Walking Wisdom

by Gotham Chopra

  It’s in our nature too to experience joy, my dad has reminded me on many occasions, but we let the challenges of modern life muffle this experience. But if you listen, you’ll see your best friend is trying to bring this back for you through her own desire for it. Pretty remarkable and intuitive.

  We had reached the end of our adventure around the block, coming upon our doorstep. Both Cleo and Krishu did their best to prolong the journey, Krishu urging the one whom he now identified as a weak link—his grandfather—with gestures and a repetitive “fetch . . . fetch . . . fetch . . .” Meanwhile Cleo was pulling on her leash away from the house, obviously seeking more pleasure hunting in the fantasia that was our neighborhood.

  Again my father looked at me for guidance. I shook my head, knowing that it was dinnertime for Krishu, to be followed by his bath time, and then the nightly rituals that included reading books, listening to music, good night kisses to Mama, Papa, Dada, and Cleo, and then sleep. There are indeed some important routines and rituals to life.

  Candice opened the front door with a big smile on her face. Every single time she looks upon her son, she reacts with instinctive bliss, the same way Krishu does when he plays fetch with Riley, or Cleo reacts when she sees Candice. “Did you have fun on your walk, Krishu?” Candice asked Krishu, sweeping him up into her arms and tickling him.

  He nodded excitedly, eager to share. “Dada throw fetch far!!!”

  Candice looked at my father, smiling. “He got you to play fetch?” Candice nodded, impressed—she knows my father well enough to understand the significance of the event.

  He reciprocated with a smile and his own nod. “Now if only we could teach all the leaders of the world to play fetch, I think we’d be onto something.”

  LATER THAT EVENING, after Krishu had successfully been put to sleep, Cleo tucked snugly beside him, I drifted back into the living room, finding my father once more staring into his computer.

  “More Wikipedia?” I asked.

  “Twitter,” he answered.

  Deepak Chopra is a master tweeter. The man has more to say than anyone in the world. His publishers are no match for him and can hardly keep up with his output. The invention of online platforms, blogs, and social networks where there are no gatekeepers between a man and his audience has been the ultimate gift for my father. He is in constant communication with his audience via his laptop.

  “You know, I was thinking,” I started, then paused so as to make it seem like I had just casually been thinking and not really scripted the following words. “Maybe we should do this again?”

  “Do what?” Papa looked up at me.

  “Get together.” I shrugged my shoulder involuntarily. “And talk.” I nodded, reinforcing what I just said. “I think it’s good for Krishu, you know?”

  “Okay,” he said, unmoved.

  “Candice and I are going with Krishu to New York next week for a friend’s wedding. You’re going to be there, right?”

  He nodded, and as if on cue, Cleo sauntered into the living room staring up at each of us, evaluating the playing field. She has an acute sense of the house and anytime she senses that someone is up to something, she finds her way to them to investigate what’s going down.

  “Listen, Gotham,” my father started, sensing something in the silence just like Cleo, “parenting is not easy. Despite the many books on it, including my own”—he smiled at the irony—“there’s no perfect method to it, no user manual that guarantees success.”

  He was quiet for a moment. Cleo drifted his way and lingered again at his feet, identifying the spot where she would come in for her soft landing.

  “How do you raise Krishu to be a free thinker, to dream on how to change the world, to be playful and innocent like Cleo and Riley, in a world that demands the opposite, that pushes for rigidity and acquiescence to rules?”

  Oh, how I wish Papa had the simple answer and wasn’t instead asking a rhetorical question.

  “Maybe that’s what we should be talking about when we meet again?”

  I nodded, knowing my mother would be happy with this development.

  Cleo circled her spot at my father’s feet and plopped down beneath him. He eyed her dubiously again, not sure what, exactly, she wanted out of him.

  Chapter Three

  Papa, do you think being a vegetarian makes you more spiritual?

  Are you asking me if I’m vegetarian? I’ve dabbled with vegetarianism off and on. At this moment I’m a strict vegetarian.

  I already knew that. It’s not what I’m asking.

