Cartwheels in a Sari (16 page)

Mesmerized, I didn't put the photo down and carried it with both hands like it was a sacred tablet for the entire function. Seven thousand pounds was beyond a human or even superhuman feat. I felt awed, humbled, and instantly renewed. Guru's lion roar of determination and his arm raised in triumph over the mountains of dead ignorant matter realigned my skewed life and reaffirmed the real reason for my existence. It dwarfed all the absurd babble that was the everyday. Greenwich Academy's self-importance shrank to crumbs to be brushed away. Binge drinking and Polo shirts, debutante balls and make-out sessions—who cared? With my name emblazoned on the photo, Guru made me part of his miracle. I was practically an eyewitness. How many of the billions on earth could make such a claim? Who wouldn't want to be in on one of the greatest miracles, the parting of the Red Sea or the raising of Lazarus from the dead? And this was better, by far. Unlike those miracles confirmed only by hearsay and vague tales, we had empirical proof. We had eyewitnesses, photographs, and a video.

“Dad,” I shouted, running to catch up with him after the function ended.

He continued walking.

“Dad!”

Still no reply.

“DAADDD!” I got beside him, panting, still displaying my photograph. “You need to tell me totally everything that you saw.”

I waited for his story, rich and full of detail, the inside
scoop, the backstory for the miracle. I wanted nothing left out.

My father, never one to display a crack of emotion, didn't slow his pace.

“You'll have to see for yourself,” my father finally said to me.

THOUGH I WAS
renewed by Guru's weight-lifting miracle, I now found both of my parents to be mysteriously distant; my father dropped out of all manifestation committees and removed himself from most extracurricular Center activities. My mother continued propping me close to Guru, as she too drifted further away.

Although the Center was rapidly growing, especially in eastern Europe, where the end of the cold war brought hordes of seekers eager to experience new religions, the core of older disciples was in flux. In particular, many of the other disciple children, as they grew up, became less involved. When they did turn up at a meditation and Guru called the children to the stage, I noticed the girls wore eyeliner and the boys’ hair was too long for acceptable disciple standards. Eventually all but a handful of the original members dropped away, and they were soon replaced by a whole new crop of kids, guided by eager parents who had recently joined Guru's path. I didn't pay much attention to the new disciples, nor did I really miss the ones who had left. For me, as long as Chahna was still a disciple, I was happy. Fiercely protective of her, I wanted to keep close guard on Chahna in order to protect her from committing some of my own mistakes.

TRUDGING THROUGH
public school in Bayonne, New Jersey, Chahna now braced for high school with dread.

“You're lucky,” Chahna said, tearing the skin off her prasad orange as we sat on the front stoop of the Queens house. “You're basically done with school forever.”

With my high school graduation two weeks away, I was almost officially school free and apprehensive of what was next. Secretly I longed to be college bound like the rest of my class, but I knew Guru would never allow that. Any attempt to sway my parents away from Guru's decree would be hopeless; they always seemed to obey.

“I wish I were done,” Chahna said.

“Yeah. Just be sure not to get caught up in any of the crazy college pressure,” I said, adding a chipped giggle for believ-ability. Not wanting to be a bad influence, I resisted telling Chahna how much I wanted to go to college.

“I'd never want to go to college,” Chahna said earnestly. “I asked Guru if I could stay in Queens this summer to work in the health food store. I can't wait.”

I had been dreading that Guru would assign me to work there for the summer and, even worse, as a full-time job when I graduated. With its lack of customers and spare shelves, the store was depressing.

Chahna's excitement over working at the disciple-owned health food store silenced me. I suddenly realized that instead of being the good big spiritual sister, I was actually the bad influence. Without receiving any outer attention from Guru, Chahna was fiercely devoted to him. On many occasions,
I overheard her begging her parents to bring her to meditations when her parents had just popped a mound of popcorn to settle in for a
Star Trek
marathon on TV. Chahna knew where she wanted to be, and she was diligent in her spiritual practice. Although I was careful to keep my past disobediences with boys private, once I had asked Chahna if she had ever liked any boys. When she responded simply, “What for?” I knew then my Chahna was spiritually pure and wholly committed. I didn't have anything to worry about for her, but I wasn't so sure about myself.

