precious time? And for what? To one day be forced to communicate with Guru as a statue in an empty temple when I had had the rare privilege of daily being in his holy presence and love? How could I have been so careless?

My inner life, so long dead and dormant, felt again multi-faceted, burning feverishly inside, rejuvenating, lessening its ache and fatigue. My doubts and anger sloughed off. A vestige
of the Supreme, unchanging and unswerving, was what I needed to be. What was I doing, moping and squandering time? I was a seeker. To thrive, I needed to live among a tribe of seekers at the feet of my guru. I looked up at the rose window, realizing that in the future, holy sites would be open for Guru's disciples to come and worship him, and these seekers would yearn to have been among the disciples fortunate enough to have been present when the last avatar walked the earth. Why was I wasting this rare opportunity to be exactly where I was supposed to be? My doubts were erased. I knew what needed to be done. I would immediately return for a life of devotion and service to Guru and Guru alone. I was finally ready to accept my calling.