  Okay, good. What I would say is this: If you want to be healthy, which is a prerequisite for most spiritual experience—because if your body is healthy, your mind is healthy and you can have clarity—vegetarian diets are more conducive to the classic spiritual experience. But if you are changing your diet simply because you want to be spiritual, then the stress that will likely come with changing your diet actually will do the opposite.

  What I am saying is that a change in consciousness will bring about a change in behavior and not the other way around. That’s the case with most things in life. Until there is a switch in your consciousness, every diet or behavior modification technique is a little more than a fleeting fad.

  With all of that said, I think there’s a much bigger question lurking here that should be addressed. What does it really mean to be “spiritual”? In our culture we’ve aligned that with the notion of being vegetarian, good at yoga, and not swearing. But spirituality and the pursuit of it is far beyond that. It is truly the pursuit of higher consciousness and an understanding of the true nature of the cosmos. To reduce spirituality to what your diet is, is to take Einstein’s insights in physics and simply say he was good at math.

  CLEO IS A PRETTY SEASONED TRAVELER. I OFTEN WISH I’D kept a log all these years, but my guess is she’s likely racked up in excess of 100,000 miles, commuting back and forth between NYC and LA, as well as side trips to Atlanta, where Candice’s family lives. Since she only weighs about ten pounds, Cleo is allowed to travel “in cabin” with us. She fits quite snugly into her deluxe Sherpa pet carrier, which slides easily beneath the seat in front during takeoff and landing.

  We’ve got our routine down pat—a routine that relies on moving as seamlessly as possible through airport security, ensuring that we’re all properly hydrated, and feeding Cleo’s drug habit. Cleo’s always been a bit of a nervous dog. She hoards food and becomes easily agitated. Occasionally she has trouble sleeping and can spend hours walking in circles around the house. During these periods, she often becomes preoccupied with certain spots in the house that she’ll get attached to. She’ll crouch behind a door or curl beneath a piece of furniture as if a poltergeist is roaming our grounds. Candice and I like to assign blame for these attributes elsewhere, citing the fact that Cleo is a rescue. Whatever emotional and psychological scars she bore were not on our watch. We’ve been nothing but loving, if not enabling, parents. We also figure that, as a puppy, Cleo built some sort of intolerance toward men when Candice was in medical school and had only female roommates. It’s a questionable theory, but it might explain why Cleo goes absolutely berserk around men she can’t identify. It’s this attribute more than any of her other eccentricities that generally guarantees disaster when we bring Cleo into public places like airports. Or airplane cabins, for that matter. Or malls, shops, parks, playgrounds, neighbors’ homes, banks, or dry cleaners, while we’re at it.

  Which leads us back to the drugs. Cleo’s fix is benzodiazepine, an antianxiety drug that induces drowsiness and sleep. We generally feed Cleo her drugs just as we board the plane so that the first wave of drowsiness kicks in when takeoff is imminent and the rumble and swoop of the plane provokes anxiety not just for dogs, but for humans as well. I can say somewhat sheepishly that the drugs had worked like a charm. We’d never had an incident. Then again, we had never traveled with Cleo and Krishu together until that May trip to New York City. (What we now refer to as that fateful trip.)
/>
  Krishu is a classic firstborn, the center of his parents’ universe. We do everything together. We’re that family. In the year and a half that he’s been alive, Krishu has never slept away from either of his parents—not once. I’m not talking about weekends away. I’m talking about separate rooms. We’re “cosleepers.” There, I said it. It’s a term that’s often shunned by more progressive parents, especially in those heated debates that take place in the confines of “mommy support groups” and parochial parenting workshops. But I can assure you it’s a Western thing. In Santa Monica, cosleeping is a hippie technique. In India, it’s just the way it goes.

  The same way some of Candice’s mommy buddies scowled when Candice let slip our cosleeping arrangement, Nana shook his head dismissively when Candice informed him that, in America, many newborns sleep in their own rooms, away from their parents.

  “And sometimes with night nurses,” she added, a term that required clarification.

