Cartwheels in a Sari (8 page)

In the bus, Guru reserved the first row for himself, and then positioned Prema and Isha on the seat across from him. The rest of the bus was by invitation only and getting onto Guru's bus was a prized privilege. Other buses trailed behind, with sad disciples who sat facing their windows with folded hands, just in case they might pass Guru's bus in traffic, and they could have a few seconds of a highway blessing via Guru's window. My family always got invited onto Guru's bus, which meant that in addition to being entertained by Guru spontaneously singing, telling stories, and passing out prasad, we received special perks like keeping count of the drawings that he did on everything from place mats to napkins. The buses we traveled on were not luxury models, but low-budget rejects, like retired school buses without heat. Inevitably, on each trip, we had mechanical problems.

One freezing and sleet-drenched night, on our way back home from Guru's public concert, the bus's engine began smoking, and we quickly pulled off the nearest exit. A few of the guards, including my father—who also rotated as one of the official drivers—bundled up and headed outside to fiddle with the engine.

Alo had been at the concert, but she had driven down from Canada with Roshan and Heera. I had watched Alo in the auditorium. She was in the row in front of me, and for the entire concert, her head drooped asleep, like a wilted tulip. In her defense, even a short concert for Guru was at least three hours long.

His concerts always started late. He began with a silent meditation, then improvised on many musical instruments, none of which he knew how to play. As usual, before Guru entered the stage, the hall was full. Disciples responsible for producing the event wanted to give Guru a packed house, and so for months they soaked the city with posters, gluing everything from bulletin boards to phone booths, and blitzing neighborhoods with leaflets. The more people in attendance, the more pleased Guru was with the event. Numbers mattered. If Guru was going to transform humanity, it was advantageous for him to appear before big crowds.

The biggest audiences came when the famed guitarist Carlos Santana, whom Guru named Devadip, became a disciple. After receiving initiation, Guru instructed Santana to marry his girlfriend, Deborah. Although they lived in California, they often came to New York to bask in Guru's divinity and have Guru as their muse. As a great honor and privilege for Santana, Guru invited him to perform during Guru's concerts. Inevitably, however, though the house may have been
packed at the beginning of the night, after Santana finished playing, bowing both to the audience and to Guru, then left the stage, most of the audience fled. Those who did stay to see Guru's follow-up act exited shortly after as Guru scraped a bow across his cello while singing Bengali songs. For nine years as Devadip, Santana devoted himself to Guru's path, receiving special attention from Guru with every visit, until suddenly he was gone. I remember Guru sitting on his porch, chastising Santana and his wife, blaming their broken spiritual lives on their disobedient desire to start a family. Santana instantly became an ex-disciple. Guru told us Santana would drown in the “ignorance-sea,” and immediately all of his relationships with the Center were formally and permanently severed.

I was used to this by now. When a disciple left, Guru forbade any contact. It did not matter how fond one was of the person—that ex-disciple had to be discarded. So many disciples came and left that cutting off a person from my life, even someone I had known from when I was learning to crawl, now felt normal. One couldn't, or shouldn't, get too attached. I'd learned how to scab over quickly, until I couldn't feel anything anymore, and an ex-disciple was just another name added onto the rapidly expanding blacklist.

Santana's break with Guru, however, did have a profound effect on concert attendance. With Guru as the headliner and only act, the less than full houses had early, mass evacuations. Although I understood that the concerts were hours and hours long and the music was unbearable, the people who left, I concluded, were simply unenlightened and didn't understand the larger purpose. I felt sorry for them. Here they were given an opportunity by the Supreme himself to become
a disciple of the highest avatar, and they blew it. It really was their loss.

At three in the morning, shivering, I huddled against my mother in the broken-down bus. Due to chronic mechanical trouble, the bus's engine stalled. From my seat beside the window, frigid winds seeped through the glass. Besides the distant beads of lights from the highway, everything outside was dark. I sighed with the realization that if the bus was repaired within the next hour or so, I might still make it home in time for school. Not only would I not have had any sleep but my language arts report, like the majority of my homework, had not even been started. When I asked my mom if she thought I'd make it to school on time, she told me not to worry, that she would happily call in sick for me. With all of my absences, I was the sickest kid enrolled, the local hypochondriac. I didn't mind since I always felt absent at school even when I was present.

