by Rajat Gupta
I was awakened early by the sound of the food tray pushing against the slot in my door. Before I had time to even remember where I was, an instinctive reflex from my last SHU stay propelled me across the cell and I grabbed the tray before it fell. The food mostly tasted like cardboard, but thankfully there was some fresh fruit. As I chewed, slowly and deliberately, I reoriented myself. It was Friday. I was in solitary. I had no idea how long I’d be here.
In my brief conversation with Anita the night before, I’d asked her to call Sonu and tell her not to bring the twins when she visited today, but to come alone. I hoped she would come, and I’d be allowed to see her. The worst thing about being in the SHU is not the deprivation or the confinement, but the knowledge of the worry it is causing to loved ones. I was reminded of the saying that, as a parent, you are as happy as your unhappiest child. If I could see Sonu, at least I could reassure her that I was fine, and maybe she could communicate that to her mother and sisters.
Sonu was already in the visiting room when I arrived, after being paraded through most of the length of the prison in handcuffs. I was happy to see familiar faces among the other inmates sitting with their loved ones, but I was quickly ushered away to a special section in the visiting area for the people in orange jumpsuits. Seeing the pained expression on Sonu’s face, tears welled up in my eyes. She gave me a long, reassuring hug, but as she pulled back, I could see tears rolling down her cheeks too. There was no joking this time. Sonu does not cry easily, so I knew how hard it must have been for her to see me dressed like this.
Soon we settled down to a long and wonderful father–daughter chat, accompanied by snacks that Sonu would get me from the vending machines. We covered every topic under the sun, from her career to whether she wanted to have any more children; from her husband Meka’s medical career to my financial affairs; from the political events of the day to my grandchildren’s latest achievements. We focused on everything but my immediate plight, and for a few hours I could almost imagine that we were at home in Connecticut, sitting in the cozy library, catching up on an ordinary weekend.
Our conversation was rudely interrupted by the announcement that the visit was over. Although she had been there four hours, I knew it was not yet 3 p.m., the official end of visiting time. When I inquired about this, I was informed that the visits from the SHU had to end whenever our escorts arrived to handcuff us and take us back to our cells. Reluctantly, I said goodbye to Sonu and presented my wrists for the cuffs.
Back in my cell, I eagerly picked up the Gita and was soon immersed once more. The shlokas (verses) I was reading were familiar favorites—I have quoted these words in many speeches over the years and in every commencement speech I have given to a graduating class of students. But I heard them afresh as I read them aloud in my cell. The theme was karma yoga, the creed my father had always practiced. The literal translation is: “Your right is for action alone, never for the results.”2 Another way to think about this idea is that if you have done your best and you have worked with the best of intentions, then the results don’t matter. This idea had always been extremely liberating for me.
The one question that troubled me, as I lay in my cell, was this: Had I done my best? My decision not to testify weighed heavy on my heart—I didn’t feel I had lived courageously in that moment. Like Arjuna on the battlefield, I had been hesitant to fight. I had succumbed to fear and let the concerns of those around me about the possible outcomes of taking the stand sway me.
Now, I felt a renewed resolve. In my four-year fight against the injustice of my case, I had lost almost every battle. Every outcome had been an adverse one. Many times, I’d despaired about the futility of the fight. Why not simply give up? It would have been easy, at this stage, to feel that the war was already over. But several legal decisions were still pending in my case, including the Supreme Court ruling on my petition and a decision on whether to allow my new appeal based on the Newman case. I knew that all of these would test my resolve to stay the course, do my duty, and fight the injustice, especially if some of these decisions went against me.
I had always identified with the path of the karma yogi more than with the path of the sannyasin. I’d considered myself too worldly for the life of a monk—too driven and ambitious and eager to take action in the world. Living in the SHU, however, I felt more kinship with the ancient monks. I was reliant on the guards for basic sustenance and cut off from the world, with almost no material possessions. This was one of the great lessons of the prison experience: how little one really needs to be happy. One discovers joy in the smallest things that cost no money: sunshine, friendship, fall colors, movement. The unresolved question in my mind was: Will I still feel that way when I get out? Will results matter even less to me? I was attracted by the idea but also humbled by how difficult it might be to achieve.
Again and again, as I recited the words of the Gita, my father’s image came to mind. A man of simple living and high thinking, he considered himself a karma yogi, but he also embodied many characteristics of a sannyasin. “He who does not hate and does not crave should be known as a man of constant renunciation,”3 said the Gita. I never saw my father express either of those emotions. He wore his simple dhoti even when he was accompanying the prime minister on state visits around the world. That’s not to say he was a saint—far from it. He’d actually been arrested as a young man for impersonating one of the students he was tutoring in order to help him cheat on an exam. The student was paying him handsomely for this ruse, and my father, who intended the money to go to his revolutionary cause, decided that the end justified the means.
He was generous to a fault with his time and money. He always gave whatever he possessed to anyone who needed it, often to my mother’s frustration, and he was simply not attached to material things. While fully engaged in his profession and connected to his family, there was a definite sense of detachment from this world, a sense that only increased in his final years. On our long walks in the hospital grounds during his final months, he exuded tranquility and peace.