  “That explains why there are so many drug addicts in America,” Nana declared, a conclusion to which he often returned.

  Whatever the case, the fact is that we are just as attached to our little man as he is to us. We also take great comfort in those studies (no doubt conducted by hippie scientists) that conclude that cosleeping leads to higher immunological benefits, a decreased risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, higher self-esteem, less anxiety, and a litany more of enabling-sounding advantages.

  It’s not just sleep. Krishu is involved in pretty much every aspect of our lives. He sits with us as we get ready in the morning, comes with us when we take Cleo for her morning walk (she wears two leashes in this case so he can play along), and helps give Cleo her treats.

  “Sit, Cleo!” Krishu will demand. And then he’ll hurl the treat at her, aiming directly for her snout.

  As a responsible parent, a role that’s come to me in fits and staggers, I know enough not to directly involve Krishu in Cleo’s pill pushing. Nevertheless, as a former kid, I also know the intense attraction of anything forbidden. Kirshu is no different, especially when it comes to Cleo. From her flea medication to her heartworm medication to the other supplements Candice has Cleo downing in her old age, Krishu needs to be in on the action. “Giving medicine” to Cleo is something that is very important to Krishu. It’s a way of showing love for the dog. To that extent, I’ll usually allow him to hold on to my wrist when giving Cleo her medication. Krishu knows not to touch, and he knows the difference between a pill and a treat.

  So it was on that May flight (see also: that fateful trip) that Krishu insisted he “help” give Cleo her benzos. Sure, I thought. Why not? So what if I had custody of the dog and the kid? Candice was only as far as the nearest lavatory. What could possibly go wrong?

  Plenty, as it turns out.

  I held the tiny pill in my hand as Krishu guided my wrist and ordered Cleo to sit. No sweat. Everything was moving along just swell. Traveling with a kid and a dog? I don’t know what all the fuss is about. But right at the moment when we were about to administer the pill, a flight attendant strolled by to make sure we were wearing our seat belts. Instinctively I attempted to clasp my hand, while Krishu for some reason jerked it forward. The effect was similar to that of a slingshot, with a benzo instead of a rock. Little Krishu being no Goliath, the tiny pill soared over Cleo’s head beneath the dark confines of the seat in front of us. Cleo spied the shadows beneath and then turned back to me with a look that was both helpless and hapless. Clearly the mere thought of her chasing the pill was beneath her.

  Of course, as the big papa of this household—and someone who knew his wife wouldn’t be thrilled with the way things were playing out—I got on my hands and knees and started the search. That’s where Candice found me when she returned from the lavatory—with Krishu giddily climbing all over my back and Cleo licking my face.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Um, nothing.” I leaped up instinctively. “Krishu threw a Matchbox car down there and I was just looking for it.”

  “Did you find it?” Candice asked innocently.

  “Nope,” I answered, empty-handed. “It must have rolled down.”

  She shrugged. “Did you give Cleo her meds?”

  I nodded vigorously, shoving Cleo’s head down into the bag and zipping it shut, while locking eyes with Krishu as if to send a message. His limited vocabulary and blind trust in his father could be counted on, I judged instinctively.

  Soon the pilot came on overhead and previewed the flight path, duration, and assorted details. As the plane rolled out toward the runway and the attendants went over safety instructions and Candice unveiled the first of many distractions for Krishu (coloring books, stickers, puzzles, etc.), I eyed Cleo, who seemed peacefully at ease in her bag. Pleased with myself and my simple cover-up, I dared to think that maybe we were way too paranoid about Cleo and needed to lay off enabling her habit. We might show a little more faith in her, I thought to myself; trust her ability to control her own moods without the aid of powerful narcotics. These are the types of instincts parents should nurture.

  I should have known better.

  As soon as the plane rumbled down the runway, picking up thrust toward takeoff, a whimper emerged from Cleo’s bag. No big deal, I thought to myself. Even under the aid of her drugs, Cleo occasionally reacted with soft agitated cries, especially during takeoff and the moments afterward when her ears popped. This was no different. It didn’t even register with Candice, who, with Krishu, remained focused on Dora and Diego. But then another groan emerged from the bag, this one far stronger than the first. Candice glanced downward and then toward me.

