Cartwheels in a Sari (31 page)

For years, I knew I hadn't behaved as Guru had wanted or expected, his shining jewel, a model for other disciples new
and old to emulate. Rather than being his obedient apostle, I had thrashed and torn through his edicts, panting and pouting. Perhaps since Guru had credited himself for my formation, I was now a liability, a public embarrassment, tangible proof of his own false claims. If he was so wrong about his miracle-child, then wouldn't it be painfully clear that he was way off the mark on his other visions and prophecies? It was better to dispose of me now before I caused him further public disgrace. For a moment, I understood his position. I, too, felt embarrassed by my own self. For someone who was reared by the supposedly highest spiritual avatar, I was as far from a Yogi as possible; I was an immature, emotional infant—certainly not a highly developed spiritual being. But I never claimed to be his perfect disciple, and unlike Guru, I never boasted endlessly about possessing infinite compassion, claiming limitless and boundless forgiveness. I realized there must have been a specific moment when Guru decided to repossess his compassion and forgiveness from me. At what hour did Guru decide I was beyond compassion, beyond salvaging?

THE NEXT EVENING,
lacing my boots on my bottom step by the door, I heard my mother enter the house, followed by Ro-mesh. I listened as he told her that Guru wanted her to do the right thing and evict me immediately. Having an ex-disciple living in a house filled with disciples, Romesh explained, placed all the disciples at risk.

“That's my daughter. Guru wants me to kick my own daughter into the street?” Rage swelled in her voice. It was
clear that Guru had gone too far. Banishment from the Center was one thing, but instructing her to evict her daughter confirmed Guru's deliberate and malicious intent.

“Calm down, Samarpana,” Romesh said, with an attempt at a lighthearted laugh.

“You tell Guru that I will never do any such thing. Don't you ever, ever threaten me about my children again,” my mother barked through clenched teeth. “Get out of my house. Get out now. GET THE HELL OUT and NEVER EVER STEP NEAR ME AGAIN!”

Without a reply, Romesh backed out, retreated down the steps, burdened with the awkward task of formulating a return message to Guru.

Being deeply entrenched in Guru's path meant basic forms of survival, home, and job were all reliant on it. In an instant, those, too, were snatched away, leaving one homeless and penniless, in addition to being without family, friends, or any thread of support. It was all part of a larger system of control; the longer one stayed in the Center and the deeper they rooted themselves, the more impossible it was to leave. That fear, deeply submerged and never discussed among disciples, was always present, privately emerging at moments of doubt, panic, or rare clarity. I wanted to run downstairs and hug my mother, grateful that unlike countless other parents who had ceased all contact with their own children after their children left or were told to leave the Center, my mother had resisted Guru's pressure. In that moment she proved her loyalty to her family and the priority of her family over Guru. Yet, instead, I remained fastened to the step, unable to act.

The next day my mother received phone messages from
all the disciple tenants insulting her ruthlessly and informing her that they were moving out as soon as possible. This included Aunt Chandika, who, after leaving her message, aborted all contact with my parents. From a full house, including basement, the house was instantly vacant, except my apartment. In addition to the lost tenants, my parents lost their invites to Guru's circle of favorites. While they remained disciples, I watched as they slid further into the periphery, silently loosening their ties to the Center and to each other. Although I was well aware that I was the cause of the uproar, I was unable to offer an apology or to help.

I WAS NOW
alone. Guru's terse rejection did not include any suggestions or advice. As far as I knew, no manuals or instruction guides were readily available on how to create a life and how to function in a post-Guru world. I knew hundreds of Guru's Bengali songs, poems, and aphorisms; I'd memorized endless classic Indian tales about masters and disciples that Guru narrated over the years. I could sit still, never budging, with my hands folded, for hours. Those were my skills and background experience. I doubted any of it qualified me for anything. Positions required experience. Mine didn't translate.