Long after I had stopped dressing in saris and decorating my cubby with photos of Guru in
nirvakalpi samadhi,
an elevated state of consciousness, the kids at Silvermine Elementary School still remembered. Tommy Frangelo, a boy who lived down the road from my house, told a legion of kids that he saw my family sacrificing a monkey and then drinking its blood. Because one of the ancient Hindu sacred signs is a swastika, it became standard knowledge that on top of everything else, the Tamms were Nazis, too.

In school, on the rare occasions I had received an invitation to a big event like Susie Thompson's birthday party at McDonald's, I was not allowed to attend. Guru had clear rules that socializing with outsiders was forbidden. Even when I begged my father to go, he seemed baffled as to why anyone
would even want to go to a birthday party. Social events, for my father, were worse than searching for files at the town clerk's office. My request to attend the class year-end roller skating party caused him to stare at me for a long time, as if unsure that this strange little person was somehow the special soul that Guru had selected. Then he'd ask if I had meditated that day.

Since every night and every weekend we were in Queens or somewhere else spreading Guru's message, instead of chatting about play dates and birthday parties, I'd attempt to share news with my classmates about the many special events that occurred during our two sacred holidays: April, in honor of Guru's arrival in America, and August, in honor of Guru's birthday. During those times disciples from all over the world congregated in New York for nonstop festivities that included our own parades, Olympics, and circus. But the girls at Silvermine School weren't impressed. Soon even the rare birthday party invitation ceased. Sitting in the cafeteria by myself, it dawned on me one day that I was labeled the weird kid not only by my classmates but by the teachers as well.

When I failed the poetry presentation in Mrs. Sanders's class, I stayed after school for clarification. I had done the assignment, a rarity, having chosen a poet—Guru, of course—I memorized the poem, recited it before the class, and made a posterboard illustration to accompany it. I didn't know where I had gone wrong. Granted, all the other students chose Robert Frost and Shel Silverstein, but it was unclear to me what the problem was, until Mrs. Sanders accused me of making up the poet.

Although at this time Guru had already written more than five hundred books and was cranking out a book or two a
week of short spiritual aphorisms, I kept quiet. More and more, defending Guru didn't seem to be worth it. Leaving Guru out of school altogether felt like a wiser choice. I figured that it wouldn't insult Guru. My academic career was never something that he emphasized, or even mentioned. When I did receive a surprisingly good grade, Guru was quiet. Education was not what he wanted from me, and he made that clear. What he wanted and expected was my unconditional obedience and undying love, and for that, I suppose, it didn't matter if I ever returned to school. I might as well just have sat on his tour bus forever.

Guru woke up.

“Oi. Are you people still alive?” Guru asked, tapping on the microphone of the bus's broken PA system. “Or are you all in the sleep-world?”

Toward the front of the bus, a few muffled murmurs responded from beneath mouths wrapped with scarves.

“I am in such pain. Excruciating pain,” Guru said.

I knew Guru hurt. His slight limp at the beginning of the concert became a definitive wobble that caused him to move extra slowly, pausing between steps onto the bus. Seeing Guru in such obvious discomfort pierced me with guilt. The blame was mine, as well as all the other disciples who were constantly failing him with our selfish needs. My complaints about the freezing bus, the lack of sleep and food, I knew were ungrateful and uninspired, which resulted in desires and longings for myself rather than Guru. And the price was paid by Guru, yet again. I slunk into my seat, wishing I could reverse all the damage that I had done.

“You cannot and will never know what this Guru has to carry. So much dead elephant weight. I suffer from carrying
your problems. Vital problems, which are emotional problems. Mental problems. But my suffering does not end there. So merciless does Alo torture me. Endless are her attacks on me. Her fierce jealousy and her demands create such problems. You people will never know what type of problems she makes for me in the inner and outer world. She is determined to make me suffer and to make the Supreme's will suffer. The pain you see I have in the outer world is so insignificant to what, at every moment, I have in the inner world. Most excruciating. Most excruciating. Alo is responsible for wanting to ruin me and the will of the Supreme.”

