Cartwheels in a Sari (25 page)

She sat with her hands clasped on her lap as I poked about for conversation. The rain slammed against the windows, dripping in from all sides of the skylight. I hadn't bothered to switch on the lights, and now we were in darkness.

“I don't know why I came back,” I blurted.

“From France? I thought you … aren't you happy?” Chahna hesitantly asked.

“Are you?” I tossed it right back at her.

She didn't answer.

“Everything feels wrong. I don't even want to get out of bed. I have no interest in meditation or the spiritual life, not to mention the Supreme. I'm on an endless loop failing Guru and everything that I can't live up to anymore.”

I heard Chahna's feet stop kicking.

“I want something of my own. I want something apart from Guru. Do you know every time Guru tells me how great it is that the Supreme is my boyfriend, I stop listening. I can't
stand it anymore. I say to myself, ‘Oh yeah, well, where the hell is he? How come he never takes me out or even calls?’”

“Guru's told me the Supreme is my boyfriend too. I think the Supreme is two-timing us,” Chahna said.

I laughed, and so did she. It got funnier, and we laughed even harder.

I had my Chahna, and I was so grateful at that moment for her presence, for sharing my life. Without judgment or jealousy, Chahna had and always would unreservedly love me.

“I've missed you so much. And I couldn't even imagine being in all of this insanity without you. You're the only one I can talk to. The only person I can trust to actually be honest with, without fear of not saying or doing the right thing and getting reported.”

Chahna suddenly excused herself, and hurried into the bathroom. When she returned she started talking about her cat and her grandmother's fake leopard coat that she now wore over jeans.

“Guru told me my soul wants me to drop out of high school,” Chahna said. She was in her senior year.

“And work full-time at the restaurant and share a room in Vedita's house.”

We sat in silence.

“I think my soul hates me,” Chahna said.

“It's so unfair,” I finally said. “It's Saturday night. Do you know that there are people out there who are actually making their own decisions, their own plans? Like hosting a dinner party, or flirting at a bar, screaming at a concert, or dancing at a club?” I started to cry. “Some people get to live real lives. Don't you want that? And here we are. Trapped.” I got up, not
knowing exactly what to do. I paced around, landing by my kitchenette's single cupboard. I felt my way around the near empty shelf, and grabbed a can.

“Here's what we have: creamed corn. It's you and me on a Saturday night with a can of creamed corn, while the Supreme, our shitty boyfriend, is MIA.” I was sobbing.

Chahna had rolled onto her stomach, her face aimed at the floor. When the phone call came later that night, inviting me up to Guru's house, I ignored it.

AFTER THAT NIGHT,
Chahna changed. She wore a used army jacket over her Guru-blue sari. Her toenails and fingernails were painted black, and she never seemed to smile so much. Every time I called, she wasn't home. When I cornered her at a function to ask what was going on, she told me to knock off the cross-examination and just be happy for her.

The following month Chahna brought a “seeker” to the public meditation. His name was Rick, and he was a few years older than her, pale with a large nose, and a jagged crew cut. He sat with her father on the men's side, and when it was time for the seekers to go up on stage to meditate with Guru, he went, fully respectful, with folded hands. When I pulled Chahna aside to question her about this “seeker,” she just shrugged.

Two weeks later, I was sitting on Guru's porch when I heard Vani whisper to Ushma if she had heard the news about Chahna.

“What news?” I demanded.

“She left the Center. She has a boyfriend,” Vani, herself
only nineteen, said, shaking her head in utter disgust at the very idea of such a grotesque act.

Suddenly dizzy, I staggered outside and sat on Guru's front stoop. My own Chahna was gone, jumping ship, without even telling me. I suddenly remembered Rick, the “seeker.” But if she had found real love, so urgent, to leave Guru, why would she have kept this, this most critical decision of her life, away from me?

At that moment, Ketan approached the stairs from the sidewalk. He had taken Guru's dog, Kanu, out for his nightly walk. By the look on my face, he suspected that I had heard the news.

“Ironic, isn't it?” Ketan said, tugging on the leash.

“What?”