I was now older than he had been when he died, and I had lived such a different life, although his example was never far from my mind. Could I follow him into that deeper detachment as I entered the next phase of my life?
In Search of Equanimity
Early on Saturday morning, I was called for a visit. As I was walking past the other cells, handcuffed and escorted, I suddenly saw a familiar face through the glass window of one of the doors. It was a guy who had been my walking partner at the camp in the early days. He had left six months ago, supposed to be headed home! Could he have been here in the SHU for all that time? They clearly had taken away his home confinement time and possibly his “good time.” All I knew was that he had argued with the case manager about his release date. I could not imagine what he must be going through, still here when he should have been home. What torment month after month of solitary confinement must be for someone I knew was accustomed to walking more than fifteen miles a day.
My friend’s plight was momentarily pushed to the back of my mind when I saw Anita and Sonu across the room, waiting for me. I instinctively felt I should make the most of every moment with them, since I did not know when my visiting privileges might be suspended on the flimsiest pretext. I remembered a story my mother once told me, about the time when my father was jailed by the British, and because they were not married, she was unable to visit. Determined to find a way, she went to my father’s brother and asked him to set up a visit for himself. She dressed in a nurse’s uniform, and while my uncle engaged the guard in a long conversation, she was able to slip into the prison. After some time, the guard became suspicious that the nurse hadn’t left, and my uncle was forced to confess, but luckily the guard took pity on the young lovers and allowed the visit to continue.
After I hugged my wife and daughter with a little extra appreciation, we all sat down. I could tell that Anita was very stressed by my situation, because her stress-relief mechanism w
as to feed me. She bought a mountain of snacks from the vending machine, and while they weren’t exactly gourmet fare, compared to the food in the SHU they were quite good. It broke my heart to see the worry on my wife’s face. I should have never given them an opportunity to send me to the SHU and make everyone who cares about me so unhappy. After they left, I felt sad and dejected, and turned to the Gita for comfort.
“The monk is called a man of steady wisdom when his mind is unperturbed in sorrow, he is free from longing for delights, and has gone beyond attachment, fear and anger.”4 I thought about this idea in the small hours of the morning, as I lay sleepless on my lumpy mattress, trying to calm my mind and emotions. Could I attain that kind of freedom here, in such emotionally and physically challenging circumstances? Another verse compared the way the wise man “withdraws the senses from the objects of the senses” to the way a tortoise draws in its legs.5 I focused on drawing myself inward, away from the noise, the discomfort, the ache in my back, the worries about my family, the helpless frustration of my situation, the unanswerable questions.
The discipline of meditation is emphasized in the Gita. Some of my friends who are long-time practitioners swear by the profound influence meditation has had on their lives, but my own attempts, I had to admit, had been episodic and erratic. Whenever I visited my good friend Deepak Chopra, he would take the time to meditate with me, but alone I found it hard to be consistent. Now, the practice took on a new seriousness and urgency. I had no control over the fact of my confinement; no choice as to when I would eat, go outside, or even have the light on; no way to tell the time; but I could learn to control my inner experience. By “treating happiness and sorrow, gain and loss, and conquest and defeat with equanimity,”6 as the Gita advised, I could win inner freedom, even in solitary confinement.
These ideas were both appealing and challenging to me. Could I treat honor and dishonor the same? Denunciation and praise? I had gone from being respected and even revered to being disrespected, insulted, and shamed. From the perspective the Gita taught, these experiences were equal. It was an attitude that is at the heart of the spiritual traditions of my ancestors, but one that I knew would make little sense to my American friends. Americans are so enamored with the drama of emotion—the highs and lows, the triumphs and the disasters, the trauma, the anger, and the healing. The idea of being free from it all doesn’t even occur to most. “I don’t understand how you can take all this and remain so calm!” was a common refrain. But for me, equanimity was liberation.
I resolved that I would not let the ups and downs of my prison existence affect me. What is the real difference whether I am in the camp or in the SHU? I asked myself. The fact that I was in the SHU did not have the power to make me unhappy. Life is a series of experiences, none of which is inherently good or bad. I was not going to give the people who were making decisions about my life the power to make me angry.
Soon, my resolve would be tested—by both positive and negative events. First, a wonderful visit from Anita and my third daughter, Aditi, who always cheers me up. For some reason, when I saw her, I remembered that she was the daughter we almost lost. Anita’s first two births had been perfectly normal, so we had no concerns, and we headed to the birthing center as most pregnant women do in Denmark, where we lived at the time. Luckily, Ingrid, the wife of one of my partners, was a doctor, and she worked at the hospital next door. She came to check on Anita, and noticed that the midwife looked worried. Suddenly, she sprang into action, and had to use forceps, because Aditi was not getting enough oxygen with the cord choking her. We were very lucky she was there. Those precious few minutes flashed in front of my eyes, highlighting the fragility of life, and I touched Aditi’s hand as if to reassure myself she was there. However deeply I might believe in the immortality of the soul, I was still deeply attached to my loved ones in their mortal bodies, for better or for worse.
