The Ever After of Ashwin Rao (52 page)

Seated, he felt habit press him to begin prayer, but as he resisted that, he heard instead, clattering in the cavity of his frightened mind, a rising wave: clatter-clatter—time and matter—chatter-chatter—daughter–daughter—double daughter—doppelgänger—Oppenheimer—double-couple—toil and trouble—now uncouple—all undone—
it was too late
—Ah, Sita—Oh, Sundar—
Ah—Oh—M—Om—Ommm
.

The ear-ringing resolved into one sound.
Om
. Then dissolved again into three parts.
Ah. Oh. M
. The strands separated and joined.
Like cloves of mangosteen
, Shivashakti had said, instructing them on the universal syllable. Picture the sweet white heart, the spongy purple flesh.

Om
expands and its parts join. A geodesic d-
om
-e. The last syllable of recorded time.

Om
. Seth ached as he chanted, louder and surer now.
Speak to me, Shivashakti. But no words, please, I’m sick of them
.

Sick with desire … Gather me into the artifice of eternity
.

Om
. This, too, was a mantra, but from a time before his god. There were others, from childhood.
Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare
. Seth would chant it on his way to school, or while playing, back when he loved Krishna. All children did. “Hurray, Krishna!” Ranjani used to say. As a child, he had perfect confidence in his gods’ distant heroism, despite their flaws. When had he lost the ability to believe like that?

A time before his god
—he never even would have thought such a thing before seeing the video today. An absurd thought. There is no time before the eternal.

Om
.

Did Shivashakti exist before Seth knew him or did Seth bring him to life by way of his devotion? He could think that as a scientist, but not as a devotee.

Om
.

From the street, he heard shouts and the thunder of fireworks.
Darkness drops again
.

Midnight sun. Sun invocation.

“Om
bhur bhuvah suvahah. Tat savitur varenyam. Bhargo devasya dhimahi. Diyo yo nah prachodayat …
”

Oh, universe—heaven, earth, and all that rotates between and beyond.

I bow to your infinite centre, You, Sun. I bathe in your infinite rays.

I dissolve in the radiance of the all-mind.

Draw me in to your centre. Drive me out to your borders.

Not-I, all-we, and the infinite plane.

And then, He came.

Whether by the grace of the mantra, or by the way that it propelled Seth into an attitude of receptiveness, Shivashakti appeared.

Appeared
might be too strong a word, but there is no weaker one that works. The god was watery and faint as one might expect an apparition to be—
I am the ghost of Christmas past!
Despite all the promises, and all it had achieved, Seth’s mind was no more still or controlled than it had ever been.

 … I am with you and within you …

No words, Seth pleaded, peeking around the edge of his mind, which seemed determined, now that the moment had arrived, to obstruct. In fact, he realized—his third eye was adjusting now—that Shivashakti was, in this form, nothing like his form in life. Or perhaps he was initially some ghost-twin of his known and remembered form, but he was dismembering now, changing rapidly. Expanding and merging in some terrifying way with Seth and the air and the light and not-light.

Without form, was this still Shivashakti?
I am not here to say I am God. I am here to prove that you are God. Tat Tvam Asi
.

Seth dimly recalled his initial intention—confrontation, right? the big question: why?—but then it spun out of him and away, caught in
a tornado … 
We’re off to see the Wiz
 … Then the words were gone, what a relief, all the words, disappearing faster and faster now, sucked away from him faster than they could appear, flung out steadily and with intention to the farthest reaches of the cosmos, where they continued on, and on, and on.

The divine quakes before creation, just as Seth was quaking now, just as he and Lakshmi created babies and then were terrified by their mysteries and wildness. You can
only
love what you cannot understand because only the fool believes he understands, so that only the wise—the bewildered—truly love. Bewilder: to lead into the wild unknown. This is what Shivashakti had done for him. Brought him to the precipice of unknowing. The wild sharp cliffs, the wide grey wilderness, the vast green sea.

NEW YEAR
’
S MORNING, 2005
. Seth felt a rustling, under his head. He started up from what he thought must be the earth and some small creature trying to nest in his ear, but looked down at the blue carpet and then up into Kaj’s blue eyes.

“Uh, trying to put this, under, uh …” Kaj smiled a faint, hard smile and tossed the meditation cushion he was holding back against the wall from where he would have got it. He rose ponderously to his feet—bulky man—and offered Seth a hand.

Seth reached to take it, then waved it away and got to his feet on his own, shaky, the second time in twenty-four hours his legs seemed not to want to hold him, even under an unwelcome gaze of concern.

“I’m …” Kaj sighed. “Going to put a pot of coffee on. Came by to get some copies of, uh, last week’s lecture.”

“Lakshmi asked you to come?” Seth said.

Kaj held his palms up, with a delicate wave of his head. “She … she didn’t have a key. I think she’s on her way over. Let me put on some coffee, eh?”

Lakshmi must not have told him about the video. Kaj thought it was a marital issue. As well it might become. Seth noticed, on the carpet, the burnt end of the joint, flattened from his lying on it. He went to the bathroom to flush it away. When he came out, teeth brushed
with a finger, hair smoothed with water, it was to the smell of coffee.

“What time is it?” Seth asked his friend.

“Wouldja look at that? Twenty to.”

Lakshmi and Brinda appeared in the stairwell. “Oh, thank God,” Lakshmi said, starting to cry.