I had never heard Guru speak about Alo in such a blunt and negative way. From the disciples I had learned that joking about Alo in her absence and worshipping Alo in her presence were politically advantageous. Beyond that, I overheard comments Prema and Isha tossed over their shoulders at meditation, forewarning that the witch was returning to town, but I had not realized the severity of Alo's effect on Guru and the suffering she caused for him. I knew my own ignorance and lack of spiritual aspiration created his pain. He had given me proof in a written statement proclaiming my worst quality.

Three years earlier, at a fund-raiser, for twenty-five dollars, disciples could stand before Guru as he wrote their worst quality. My parents thought this was a great idea. For a special gift, they signed me up. After my turn was over, I needed help from my mom to explain what it meant: “Deliberate disobedience on the lower-vital plane.” I did not understand. My mother informed me that the lower-vital plane was the part of the being that harbored impure thoughts, emotions, and desires. At nine, my impure thoughts had been that Ketan
could be a jerk, and my dad wore the same stinky, sweaty T-shirt that he had run in and then dried off on the radiator for the remainder of the day. Guru had officially confirmed the depths of my disobedience, my grave sins.

To witness Guru speaking about Alo with such pain in his voice was new and surprising. The problem of Alo, obviously, was dire. But, as with everything else, I had been too selfish and unaware to notice. What was wrong with me? My own intuition was nonexistent. I loved Alo. And secretly—even though it was bad—I still loved her. This probably caused Guru extra suffering.

“Guru?” a woman asked.

“Oi?” Guru replied. “A question?”

It was dark, and in my seat I couldn't see into the rows behind.

“Is there something that we can do to help you with Alo?” she questioned.

I was glad that she asked this. I really wanted to know.

“Could you not kill her?” Guru said.

The world paused. Stuck in a moment, frozen. Only the wind moved, bleeding through the glass onto me, giving me chills. I did not want to hear any more. I felt afraid of Guru and what he wanted. It all felt wrong. I turned away, toward the window that offered an illusion of the world outside with no lights and only deep darkness. Somewhere, I remembered the snaky arms of the Guru-bust in the backyard, curling and lapping their way toward my bedroom, awaiting my eventual return.

Half an hour later, the bus was fixed and merrily on its way, when Guru told the driver to pull over to a Howard Johnson's rest stop. As the sleepy disciples stretched and stumbled
off the bus, confusion churned in my head. Nothing made sense. I must have misunderstood Guru. Language had different meanings for moments, and words slipped between meanings quickly, as when crossing between rooms. What I heard Guru say felt wrong, yet I knew that was impossible. He could never be wrong. Unsettled and with my stomach throbbing with discomfort, I turned toward my mother, who stood in the aisle zipping up her coat. There was a line to disembark as disciples packed tightly in front and behind her. I wanted to confess my distress to my mother, but I knew I couldn't. In my family, as in the Center, we did not speak openly. Guru's standard policy was that disciples who questioned him were problematic and needed to be turned in for punishment. Criticisms, concerns, and suggestions about the Center were evidence of one's spiritual corruption. Rather than expose my own weaknesses, and risk being reported, it was much safer to keep my concerns to myself. As the Chosen One, I had a lot to lose.

“Mom?” I asked in a low voice.

She looked at me with deeply tired, apologetic eyes.

“I had a good meditation tonight,” I said.

THE REST STOP
was populated with truck drivers smoking and chatting up the waitresses, who jiggled while refilling coffee cups. All heads turned as we entered. We looked like we suffered from severe personality disorders—our top halves resembling skiers, bundled in earmuffs, scarves, and parkas, and our bottom halves meditators from which flowed our matching Guru-blue saris, the color selected by Guru as our standard uniform for all public concerts and events. The finishing
touch below our saris, the outer symbol of our contemplative lives, was our footwear—various sizes and colors of running shoes, which demonstrated our shared enthusiasm for Guru's latest obsession with running. The male disciples all matched one another, wearing white pants, white shirts, and running shoes. We loaded in, filling the restaurant to capacity.