When I called Chahna, my only friend who had smoothly transitioned to the outside world, she was heading out to a party with Rick and a group of friends. She was busy, engaged in the fullness of her life. She promised to call me back as soon as she got home, but after a few days passed, I understood that she had forged on and was reluctant to regress
back to where she had been, even if it was for me. She was constructing a new life complete with a boyfriend, college, job, and friends, and she was too far ahead of me for me to ever catch up. I had to let her go. I then thought of trying to find Oscar, but years had passed. Even if I could have located him, I cringed, imagining the awkward embarrassment of trying to explain to the established lawyer and family man who I was and why I was calling. Nothing from my past was available for me to rely on—I was on my own.

I decided I had to begin. Somewhere. With something. These new steps were all mine. I was not shadowing or being shadowed. I asked myself what I wanted to be when I grew up. It was finally time for me to seek my own answer. Guru's invisible ashram walls had barricaded me my entire life, but I was only a few miles away from Manhattan, the epicenter of commerce and chance, the destination for life makeovers.

I left my apartment and began walking down the congested lanes of Queens Boulevard, absorbing the signs, smells, and noises. Crossing the bridge to Manhattan, the water linking the boroughs reflected the sun in thin strips like tinsel. Once in Manhattan, I wandered uptown, passing parks with nannies and the elderly dozing. I crossed corners where vendors sold gyros and pretzels, and businessmen hollered into mobile phones. Midtown, at Times Square, I followed a class of high school students from Kansas dressed up for a Broadway show as they walked with their mouths open in disbelief. I wound my way downtown past pizzerias and movie theaters. Couples holding hands, students walking dogs, police writing tickets, everyone was busy. I looked up; the endless floors above me that lined the avenues pulsated activity—the
doing and the getting, the achieving and the losing. New York was in motion, as was the world. Millions of people actively erecting their lives. Sri Chinmoy who? Never heard of him. They were independent contractors reporting to themselves. I could grab anywhere and anything—no limitations. Everything was here. Whatever I wanted was available, I was sure of it. No one or nothing could tell me the opposite. The steaming manhole covers, broken traffic lights, and perfectly picked tiers of fresh flowers outside the delis were all part of the vast rich possibilities. I was free.

I decided to start college as a full-time student. With the support of my parents, who anxiously awaited signs of my stability, I called Queens College, close enough to walk to, and spoke to an admissions counselor. Even though I registered for college, I needed to learn subjects and skills about the outside world that would never appear in their course catalogues. Timid and uneasy, I had switched from being the Chosen One, the bold, confident leader, fully comfortable performing onstage before hundreds of people, to a shy, back-row observer. Watching the natural interactions of students and faculty, I was jealous of their seeming unity. They shared a background and culture of American normality. After time, I discovered that Queens College had a large percentage of recent immigrants enrolled, eager to begin their American experience, and it was with this group of students that I felt the most in common. However, my Connecticut accent didn't convince others that I too was a newly arrived foreigner. I excelled in my coursework but failed in making friends. For a while it felt easier to avoid people altogether than to risk having to reveal anything about my past. Although the faculty
were gracious and encouraging, I guarded my privacy. I planned on keeping all traces of Guru locked away in permanent storage. Except that wasn't so easy dwelling in Guru's neighborhood.

I became skilled at dodging in and out of my apartment, avoiding the throngs of disciples out for their daily run sporting Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team T-shirts, or not looking closely at the cars that drove down my block, the normal route taken by both Guru and disciples due to the pattern of one-way streets from Guru's house to the tennis court. I never drove the section of Parsons Boulevard where the divine-enterprises clung together. Since Queens College was more than two miles from the tennis court, I thought I was in a Guru-free zone, but soon enough, one of the disciples opened a divine-enterprise, a printing press, only two blocks from the college, and then almost next door, another disciple opened a vegetarian restaurant. Their unusual manners and habits drew attention, and I overheard students talking about the blue restaurant where the drugged-out waiters invited them to cult ceremonies. When I finally began joining campus activities, like going to the student center for poetry readings, I found posters for Guru's upcoming public concert as well as for the formation of a new meditation club on campus. I wanted them to go away—how dare they encroach on my space. When Guru's April and August parade route changed, the jumbo floats and contingents of marching disciples, distributing leaflets about Guru, rolled past the college's front gates. It felt like Guru kept circling in, closer to where he knew I was.