“You know, don't you see the irony here, with Chahna? After all she did save you from …”

“Me?” I snapped. “What does this have to do with me?”

“After Chahna rescued you from leaving the Center by reporting you to Guru, now she is the one who commits spiritual suicide by running off with some ordinary loser. I find it ironic. Don't you?” Ketan bent down and scooped up the tiny white dog. “Come on, Kanu, let's go nighty-night. You already pooped,” he said, going inside.

I walked away from Guru's house. I didn't know where I was going, and I didn't care. I wandered block after block not hearing anything except my own storm of thoughts. All this time, and I had never imagined that Chahna, the one person I trusted, had turned me in. I was furious. She was no different from the other poseur disciples, eavesdropping and plotting to get inside Guru's special clan. Chahna, my two-faced
friend, had used me to get tenure as Guru's darling, sitting at his house, receiving his flowers and gifts, for having sold me out. I was done with her. I hoped her soul would wickedly punish her. It's what she deserved.

Suddenly, a black van pulled up beside me and beeped. A man with sunglasses leaned out the window, making sucking noises with his mouth. Instead of fear, I only felt outrage. The man tapped his palm against the side of the van, as if to lure me like a dumb stray dog. I bent down and picked up two fistfuls of rocks from the weedy patch between the sidewalk and street curb, screamed and pummeled the rocks directly at the van. Rocks for Chahna's incredulous betrayal and her smug abandonment, for Guru's inability to make me the person I was supposed to be, for my parents’ obliviousness to my meltdown of faith, for my brother and his gossipy aloofness, for the clawed and cliquey disciples who smiled while hoping that I would fail again, for Oscar, who never rescued me, for everyone who was living a normal life, and finally for the Supreme, whom I hated and sought a permanent breakup with. The rocks walloped the van and rebounded off onto the street.

The man hollered at me in Russian, then he opened the door and stood beside his van, his arms slapping his thighs.

I screamed back at him in nonsensical globs of consonants and vowels, mashing sounds with shrieks to topple his barrage of Russian curses. At the top of my voice, I shrieked. My voice tore through the dark street, butting the windows of the sleepy residents. A light flicked on from the second floor of the house across the street from where I stood, then the porch light blinked on, spilling light onto our scene.

The man looked up, then back at me, and flicked his hand
dismissively at me, as though I suddenly was no longer worth his time, then scrambled inside the van and hit the gas, leaving behind a long cloud of smoky exhaust.

I roared after him, then refilled my hands with rocks, hoping he'd return. I surveyed both ends of the street, armed and ready. I was not backing down. I had reached my limit, and he had chosen the wrong person. I walked, clutching the rocks, tracing their jagged edges in my palms. I clicked them against each other, and deeply exhaled as I realized that not for one second, even as the man roamed outside the van, had I invoked Guru. I had done just fine without him. I could extend this independence and fend for myself. I determined that I could do without Guru. I had had it.

WHEN I WROTE
to Guru informing—not asking—him that I needed to make immediate changes, my fearlessnesses had already receded. Leaving the Center was absolutely terrifying; it meant an irrevocable separation from everything that I had ever known, including my mother and father. I would be homeless and penniless. Though it felt too daunting to parachute into the outside world all alone, I pledged to take small steps away while still grasping the stability and security of the Center. I needed to pace myself, moving slowly toward freedom. To start, I would no longer be a full-time Guru-vagabond.

In order to get Guru's approval of my decision, I knew I'd have to convince him that my actions would ultimately work to serve him, which, to a certain extent, was true. I suspected I would always be serving him, no matter what I did. I pleaded with Guru that I be utilized to help him publicize
his activities and recruit new disciples, by becoming a journalist. Guru, as I expected, was not enthused by my unexpected request, and he was perturbed that I wanted to enroll in a few journalism courses. When I was in high school, he had made it very clear that he did not want me to go to college because it was the domain of the mind, and dwelling in the mind, rather than the heart, only led seekers into a forest of poisonous doubts. I persuaded Guru that I would only be taking classes to acquire the tools needed to join his growing public relations team of disciples who gathered in strategizing meetings, toting around briefcases filled with full-color brochures of Guru's meetings with pop stars, presidents, and popes. When I notified my parents about my decision, my father thought it was great and commended me for taking the initiative toward financial independence. My mother appeared neutral, allowing me to negotiate directly with Guru for permission and directions.