What would happen when I graduated from Greenwich Academy in two weeks was uncertain, to me at least. My classmates had their futures all figured out; the reason their families had selected the prestigious prep school was for its near guarantee of Ivy League acceptance. Most of my classmates had had private SAT tutors and essay coaches since freshman year, polishing and retooling their college applications. The rest was a waiting game with college visits and phone calls from their alumni parents to other high-powered alumni. All students had mandatory sessions with the college counselor, Mr. Holland, a red-haired man who always wore silk stripe ties and moccasin loafers.

My visits to Mr. Holland, where the colorful banners of the Ivy Leagues decorated his office like coats of arms, clearly left him baffled.

No, I hadn't thought about what my top choice colleges were. No, I hadn't visited any campuses. No, my parents didn't have a preference.

He stared at me like I was a severely disabled child who up until now had been forced to live this way because my
parents had not bothered to investigate a simple corrective procedure.

“You do realize that this is the most important decision you will ever make, don't you?” Mr. Holland asked, speaking extra slowly, folding and unfolding his tortoiseshell glasses.

On his round table lay glossy brochures with blond pony-tailed young women clutching books and striding beside a blazered professor with a goatee, his hands in a wide gesture. Around them students sat in multicultural clusters beneath autumn trees, engaged in animated discussions. A neogothic clock tower loomed in the background. The idyllic scene hypnotized me. I wanted to be there more than ever.

“You are taking this college process seriously, Ms. Tamm, aren't you?” Mr. Holland's glasses clicked faster.

He slowly put his glasses back on, signaling serious business.

“You give me no choice. I'm going to have to write a letter to the Tamms, informing them of your lackadaisical attitude about the college process. If this letter does not return to me, with their signature, then I will be forced to invite Mr. Tamm in for a conference to discuss this matter. You wouldn't want me to have to bother Mr. Tamm from his busy schedule to come in, would you?” Mr. Holland asked.

I wanted to explain how much I longed to go to college, that I was not allowed, but I couldn't. It was too strangely complicated. He would never understand.

Guru did not approve of college for his disciples. Never having graduated high school, Guru made a clear distinction in his philosophy between the mind and the heart. The mind was the source of doubt, of stubborn questioning and
intellectualism, whereas the heart was the apex of faith, of unconditional surrender. In Guru's aphorisms, he praised the childlike heart and chastised the obstinate mind. Repeatedly, in both formal lectures and front-porch chatter, Guru blasted institutions of higher learning. College, Guru felt, was a deterrent to the spiritual life. Fostering the mind was negating the heart. Unlike years ago when Guru had urged my father to pursue law school, the rules had changed. Now, disciples who joined the Center while attending college were quickly persuaded to drop their outer studies, if they were serious about pursuing their inner studies. Disciples who shunned college proudly felt superior to the unfortunate disciples who, in their dark pasts, had obtained degrees.

The remote vision of myself as a normal student inhabiting the world of the glossy autumnal college brochure, living in a dorm surrounded by friends and activities not focused on manifesting the Supreme, seemed magical. Never having given much thought to what I wanted to be when I grew up because I knew it was not going to be my decision, college, in my fantasy, had less to do with career goals than with the luxurious freedoms of a life away.

Since my father had an advanced degree, I thought he might understand the necessity of college for me and would argue this point to Guru, but he didn't seem concerned. Whenever I brought up college fairs or application dates, he remained quiet, sifting through stacks of tax forms.

“Write to Guru,” my mother said, still her answer for everything, when I hinted at my desire to attend. She knew very well that decisions were not hers to make.

My official answer to the question of college came in a phone message from Romesh, Guru's official message carrier.
The owner of a vegetarian restaurant, Romesh was a heavy-set, balding man known for his overabundance of energy who bounced from foot to foot while talking in a big, yelpy voice.

“Guru said that your soul does not want you to go to college. When you graduate from school, Guru will confer with the Supreme as to what he wants you to do.” Romesh panted with excitement.

I held the phone far from my ear, waiting for Romesh to finish the message I had expected. When I told my mother she seemed to have pinned a smile to her face. My father nodded in agreement as he laced up his tennis shoes for a quick match.

