by Karan Bajaj
Max shook his head.
She raised her hands in the air. “You are crazy. People come here after many years of making yoga and meditation,” she said. “I practice for nine years, Hari for much longer, and even people who come and leave practice for many years. And you just drop in from nowhere? How do you even find this place?”
Max explained his saga over the roaring motor.
“Incredibile,” she said. Loose strands of hair flew in all directions. “No one knows of this ashram. A monk in my village in Italy who tells me about Ramakrishna says path to him opens only when you blaze in desire for truth for many lives. But you just come here like it is winter skiing holiday.”
Not exactly, thought Max, remembering the glaciers he had crossed barefoot on his way to Bhojbasa.
“Past life. Good karma,” she shrugged.
Max stared at her sure, angular face. “You believe in that, being an astronomer and everything?” said Max.
“I believe because I am astronomer,” she said.
“How?”
“Yoga is figo, the real thing. You will see soon. It is science,” she said. “When I am in university ten years ago, I analyze gravitation, energy fields, solar systems, and I find everything is more similar than different. I think there is one principle in universe. I start doing yoga around same time and understand yoga philosophy says exactly that.” Her black eyes widened under the glasses. “Centuries before modern science, the yogis say origin of the universe is one vibrating energy. In the beginning, it shimmers alone, then it goes from one to many, manifesting the whole material universe: space, time, the sun, the moon, the oceans, landforms, everything.”
“Like the Big Bang?” said Max.
“Yes, yes, just like Big Bang,” she said, adjusting her glasses. “Only science makes original energy dry and without attribute. Yogis say it vibrates with life, energy, intelligence, good, bad, everything, the sum of all attributes. That makes sense to me. I struggle with scientific view that an intelligent universe like this one creates itself out of nothing in a fraction of a second, 10 raised to the power -47th precisa, from unintelligent molecular mass. It just can’t be. After that, I study more ancient yogic text. The yogis in 10 B.C. are like scientists. Not just scientists, like . . . mystic also. They analyze nature. They go within man. They find that like nature, essence of all life is also same alive, intelligent energy. Insects, animals, you, me, everyone, our core is same. Call it God or consciousness or whatever you want. But underlying us all is just one energy. We just don’t see it as that because it is covered by layers of individual thoughts and desires,” she said.
Max had read this before but after a week of silence the dots connected more fluidly. He understood Ramakrishna’s words better now. Yoga stilled the fluctuations of the individual mind’s helpless thought waves, allowing it to see the one unchanging energy, the unborn, un-aging, un-ailing, sorrow-less and deathless state within that Viveka had talked about. If indeed all this was true.
Shakti poured half a bottle of water on her head. It dripped from her hair to her slender neck and down her bare arms.
“I like yoga science very much,” she said. “No praying, chanting, singing. No nonsense about suffering is good or God is all powerful. Yoga also says God, this energy, is both the field and the knower of the field. But he doesn’t need to be all powerful. Inside the field, life runs by same impersonal cause and effect laws as nature. You think bad, do bad karma, you get suffering, no God helps. You work hard, you move forward and evolve like Darwin’s natural selection. Until one life after many lives of moving forward, you become a human. Now, you have sophisticated intelligence for first time. You find this up and down, ever-changing nature of life incomplete. You go inner, you do yoga, silence your mind, lose identification with your thoughts, desires, the whole sense of ‘I’ and become the One.”
Max regretted not having discussions like these since he was twenty and stoned in his suite at college. Where had the last decade gone? One job, then another, dinners in fancy restaurants, trying to become a part of a world he didn’t belong to, draining precious prana.
The tractor slowed. Thatched huts appeared in the distance. The bumpy dirt track became smoother.
“How do you know all this? I want to learn these things myself. What books do I read?” said Max.
“Why are you in such hurry? You just started,” she said, knotting her hair again.
“I don’t know. Why should I wait?” said Max.
“You are very American. Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she said. “Just meditate on it, bud.”
Max laughed. “How do you speak such good English?”
“How do you speak such good English?”
“Well I mean . . . you know, I grew up in America,” he said.
“Well I mean . . . you know, I grew up in Italy,” she mimicked.
Max reddened. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said.
Shakti threw her head back and laughed. “I was just making a joke. I know Italians don’t speak English well. But I did my master’s in Princeton. I learned better there,” she said.
The tractor stopped next to the village well. They jumped out. Shriveled, blackened women in colorful sarees sat in a circle around the well, gossiping, laughing, looking unbothered by the blazing sun. Naked children played with marbles next to them. Ahead in the fields, men pulled large, heavy plows and women watered the millet plants. Max didn’t feel apart from them anymore. He could picture their lives better now, squeezing the barren earth for every grain, the difference between a good crop and a bad crop meaning life or death. Life back home with its doormen, gluten-free diets and soy and nut allergies felt soft, easy, and quite entirely useless.
A weathered old man came out of one of the huts. Max helped him take the sacks to a storage place at the back of the hut. The man folded his hands and thanked him.
“Pavur has telephone and even laptop with Internet dial-up. You want to walk?” said Shakti when he came back sweating.
“Isn’t it six miles away?”
“Ten kilometers, so yes, about,” said Shakti.
Max groaned.
“Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale,” giggled Shakti, mimicking Ramakrishna.
Max laughed.
“Seriously, it helps. Just exhale long to count of six,” she said.
Once again, pranayama worked its magic. The careful, long exhalation meant an automatic long inhalation which brought a fresh supply of revitalizing oxygen into his body. He wasn’t the breathless, sweaty mess he’d been when he had walked from the village to the ashram.