To build my case, I wrote an article on Guru's newest project, his Soul-Bird drawings, a series of wobbly pen-and-ink doodles that were meant to represent the soul as a bird. I titled it “A Migration of Art,” glorifying his art and playing up the bird metaphor to its fullest. Guru loved it. He published it as a pamphlet and required all of the disciples to buy a copy. He told me I understood the consciousness of his soul-birds, and since he was so pleased, he agreed to allow me to hone my journalistic skills. I was empowered by my own manipulative magic, and it reminded me of the times as a little girl I had charmed Guru into bending the rules for me. Ketan was the only one who seemed suspicious.

“You're going to college? Why?” he interrogated, squinting his blue eyes at me, his blond lashes rapidly blinking.
“You're not going to get yourself all tangled up in something, are you?”

“Oh, please,” I said, as if the very question was insulting.

ON THE FIRST
day of my classes in Brooklyn, relishing the excitement of my new unsupervised surroundings, I sat next to the cutest guy in the room. I felt instantly energized. After class, Rufus introduced himself and invited me to a party that night. Without a single thought of the inevitable ramifications from the Center, I ended up leaving with Paul, a communist with shaggy black hair and a gap between his two front teeth. We sat at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Nostrand Avenue, composing lines of poetry. By the end of the night I wrote,
I think I'm in love with you.

When I returned home, I had two messages from Sarisha, summoning me to celebrate Vani's birthday at Guru's house. The next day, when Ketan asked where I had been, I told him that I hadn't felt well, and had slept right through everything. When he said that he hadn't seen my car in the driveway, I rolled my eyes, as if affronted by his mere suggestion of a discrepancy.

Suddenly, I no longer missed Chahna or Oscar. I couldn't wait to ride the subway to Brooklyn. It was a safe distance from the eyes and ears of Guru's neighborhood, giving me plenty of space to test out my new self—Jayanti, the dark-arty-writer-communist-lover. With my refusals to answer certain questions about my past or family or invite anyone to my home or anywhere near my neighborhood, I appeared enigmatic and exotic.

After class, Paul and I would make out on the boardwalk
at Coney Island for hours, until I knew I had to return for the evening meditation. Missing meditations was too obvious. In order to maintain the appearance of normalcy in the Center, I needed to be sure to raise the least amount of suspicion possible. I wanted to keep my footing steady between both worlds. Taking the full plunge either way felt too overwhelming. Though I knew I couldn't sustain both equally forever, I forged ahead. I attended
bhajan
practice, ran Runners Are Smilers, appeared at the tennis court before classes, and showered off Paul's sweat and licks by the evening meditation. The difficult part came with Guru's house late at night; I knew that alarms would be sent if I declined his invites, so most nights, I went to his house, then when it was over, I changed in my car at stoplights on my way to Brooklyn, returning just in time to change back for
bhajan
practice at five-thirty

I thought I was doing great. I felt vibrant and clever, thrilled with my managerial skills over all things me. There was no stopping me now, and why should there be? I felt I could exist this way forever. It suited me fine. I had everything. I inhabited the best of both worlds: I had friends, college, fun, and a boyfriend, while simultaneously, through my continuous presence at the tennis court and Guru's house, maybe could even still inch toward God-Realization. It seemed unfair that the two worlds had to be so distinct; it felt more natural to have both—a rich inner and outer life. I did not understand why spirituality could not be just
part
of a life and why it had to be piously segregated. My family thought I was doing great, and so did Guru. I kept Guru a secret from Paul, and I kept Paul a secret from Guru. Each seemed perfectly oblivious of the other and fully content with my attentions.

One night, I was sitting on the porch at Guru's house, when Fulmala, Vani's mother, who always seemed to be campaigning for Vani to take over my position, sat beside me.

She stared at my face for a few moments, as if she detected the thick black eyeliner and glossy lipstick I had worn earlier.

“You look different,” she concluded.