The Empty Chair (24 page)

The widow stood, signaling she was nearly done.

“Each time you pressed Baba's feet at satsang's end, it was confirmed in the most
captivating
way. He would tell me your touch never failed to convey the ‘congeniality'
of your energetic configuration . . .

“I
warn
you, dear friend, do
not
make this more complicated than it is! Take your place in the chair! Do not be bothered that most of them will have need to declare you were appointed by royal decree! Six puffs of smoke from the roof, from Baba's favorite cigar! They shall see it through the crudest lens, they always do! Your challenge will be not to believe it, any of it! Making you feel
special
is not the devil's work, it's the
mind's.
The mind will summon you to its bloody battlefield . . . a clarion call not easy to resist. To hell with how it will
look.
In time all will come 'round, I can assure—

“Think it over, my American friend, I urge you!
Carefully consider
why you flee from your destiny. Your life is in certain danger!
There isn't much time and I shan't come begging again. For all is
predetermined
!
But mark my words, soon enough all will shout:
‘The Great Guru is dead, long live the Great Guru!'”

I've been telling this story as straightforward as I can but it's convoluted by nature. Shall we do a timeline?

That last scene (hope you enjoyed) occurred roughly a month after the Great Guru's death and some 48 hours before Kura found his place at the foot of the chair—a position, by the way, he would occupy for seven years. (As it happened, his apprenticeship to the American lasted precisely as long as the latter's under the Great Guru.) Now we circle back to a question: When Kura and I first arrived at Mogul Lane just what the hell was going on? With that insane and glittering mob?

You see, mornings had become especially difficult since Baba's death. As the hubbub of bereavement began to recede, the void once filled by satsang became a continuous reminder of the Great Guru's
absence. By unspoken rule, the lobby was off-limits between 9:30 and 11 when he would have held forth; its use as a walk-through vestibule or nostalgic loitering place felt disrespectful. There was a new wrinkle—devotees still gathered outside as they used to, only much earlier. Occasionally the satsang-less queue outgrew the sidewalk, snaking into the street with dangerous nonchalance. The police delicately brought this “hazard” to the attention of a Cabineteer, who brought it to the widow, who brought it to the American, who was only annoyed by the bureaucrats' bogus distress. As far as he was concerned, the whole of India was a hazard. That was when he made a brilliant decision to open the doors to the Master's house for what he privately referred to as “ghost satsang.”

They filed in like it was a cathedral, festive young voices abruptly stilled by the humble oratorium. Attendees, lost in prayer and self-reflection, were so quiet the unexpected sight of them invariably startled this or that auntie passing through on official business. The American was touched by their earnestness. Now and then he found himself discreetly joining the throng near the shop's entrance. It was more séance than satsang but if he shut his eyes the presence of his beloved teacher could most definitely be felt. At a few minutes before eleven, when the Great Guru would have begun closing hymns, the voices began to whisper, a chorus of throats gargling with
sutras
before joining in song as one. It gave him gooseflesh. Naturally, they
asked after the Great Guru's books and tapes. The American put a disciple in charge, a solitary Norwegian woman who moved to Bombay fourteen years earlier so she might give her life to the saint. Each morning she laid everything out.

And so it happened that all appeared unchanged, except for the absence of he who once presided—though it must be said that the empty chair, dramatically indifferent in its
thing-in-itself
-ness, proved a worthy stand-in for its vanished occupant.

Word of
ghost satsang
spread. In time, the early morning pilgrims (whom the American wryly dubbed
tobacconistas
)
were joined by the simply curious. The shop began to groan under the weight of lurid mythology. Pop-up folklore had it that the Great Guru's emanations radiated from the chair but were only visible to those of strongest faith.
Another claim promised visitors to the shrine a spectacular rise in income, if not an outright windfall within the year. It wasn't long before the infirm of body (there were already plenty infirm of mind!) hobbled and rolled onto Tobacco Road. The rich sent servants to keep their places in the queue in order to secure a coveted spot near the empty chair
.
The widow took the American aside, pointing out the pony-tailed thuggee
she'd warned him about. By the time the dangerous guru reached the door, the shop was filled to capacity. He implored to be let in but was sent gloomily packing. “Good riddance!” she said, adding that he'd merely come “to case the job.”

A command performance limned by an understudy (the chair) nonetheless became the hottest ticket in Bombay. In lieu of demanding VIP treatment, local politicians made a great convivial show of waiting on line. As elections loomed it was important to demonstrate they were men of the people, if not
for
the people. Once inside, the burdens of municipal business fell away, allowing a pause for prayer not less than three minutes nor more than five. These enterprising gentlemen made the most of their time, shedding tears for “our Baba” and receiving imaginary blessings. On taking leave, they cavalierly waved away constituents' offerings of handkerchiefs to wipe wet eyes blinking above wetter cheeks. The same politicos soon found themselves on the horns of a dilemma. Three aficionados—one Canadian and two Englishwomen—were fatally struck by cabs in as many weeks. Even worse, a cow was hit, and perished. (
Not
a good omen.) Pickpockets were rife as rats. Initially thrilled by the Great Guru's promisingly lucrative afterlife, vendors began to fight amongst themselves over choice sidewalk billets, the closer to the tobacconist's the better. Mogul Lane became
the
up-and-coming destination for tourists led by irreligious guides. These scruffy docents spoke into microphones as they drove, delivering nonsensical lectures about the concepts of the Great Guru, his rumored wealth, the speculation he'd been poisoned and whatnot. They delved into the spiritual, in cocksure possession of an hermetic knowledge of the liminal, subliminal and sublime. Meanwhile, the governor was harassing the mayor to bust things up—to restore the neighborhood to relative sanity and let sleeping gurus lie.