  “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, she’s fine.” I nodded reassuringly. “Rough takeoff,” I added as the plane soared gracefully into the air.

  But Cleo was anything but fine. And she quickly made us aware of it with a very audible yelp this time. Now not just Candice but the couple across the aisle stared over at us suspiciously.

  “That’s strange,” I said, putting my hand on her bag, determined at this stage to keep my ill-conceived charade going. This time as the plane veered hard, making its turn after lifting off over the Pacific and heading back east, Cleo let loose with a rapid fire of agonized cries. As if she had a deep sense of foreboding for some imminent danger, she culminated her cry with a soulful, boisterous groan.

  Passengers all around us clued into the awkward sounds coming from our aisle. I shrugged my shoulders and smiled.

  “Pick her up,” Candice urged me, sensing the same heat.

  I followed her orders and lifted Cleo’s bag onto my lap, staring into the mesh, trying to calm Cleo with soothing words and sounds. But she’d have none of it. She started to claw at the fabric frantically with her tiny paws. Her eyes wide, pupils fully dilated, this was a dog on the edge, a canine junkie that needed her fix.

  “Take it easy, Cleo.” I fumbled with the zipper on the side of the bag and pulled out the prescription bottle for the medicine. I cracked it open and my own eyes widened with panic when I saw it was empty.

  “What are you doing?” Candice inquired.

  “Don’t you see?” I answered. “She needs more drugs!” I calmed myself and took on more of a solemn tone. “She’s built up a tolerance to this stuff.”

  “Well, there aren’t any more pills. You already gave her the last one.” God bless Candice for never doubting me. Krishu started to cry, Cleo’s anxiety affecting him. “Calm her down,” Candice ordered.

  Determined to make my cover-up succeed, I unzipped the top of Cleo’s bag and stuck my hand inside to stroke her. Cleo, seizing the moment, climbed right over my palm and leaped out of the bag. I tried to wrangle her but she wriggled free and pounced away from me, landing on Krishu, whose expression transformed from abject terror to absolute glee, as if he had just witnessed a fellow comrade sprung from death row.

  Free at last, Cleo made for the hills, or at least for the center aisle. Mouths agape, Candice and I watched as Cleo
landed in the middle of the aisle and reared back on her hind legs, barking raucously, before tearing off full tilt toward the front of the plane.

  “Holy shit,” I exclaimed.

  Krishu turned to me, his grin widening ever more. He knew this taboo word that was used far too often for his mother’s liking. “Sheeeet!!!!”

  The whole cabin was flustered now as the other passengers registered what was happening. I leaped into the aisle and searched for Cleo. She had made it about twelve rows forward, where once more she stood poised, weight on her hind legs, barking full pitch at a terrified young man who reared back in his seat. I rushed off after her as the flight attendants wrestled out of their jump seats to join in the fray.

  Over the next ten minutes, I gave chase, dodging and weaving my way through the cabin along with three decidedly irritated flight attendants. For Cleo, it had quickly turned into a joyous game. As soon as one of us would close in on her, she’d elude capture, sliding beneath a seat or leaping straight over frenzied passengers. At first I too was frantic, but in Cleo I could see a switch had occurred. Her initial panic had transformed into playfulness. It was all a game to her now. I could only attribute the passengers’ alarm to the fact that we were all locked into a confined space as we steadily made our way through fifteen thousand feet. Cleo—at her most ferocious—could barely subdue an insect, a gladiatorial combat we witnessed occasionally in our backyard.

  At long last, a woman in seat 7C managed to soothe Cleo by offering her a piece of a fresh croissant she had brought onto the plane. Ever the well-behaved dog when it came to exotic French pastry, Cleo calmed down as the woman skillfully fed her and then held her in her arms until I arrived.

  “Thank you so much.” I took Cleo from her as Cleo wrestled me to make sure the croissant came with us. “I owe you a croissant.” I shrugged sheepishly.