To avoid a spectacle, I had Mr. Holland send off transcripts to the college he felt would be the best fit for me, and kept my true plans to myself. As the year ended and the drama of receiving thin college letters versus thick envelopes nearly capsized the entire school, I mimicked my classmates’ mood swings and debates about whether to live in an all-girls’ dorm and whether or not to join a sorority the first year.

In my room, I stared at my framed photo of Guru triumphantly hoisting the seven thousand pounds. Why was I fretting? Guru was in control. He held me in his firm grasp, and, like the weight, I needed to surrender and allow myself to be moved, miraculously lifted by his grace. The day I received an acceptance letter from Bennington College, I didn't wait to show it to my parents. I took the wad of Bubble Yum I had in my mouth and pressed it between the folds.

G
URU WANTS TO SEE YOU NOW,” PREMA SAID, POKING
her head onto Guru's porch, where I sat waiting alone. “He's in the kitchen. In a pretty good mood,” she added with a slight smile.

She knew what this was all about—the answer to my letter asking Guru what I should do with my life written on a piece of stationery with puffy clouds, rainbows, and a unicorn posed in the corner. I strained to return a smile. It was July. The rounds of congratulations that had followed the elaborate graduation from Greenwich Academy had quickly stopped. I had invited Guru to my graduations, but, of course, he did not go. When I invited Prema, she told me with a laugh that she hadn't attended her own graduation and wasn't about to go to one now. To be diplomatic, I invited Isha, and much to my surprise she accepted, turning up that day in a shiny homemade red and white satin dress. Where Isha went, so did her own assigned posse, who donned modest dresses that amply covered every part of their bodies like chadors. But my favorite invited guest, the one I was most
happy to see, was Chahna, squinting in the June sun. She flung her arms around me in an oversized hug.

“I didn't realize I was coming to your wedding,” Chahna's mother, Nitya, said to me.

True to tradition, all the seniors wore white formal gowns with white gloves and carried a bouquet of flowers down the aisle escorted by a flower girl while classical music tinkled in the background. It was, I realized, the closest I'd ever get to having a wedding.

With my family and few disciples garbed in what Guru considered “Western clothes”—not wearing saris and whites— which always made me think of cowboys wearing jeans, chaps, and boots, I felt like the ringleader of a group of impostors. From my elaborate white gown, bought after bargaining for hours from a raggedy Chinese factory on the Christmas trip in Singapore, to the listing of my name in the program with Bennington College as my choice for the fall, I couldn't have been more relieved to have the entire graduation and prep school experience over.

For a few weeks, I relished not having to get up for school or for anything. I split my time between Connecticut and Queens, hanging out at the tennis court with the group of disciples who turned up all day every day at the court, as though that was their full-time occupation. For Ketan and the rest of the tennis court guards, however, it was their official job, and Guru paid their salary. I was always welcomed, and Guru made a point to encourage me to play as much tennis as I wanted on his court. Tanned and fit, I floated along, letting whatever schedule Guru had serve as my only agenda.

“So what are you going to do with your life?” Mayar, one of the tennis court guards, suddenly asked me.

Out of all people, I was unnerved that Mayar, whose agenda consisted of whatever Guru ordered, from painting lines on the streets in the middle of the night to marking out a jogging course for Guru, to scouring shops across the tri state area in search of the perfect samosa when Guru had a craving for a savory snack, he knew perfectly well that this was not a question that I could answer or even be allowed to answer.

I wanted to reply,
Be rich, successful, and happily married,
just to shock him, but I knew better than to joke like that. A comment of that nature could have wound up getting me reported to Guru.

The more I thought about my future, the more panicked I became. I looked around at the disciples who during the day ventured in and out of the tennis court. First there were the workers from the disciple-owned Indian restaurant. Notorious for hiring disciples, mostly from visiting centers, to slave for twenty dollars a week, they labored long hours, mopping floors and schlepping buckets of potatoes up and down from the basement to the slop sinks in boiling heat. They were allowed to duck into the court for prasad or a quick walking meditation, and I could always tell they were near because they smelled of reused frying oil. I shuddered at being told to join their ranks.