Election time—a sticky wicket!

What
, then, finally pushed the American into the widow's camp and the chair itself? I think it was attrition as much as fate. Because it was
my
impression he was bully-proof. And I
never
thought him capable of abrogating his integrity by servicing a brand name legacy—nor could I envision the American plotting against those who might wish him harm. He was tired, he was grieving, he was
noble
, and had no fight in him. He just wanted to be left in peace. But instead of his teacher's death providing a reflective respite, he suddenly found himself absurdly challenged.
Aggressively
so. It was a bitch of a conundrum . . . the whole business was wildly inconvenient. He kept reviewing the widow's words. Whatever her flaws, stupidity wasn't one of them. It was true that the American's
concept
of his guru's opposition to so-called successorship had hardened into dogma. The widow's assertion that her husband had spent his life battling the perceptual
policies and prejudices of man neatly overturned the American's reasoning. She was right and he knew it. The old
siddha
wasn't for or against
anything
,
including someone taking out the chair for a spin. To see it any other way would mean that he'd wasted years at his guru's feet.
To sit or not to sit?
became the burning question that his egotism, laziness and outright terror threatened to ignite into a conflagration. To answer it would take everything he had, everything he'd learned in the last seven years and more.

On just such a day, in the midst of a lot of Hindi hoopla, did Kura and I make our famous entrance—duly orchestrated by the Source
.
May the trickster gods rejoice!

Graduation Day for us all . . .

I can't recall a word of the American's first Q&A. (Though squawk boxes strung on the outside of the shop gave broadcast.) I think I already told you that, didn't I? You know, I might be getting a little punchy—let's stop soon and have supper?

O . . . there's something I
do
remember that's important not to forget.

When any satsang
ends, not just the Great Guru's, one “presses” the teacher's feet
in respect. An ancient gesture. Devotees jockey to get there first. You know, “If I touch the feet before all others, that makes me special.” The human being is stark raving mad, don't you think? Absolutely
wired
for hierarchy, we do hierarchy in our sleep. Kura was in the catbird's seat, or in front of it anyway. So
he
was the first. I had a perfect view from my pole . . . He prostrated himself then pressed his forehead to the floor. Remaining thus, he extended his arms for their short, deferential journey, that gentle, timeless laying on of hands. What happened next was as horrifying as it was baffling. The moment contact was made between Kura's hands and the American's feet, well, the man in the chair
went
rigid.
I swear, his eyes shone with something that looked like
apocalyptic
dread.
His mouth hung slack like an idiot's and the rest of him—I'm not sure I can properly convey! He looked so
startled
and
confused
,
like he'd jumped from his skin . . . then came that
weird
silence
again, remember how I was saying that in the moments before he sat down there was this
eerie silence
?
Well there it came, no one breathed, not a soul, that behind-the-snow-globe silence I thought I'd
never hear again in my life. The collective breath hung in suspension as I went about my lightning lucubrations to explain the reaction: Had Kura pressed too hard? Was there something wrong with the man in the chair's feet? (I say “man in the chair” and not “the American” because at this time you see we really had no
idea who this simulacrum was or what was the meaning of it.) Was he about to have some sort of
fit
? A flurry of colorful thoughts followed:
What the fuck am I doing in India? Kura doesn't love me anymore, he never did
 . . .
I want to go home now, how can I get home? But where
is
home?

Just then, a coquettishly simian grin bloomed on the fellow's face as he sat bolt upright. He looked gemütlich and hyper-alert. This time though, the effect was radiantly comedic, his countenance Chaplinesque. He began to mime a convict sizzling in an electric chair, not scary but
delightful
,
his ticcing, twitching face pelted by the most wonderful hailstorm of expressions that morphed from an obsequious smile to the rictus of a silent scream (and everything in-between) as if to deftly convey a mission statement to the tribe: “I am not the Great Guru! He
cannot
be replaced . . . Yet I ask you to fear nothing, you are still in his hands! Have patience, I beseech you! I beseech you to trust! It is impossible for
energy
to err, of that you can be certain! Mysterious forces have brought me to this chair! All is
predetermined
 . . .”

Thus, at the tail end of his inauguration, as a fillip to the substantive, wittily learned, deeply satisfying nature of his responses to the audience's questions, did the vaudevillian Vedic scrum swing from the sublime to the ridiculous then back again, celebrated by a communal roar of approbation
.
The American had gambled
with antic play, the same his teacher had usually confined to the kitchen table. It was a brilliant stroke. The maneuver
forced skeptical seekers to challenge their reactionary resistance to change. He was
their
saint now (at least in this moment, for mobs are notoriously fickle) and had gained more than a toehold
on their ardor and respect, perhaps even on their fear . . . Many pairs of hands followed Kura's. The American's face became inscrutable while he received further benedictions, which seemed befitting. For he was the American no more.

He was the Great Guru.