Halfway into the journey, Max gave up the studied breathing. He could walk easily the rest of the way.
“You said I should meditate on the consciousness within,” he said. “Isn’t meditation about emptying the mind of thoughts?”
Shakti exhaled loudly. “First, you practice concentration,” she said. “Slowly, your mind becomes sharper and sharper. Now, when you meditate on something, you just think of that thing only. No other thoughts left. You meditate on consciousness, you become pure consciousness. This is goal of yoga. It can take many years, many lives. You can’t jump or hurry like American.”
“If meditation is the goal, why do we spend so much time exercising every day?” said Max.
“Asana and pranayama are just to keep your body fit,” said Shakti. “If body is not silent, how can mind inside be silent?”
Again, it made sense. In the three hours he sat for meditation, he constantly crossed and uncrossed his legs, and stooped and fidgeted trying to find a comfortable position. No wonder his mind was so restless.
“Why doesn’t Ramakrishna teach us all this?” he said.
“Did you hear anything about him before you come here?” she said.
“That he is a great man,” said Max.
“Nothing more?”
Max shook his head.
“I hear other things,” she said.
Aha, spiritual g
ossip. “What things?”
“He will not like we talk about him,” she said.
“Come on, it’s just us,” said Max. “Not like word is going to spread in this desert.”
“Okay, he comes to this village many years ago—fifty, maybe sixty, no one knows for sure—when he is a young boy, thirteen or fourteen years old,” she said. “Without any help, he builds a hut thirty-five kilometers away from the village. He lives alone there since then. He says he learnt yoga from his guru but no one has ever heard or seen his guru. No one knows his parents. No one sees him with any family ever. No one sees anyone visit him except his students. Who is he? Where does he come from? How does he learn what he knows? Why does he teach?”
Max stared at her. “I don’t know. What does that mean?”
“Villagers say he is reincarnation of Jesus,” she said.
The Savior was back. Max thought of the wild-haired homeless men camping on the green benches in Central Park who promised Max when he ran past them that Jesus was coming back soon. Some things never changed, whether you were running in New York or melting in a remote South Indian village where a missionary had likely traded food for belief.
“That’s such bullshit,” said Max.
“I agree. Hundred percent. That is not yoga science. Jesus has realized oneness. Like Buddha. Like Mohammed. Like anyone can. He is not born again in the world,” she said. “I think Ramakrishna is very successful yogi in past life. Not enlightened though. This life maybe he gets full liberation. He knows yoga from past. That’s why easy for him to do, difficult for him to teach. You will see. He can do very difficult yoga pose himself but cannot tell you how you can do it step by step. Same in meditation. He can sit in meditation for hours but he cannot explain how you can meditate.”
They reached the small, dusty town of Pavur. Men rode long, black bicycles at a leisurely pace around them. A cow lingered in front of a mom-and-pop store, its nose touching the chips and cookies dangling on a string from the shop’s facade. Next to the store, men wearing skirt-like white cloths around their waists sat on their haunches smoking beedis—thin, leaf-wrapped Indian cigarettes. Opposite the store, a stray dog urinated on a shuttered shop advertising mobile phones.
Attracted by the glass bottles of soda on the counter of the mom-and-pop store, Max and Shakti bought a Pepsi each, then quickly gobbled chocolate biscuits and Lays chips, enjoying the sticky, sweet, salty, familiar taste of home. A clot of kids gathered around them. A ragged kid touched Max’s arm and mimed being struck by an electric shock from his unfamiliar white skin. Max and Shakti laughed with his companions and bought them each biscuits and drinks. Their thin, brown faces lit up. Max shuddered involuntarily. Years ago, he had gone to a Trinity girl’s Sweet Sixteen party. The girl’s father had flown in a band from New Orleans and showered her with gifts from cars to diamond necklaces. Max’s heart had filled with rage that Andre’s mother had to beg money from her neighbors to buy him a wheelchair while this girl test-drove a shiny new Mini Cooper. Was that karma, he thought now? An unbroken chain of cause and effect continuing from one life to another, bringing pain, bringing pleasure as one deserved, until one broke out of the cycle for good. It felt even more unjust. Could he really believe that the kids in front of him with their angelic faces and easy smiles were mass murderers in their previous life? In a fit of guilt, he bought them another packet of biscuits each. They cheered.
“Do you want to see Internet or make phone call?” asked Shakti.
Max’s stomach tightened. Was Sophia fine? He’d never forgive himself if something happened to her. Chill. She wasn’t a kid in the projects anymore. She was probably having brunch with her tree-hugging friends in hipster Brooklyn.
“Internet is great,” said Max.
They turned into a narrow mud road that had along it an empty tea shop, three shops with assorted clothing and two general merchandize stores. Pavur’s main market ended there. Shakti pointed him to one of the general merchandise stores and went to the adjoining one to make her phone call. He stooped and entered the partly shuttered shop. A hairy man stood behind the counter. His mouth opened on seeing Max.
“Giant,” he said.
Max smiled. Behind the man were shelves stocked with paint, hammers, pliers, nails, wires, fixtures, and bulbs. Biscuits and assorted fried Indian snacks lay on the counter. Hardware and snacks, an odd but soothing combination. Work hard, eat well. But he didn’t see any computer in sight.
“Internet?” said Max.
The man nodded and went to the back of the shop. He came back with a small laptop covered in dust. