Cartwheels in a Sari (2 page)

The myth of my birth was one of Guru's favorite stories that he repeated over the years. Although it changed slightly depending on his mood, the standard version is the following: At 6:01 on a warm morning in September 1970, my soul entered the world, landing in a Connecticut hospital. My exhausted mother beamed and clutched me tightly to her breast, while my father was in the parking lot waiting for Guru. Guru was being chauffeured from Queens, New York, and as soon as he arrived, my father escorted Guru directly into the nursery.

According to Guru, my first
dharshan,
official blessing, occurred an hour after my birth. Guru walked up to the window and spotted me. I, like the other shriveled, stunned newborns, was asleep. Guru had brought with him my name. In Eastern traditions, a spiritual name means receiving a new life, a new identity. My mother, originally Kathleen, was given the name Samarpana by Guru, and my father, originally Tonis, was renamed Rudra. My parents would never have considered naming me themselves. I was Guru's. He picked out the name, Jayanti, meaning “the absolute victory of the highest Supreme.”

Guru started meditating on me, sending me an inner message to wake up and respond to his presence. In the first of many of my great acts of disobedience and disappointment, I continued sleeping. Again, Guru intently concentrated on me, attempting to stir me, yet I offered no reply. Feeling frustrated, he inwardly told my soul,
Is this your gratitude? I specially chose you from the highest heavens to come to earth to be with me, and this is your gratitude? You do not acknowledge your Guru? Bah.
At this point, I uncurled my fingers and moved my hands together in a prayerful
pranam,
opened my eyes, and slightly bowed my head and neck into my chest. It was a perfect moment, an act of unconditional surrender, of pure
bhakti,
devotion. It was miraculous and yet expected. It was my first test, and I had passed it, cementing my status, cementing my bonds.

FOR THE FIRST
six months of my life I was homebound because Guru told my mother that my special soul, so daz-zlingly beatific, needed careful sanctuary while adjusting to the vibrations and consciousness of the chaotic world.
Unquestioning, my mother obeyed. That was the requirement necessary to be his true disciple: obey and please Guru unconditionally, and, in return, he would deliver the disciple to the golden-shore of perfection. It was his guarantee.

All of my childhood memories involve trying to obey and please Guru. My earliest memory is of my third birthday party in Queens. The meditation that night was at the house of a disciple who lived a few blocks from Guru. My mother dressed me in a sari of Guru's favorite color, a shade of light blue the disciples officially dubbed “Guru-blue.” Saris were the required uniform for meditations—six yards of fabric, carefully pleated and draped, that modestly concealed the body. When worn well, saris produced goddess-like silhouettes. The disciples’ saris included many colors, from jewel-toned silks that evoked the splendor of strutting peacocks to pure white cotton that suggested nunlike severity. For my mother, trying to keep six yards of slick blue polyester pinned and tucked on a three-year-old determined to waddle around, kicking and spinning, was a true challenge. I kept tripping over the pleats, even though my mom had safety pinned my goddess draping to my undershirt.

When Guru summoned me to the front of the room for my birthday cake, a bus-wheel-size mound covered in sugar icing and pink rosettes with three thick candles, I marched over, anxious to blow out the flames. But, as always before any activity, first came the meditation. Guru motioned for me to stand still in front of him.

I started to squirm. I heard the flames lick the air, then watched the candles melt into pink wax puddles on the icing. I needed to get to those candles. I needed to lick off the pink
rosettes, but I was trapped. He wasn't done. I hadn't yet been thoroughly blessed. He smothered my folded hands with his left hand, capturing them, then pressed his right hand on my head, covering my entire skull, then he pushed harder, as if to ensure through force that the showering of love would be better received. I wiggled more, trying to turn my head to look for my mother. I was worried now. The candles were shrinking while people giggled and oowwd and aahhd behind me. Guru rotated me to face him. His blessing wasn't done.

Finally, with a large smile, he proclaimed, “Good girl, Jayanti, you are a good girl.”

He let go. I took a step back, dazed from all the blessing, and again looked for my mother. Spotting her, with a huge smile, her eyes happily streaming with tears, was a relief. I was always relieved when I could see my mother. With both hands folded, she prompted me to do the same—keep those hands folded. I did. I brought my hands together and stood beside the cake. I then looked for my father and brother. My father was fidgeting with a camera, staring down at the lens cap, as if looking at himself in the reflection. My six-year-old brother, Ketan, glared at me with his arms squeezing his knees. He hated all birthdays that were not his own.

But then it was finally time—the big event—the sugar fortress awaited. The sheer bulk of the cake meant that I couldn't get close enough to blow out the candles properly. I tried with a faint puff and nothing happened. I looked up at Guru for my instructions. He always had answers.

“Blow, good girl. Bah, bah. Blow hard.”

I tried again. Nothing happened. I didn't want to disappoint Guru. Disappointing Guru meant he did not smile at
me, and my parents didn't either. More giggles and oowws and aahhs. I forced a burst of sloppy wind up from the bottom of my stomach. Again nothing.

“Oi,” Guru said. “She cannot do it. Her mother, come, help her.” Guru started reading a note on his side table.

I had failed. My eyes filled with tears. Guru did not look up at me again.

My mother stood up, ready as always to sacrifice herself for her family, but then, without any invitation, Ketan dashed up onto the stage, rammed his entire fist into the scripted lettering of
Beloved Jayanti,
and blew out my candles. So there, he glared at me. He had won.

“Oi,” Guru said at the chaos before him.

Happy Birthday.

AS THE NUMBER
of disciples quickly grew, the informal meditation group my parents joined disappeared. In its place, Guru established the groundwork for a booming organization. Guru invited my parents to be active pioneers in the process, and they were both honored and overjoyed to be part of what they viewed as an expanding movement with the potential to radically transform the world for the better. My father, in particular, wanted to be at the forefront of Guru's evolving mission. Although my parents longed to move permanently to Guru's new neighborhood in Queens, New York, Guru told them to remain in Connecticut to manage the Connecticut Center—the gathering place for potential and current disciples. One year after my birth, after consulting with Guru, my parents found a humble two-story ranch house in
Norwalk that had a fully finished basement to host the Connecticut Center. With plenty of parking, a separate entrance, and low rent, it was ideal. After Guru came to view the house, he gave his consent, and we packed up and moved. The Connecticut Center occupied the entire basement, and we inhabited the first floor of the house. I shared a room with Ketan, my parents had a room with separate beds, and there was a living room and small kitchen. Norwalk, in 1971, was closer to the country than the suburbs, and the house had a field on both sides with large woods stretching out behind it. The semi-seclusion worked well, for we were definitely unlike the other residents in the neighborhood.

It was made clear to me right away that the new house was not for us. We were just custodians; the house served the needs of the meditation group and Guru. Our living room had only one piece of furniture, a throne for Guru. Our kitchen cupboards stored the pots, utensils, and ingredients my mother used when cooking for Guru. Our bathroom shelf held special sponges and cleaners to be used before Guru's visits. The sole point of everything was Guru—and everything that belonged to Guru, including all his personal items— his cup, blanket, pens—items that had once belonged to Guru—used cups, blankets, and pens—or objects that had any faint relation to Guru, including candle holders, incense burners, and shrine cloths placed near his pictures, were sacred relics.

Our house felt like a Guru museum, replete with photo gallery—pictures of Guru occupied every single free space upon the wall—Guru with his hands folded, Guru laughing, Guru sniffing a gardenia, Guru sipping juice. From the
entryway to the gap between the sink and medicine cabinet, we were surrounded by Guru. He was always watching me. He was always, always present.

My parents, striving to be obedient disciples, settled into their separate routines that Guru assigned them. Their schedules seemed to overlap only occasionally, and most often in their efforts to raise my brother and me to be model disciples. My father created board games such as Disciple Chutes and Ladders, where we dreaded landing on squares like “Did Not Meditate Soulfully—Go back ten spaces.” He also told us favorite stories such as the day Guru achieved God-Realization at age eleven, when he saw the Supreme in the clouds, and how when Guru was fourteen, just like Lord Krishna, he outwitted an evil force that appeared in the form of his own guru, Sri Aurobindo, and destroyed the demon, and teaching tales of how Guru's third eye allows him to know the past, present, and future simultaneously. So when I wouldn't eat my bowl of spiced dal, my mother gently reminded me that Guru was watching and not at all pleased with my behavior, which made me look around and quickly shovel the lentils into my mouth.