“I’m …” Seth stood. He was what? Fine? Sorry? He was both and neither.

Kaj pointed out past them. “On my way to the soup kitchen.” He raised a hand and descended the stairs.

“Dad, listen,” said Brinda. Seth waved them into the kitchen, where Lakshmi, her eyes drying, poured coffee. “I know the opening to the video was pretty sensationalistic, but the rest of it is, well, not that you’ll feel great about it, but …” She looked at her mother. “I don’t think it implies Shivashakti is evil. Misguided, maybe, or, well, I don’t know. Mahatma Gandhi is supposed to have done some pretty strange things, also, apart from all the great things. I don’t know if those aspects can necessarily be separated, in charismatic people. Maybe in anyone. I’m not sure it takes away from Gandhi’s accomplishments, and maybe you’ll feel the same about Shivashakti. You know how I feel about him, so believe me when I say this! You should make up your own mind.” She looked around. “Feels weird to be talking about this here.”

Seth wanted to get out of the ashram, but didn’t feel quite ready to respond to Brinda. “Why don’t we all go volunteer at the soup kitchen?” This felt right: something they liked to do together.

““I can take your place,” Brinda said. “Don’t you and Mom …?”

Seth looked at Lakshmi, who narrowed her eyes a tiny bit and shook her head. “Let’s talk later.” She sighed, quick and hard. “I was worried sick.”

Seth pinched the bridge of his nose. “I am sorry. I, I meant to call.”

“Mom and I are going to horn in on your brandy at Dr. Aidallberry’s.” Brinda said. “You’re not the only one who needs a drink.”

Seth, smiling, descended the stairs with a hand on each of their napes.

“
Jai Shivashakti
,” the others all said to Seth and his family when they got to the soup kitchen.

“
Jai
 …” he tried. He mumbled, he faltered. Did they notice?
“Jai Guru,”
he eventually responded. Glory to the teacher. Which?

Physical work, familiar activity—the comforts of routine. As Seth served, Seth recalled Brinda’s objection to his serving his god by serving these people. What had he said?
They get fed, they don’t care
.

Namaskaram
, he thought now. Lakshmi had dragged him to a yoga class one time, where the teacher had translated this into English, the greeting that looks like a prayer. Palms together, at the heart:
I salute the divine in you
. He never would have thought to put it in words, this idea, but she wasn’t wrong. Still, he never went back.

He thought it as he ladled out minestrone. If Seth loved his kids, he loved God in his kids. He loved God in his wife. He repeated it for each scoop of soup
—namaskaram
—his head throbbing lightly so that he was aware of the beat of his heart
—namaskaram
—as he sifted vaguely and painfully through splintered recollections of the long night before.

BRINDA STAYED IN LOHIKARMA
some two or three weeks longer. I saw her several times, and when she left, made her promise this time to stay in touch.

Seth made himself harder to see. I called him, but the dull chill in his voice froze out even something so simple as
Could we meet, a coffee?

I persisted. We met. I did my best to explain.

He listened, his eyebrows slightly furrowed and, significantly, motionless. His tone was unencouraging when he said, “Lakshmi seemed to think it was a good thing that Brinda talked to you.” Another of his women had allied with me—how they pulled the rugs out from under him! It must have enraged him, not that it would have gone any better for me had she taken his side.

I was oddly reconciled to our estrangement, though. He was displacing his anger and anxiety about Brinda’s divorce onto me. Okay. He needed to do that. And my guess was that, as those feelings ebbed, he might come to agree with his wife. My initial frantic fears and self-recrimination—I had, as always, paved the way for my own loss—had also ebbed, enabling me to see this was likely a temporary loss, the kind normal people dealt with, in normal life, where one has friends and lovers and differs with them and reconciles, where life goes on.

Writing it was helping. I cautiously let myself see some coherence in the story I had begun composing. The longest-ago sections were most digested; I must have thought about all that much more in the intervening time than I had realized. The Lohikarma sections drew on the narratives I had been writing for
The Art of Losing
, but inserting myself helped me to understand them better. Narrative Therapy. Physician, heal thyself.

It also helped that Rosslyn and I had continued to speak, every week or so at first, and then with increasing frequency, until we were on the phone several nights a week, for hours on end.

When was it that she said she would come to Vancouver, to meet me?

“My sister lives there now, and—you said the verdict is going to be announced March 16?”

“That’s right,” I said, shivering with old fears, old hopes, the anticipatory delight of old habits.

“Spring break. Griffin’s going on a class trip to Russia.”

“Russia!”

“I know.” She laughed. “I’m going to be so anxious. It will be good for me to go away too. Otherwise, when you come through Ottawa in May, you’re on your way back to India, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I don’t want that to be the first time we meet. I’ll see you in Vancouver.”

“That would be so … yes, I would love that.” But I had to specify. “Just don’t—you don’t mean you’ll come to hear the verdict, do you?”

A long pause. “Yes, that was what I meant.” Icy. “You don’t want me to come?”

“I very much, very much want you to come. But not that day.” Oh, Rosslyn. How to explain? “Give me … a few days’ grace.”

As I fished around in my inchoate resistance, you spoke. “Grace,” you repeated. “I always thought that part of what justified your leaving me, in your mind, was that I couldn’t properly understand what you had been through.”