When the regular facility where Guru's biannual circus
took place banned disciples from renting it again, sure enough, as I crossed campus en route to a world literature class, I saw swarms of Europeans in saris and running shoes rushing with their clown costumes draped over their arms toward the college's gymnasium. For a second I panicked, wanting to dart into the Social Sciences Department to hide, but I stopped myself. I watched the steady progression of disciples on foot, Rollerblades, and bikes, migrate to where Guru would be. Some faces I knew, disciples still committed, permanent back-row disciples, hoping for Guru's blessings, his favor. A contingent of men from Germany crossed the quad in matching Guru-blue shorts and shirts. Perhaps they would juggle, wrestle, or whistle, adding to the hours and hours of humble acts designed to please Guru. I shook my head at the utter futility of their efforts, the impossibility of surrendering their lives to a human who stands in for God. I could have told them to run far away, but their smiles and sure-footed march toward the gymnasium made me realize their absolute belief was their gift and their burden. It was not up to me or anyone to puncture or unravel their faith. Unlike me, as adults, they had chosen Guru themselves and followed a set of teaching that satisfied them. To them, I was the piteous one, eclipsed and swallowed by ignorance. I would not debate them. Who could possibly win? I knew what I wanted, and it was not contained inside the gym at Guru's circus. I would never go there again. I was through tumbling for him, done cartwheeling, dwelling upside-down.

The clock tower chimed. I hooked my backpack over my shoulder and turned in the direction of the English department. I had a class to attend. I couldn't be late. I had wasted enough time.
NEWS OF SRI
Chinmoy's latest escapades, stunts, and scandals continued to flow to me, mostly from my father, who remained a disciple for seven more years, until he was officially asked to leave. After involving himself with a group of ex-disciples who posted online testimonials regarding a range of alleged improprieties committed by Sri Chinmoy, my father's public questioning among new and old disciples was the breaking point of an increasingly strained relationship. Perhaps it took my father years to process all that he had personally witnessed and knew from his decades in the Center, but he didn't tell me until much later any of the doubts and suspicions that he had secretly harbored. In an attempt to grapple with his conclusion that he had been duped, spiritually swindled, he finally revealed to me that at Sri Chinmoy's house on the night of the 7,000-pound “miracle” one-arm lift, when the disciples present were instructed to meditate with their eyes closed and backs facing the barbell, my father disobeyed. He witnessed that Sri Chinmoy never lifted the weight. I had had no idea at the time, but it seemed, for decades, he had been gathering evidence against the man to whom he had pledged his life. Shortly after Sri Chinmoy severed my father's ties to the Center, my father turned around and severed his ties to my mother, leaving her for another woman.

My mother then soundlessly left Sri Chinmoy's group, requesting privacy from all members, both past and present. Not wanting to devote one more single ounce of energy to either of the men to whom she had surrendered her entire adult life, she neither retaliated nor reminisced. She boxed up
all of the contents of her former life, her shrines and saris, her scoldings and servitude, and threw them all away. Permanently free, she was now able to embark on the process of resurrecting her own long-buried needs. Years later, as she shared with me her own painful struggles of her decades in the Center, we began a new relationship of openness and truth. There would be no more secrets, no fear of repercussions.

In contrast to my parents, my brother, Ketan, remained steadfast, firmly committed to serving Sri Chinmoy, obediently shunning his family members—except my Aunt Chandika, who remained a disciple—from all visits and communications.

As for Chahna, despite trying, we couldn't assimilate our unique relationship into the new world from our old habitat, and we sadly drifted apart, until we both understood it was only fair to finally let each other go.

According to information leaked from disciples, the Sri Chinmoy Center lumbered along. Alo Devi was still planning trips to villages tucked into remote lands. New legions of fresh-faced devotees joined as many of the original disciples left, including Prema, my former meditation idol. After Prema's exit, Isha promptly cemented her title as the official number one disciple, and others began greeting her with folded hands and reverent bows.