My parents worked diligently for Guru, especially on Mondays—the night Guru came to our house to hold meditations. Preparations began a few days before with each parent taking on specific tasks. It seemed that they always had separate projects that kept them in different rooms of the house. I never saw them together tidying up the meditation room or raking leaves. They moved, it seemed, in opposite directions, with my mother entering a room just as my father had shut the door on his way outside. As my mother cleaned rooms, picked flowers, and bought groceries, my father arranged
chairs, lit incense, and swept the path from the driveway to the side door. While all of the setup took place, Ketan and I were told to stay out of the way.

Monday afternoons, I sat on the kitchen counter while my mother cooked some of Guru's favorite foods. Guru was a vegetarian, and made vegetarianism mandatory for all of us. I had never even tasted meat; and I didn't want to, since Guru said that meat contained restless animal-consciousness, and anything that he declared could lower my consciousness was to be avoided at all costs. But Guru enjoyed food and was a voracious eater. Since he took great pleasure in eating, his weight would perpetually fluctuate, to his great dismay. He often complained about the large number of calories in ice cream and samosas, after devouring a heaping plateful of both. I knew that Guru could use his spiritual powers to do anything, and sometimes I wondered why he didn't touch his own stomach and make it go away. But then I also knew that Guru was teaching us some sort of lesson that one day I would understand. Often at meditations, Guru, in a teasing voice, asked us why our master was so fat, and when we told him that he was thin, he would shake his feet, then say that he was not as thin as Lord Krishna or Christ, and not nearly as handsome, but when we told him again and again that he was much more beautiful than any other avatar, he would lean back in his chair and smile sweetly. Then I could tell he was happy.

As Guru preferred foods from his native Bengal, my mother tried hard to learn classic Indian recipes such as aloo chop, saag paneer, and jalabis. Having lost her mother at age eleven, my mother grew up in the scotch-soaked stink of a Chicago apartment with her permanently drunk father and
her neurotic older sister, becoming a surrogate mother to both. Nightly she fished change out of her father's coat pockets in order to provide dinner. Even as a child, my mother dreamt of family dinners and cozy memories, and so having Guru and the disciples come to her kitchen was like hosting Thanksgiving dinner weekly, and she strove to prepare an array of elaborate dishes, trying to anticipate Guru's whims. Just in case he might be in the mood for an okra curry, vegetable pakora, or tamarind chutney, wearing her Guru-blue cotton sari and red bindi, she scoured the local grocery stores until she found ingredients she could piece together into a Mogul feast. Often, after days of preparation, Guru wouldn't touch a thing, asking instead for pizza. That only made her try harder to please him, and the next week, she was at it again, mincing garlic and rolling chapatis.

Although the meditation was supposed to start at seven-thirty, Guru was normally at least an hour late. My brother and I were not allowed downstairs inside the meditation hall unless Guru called for us, which meant my mother stayed upstairs while my father attended the meeting. Since the walls were thin and the floors were squeaky, it was mandated that we remain as quiet as possible so as not to disturb the meditation below us. Even for the golden child, this wasn't easy to do, especially with Ketan's ideas for having somersault contests or dare-jumps off the top bunk. Numerous spiritual seekers stormed upstairs urging us to shut up. When we tried to play quiet games, such as Guru and Disciple—one of Ketan's favorites, which involved the Guru sitting on his throne and barking a list of commands for the disciple, none of which would be done to his satisfaction—we still ended up being too loud.

“Good girl,” Ketan said, sitting on his bed. “Go get me orange juice.”

“Yes, Guru,” I answered.

Ketan always played the Guru, making me the disciple.

I came back with a mug, spilling orange juice all over the floor.

“You didn't put ice cubes in it. You are a bad disciple. You are unspiritual. Now, pick up my stufties. Soulfully,” he said, between sips of juice. “Stufties” was what we called our stuffed animals.