Unaware of the thoughts going through my mind, my daughter proceeded to give me a full report of her recent dating experiences. Anita, once again, fed me as much as she could. Overall, it was an uplifting visit, but I reminded myself to practice equanimity even then. Soon they would be gone and the feelings would change—could I remain poised in wisdom, as the Gita described? As I hugged them goodbye, I told them I was not sure when the next visit would be possible. Little did I know it would be two months before I would see them again, and every last reserve of my spiritual strength would be called on to remain steady.
The next three days brought one piece of bad news after another. On Monday, the guards came to fetch me for a call I had scheduled with my lawyers. By now I was used to pretty rough treatment, but this was extreme. They first attached a heavy chain around my waist, then handcuffed me in the front and double handcuffed that to the chain around my waist. I was taken to a small room with a desk and a phone and then the counselor connected the call. When I asked if my hands could be free to hold the receiver, he looked at me as if it was a completely unreasonable request. He told me to hold it between my chin and shoulder. I must have dropped the phone at least five times during the call, awkwardly retrieving it with my cuffed hands.
As I sat there, my neck stiffening painfully, my lawyer told me that the Supreme Court had refused to hear my appeal. This was a huge blow. As I was taken back to my cell, I kept telling myself: Be detached. Do not let this pull you out of your inner peace. I am doing my duty and fighting the injustice as best I could, I reminded myself. The outcome is not in my hands. I should not let it affect me. Don’t get mad at the justices or the COs in the SHU. Don’t be upset at the people who let you down. Forgive all and be at peace with yourself. And know that at the existential level, it does not really matter. I was roughly thrust back into my cell and the chains removed.
The next day, I was restless. It had now been four days and I did not know what they were going to do to me. Herb Henzler, my old McKinsey friend from Germany, and Pramath Sinha, the first dean of ISB, were both flying in to visit me. It would be really sad if they were turned away because of this stupid incident. I asked to use the phone and was told that one could only make a call after one month in the SHU. The only exception was for legal calls, so I requested one of those as soon as possible. Maybe my lawyers could get a message to my friends.
On Wednesday, my case manager came to meet with me. It was a stone cold meeting. She proceeded to read my rights, then told me my visits would be taken away for sixty days. I had been steeling myself for thirty days but this was much worse. My sisters were coming from India at the end of May—the only break during which they could make the trip. I explained this to her, but she did not even bother to reply. Surely she is also someone’s sister, I thought. I would have appreciated at least some sympathy, even if she could not do anything. I asked her, “Now that my case is resolved, when am I going back to the camp?” She was evasive. What were they going to do to me? The meeting was over in less than five minutes.
Back in my cell, I started imagining the worst outcomes. I tried to meditate and steady my mind, but the racing thoughts, recriminations, frustrations, and questions would not leave me alone. So I picked up the book once again and began to read aloud, as Arjuna extolled the nature of the Divine. The rhythms of the beautiful poetry and the sounds of Sanskrit put me into a trance-like state.
“I am the taste of water, I am the effulgence of the moon and the sun … I am also the sweet fragrance in the earth, I am the brilliance in the fire, and the life in all beings, and I am the austerity of the ascetics … Know Me to be the eternal Seed of all beings. I am the intellect of the intelligent; I am the courage of the courageous. And of the strong I am the strength which is devoid of passion and attachment.”7
Surrounded by concrete and steel, the glare of fluorescent lights and the clamor of suffering voices, I contemplated the Divine and found some peace. It was a different idea of God to the one my Christian friends prayed to; a God that was not waiting in a faraway heaven but permeating everything in this world, includ
ing my own self. Perhaps I could not prove that such a Supreme Being exists, but the power that was carried in the Gita’s words was enough for me to believe.
The Cage
Is this what a zoo animal feels like? I wondered. I was in a cage—thirty by ten feet with chain link fences on three sides and the ceiling, barbed wire above, and a cinder block wall at the end. Next to me was another identical cage, and five more lay beyond it. In each cage were anywhere between five and ten orange-suited SHU inmates, partaking of their daily “recreation outing.”
I had been in the SHU a week before I discovered I could request this change of scene for ninety minutes a day. We were transferred like animals—handcuffed and escorted although it was all of ten steps from the cell area to the rec area. Once inside the cage, I politely greeted the other occupants and then began walking the longer side of the cage. Twenty steps one way; twenty steps back. The hard concrete floor was painful through the thin-soled orange canvas shoes we were required to wear, and the short back and forth was dizzying, but it felt so good to move. I missed my ten-mile-a-day walks.
I had been walking for a few minutes when suddenly I heard a crashing noise and saw an old man collapsing against the chain link fence, frantically trying to get a grip. There was a sudden flurry of activity and the emergency response personnel came. What was such an old man, certainly in his eighties, doing in prison at all? I wondered. And why on earth is he in the SHU? It was hard to watch the callous way they handled him, clearly showing that this human life did not have the same value as themselves in their eyes.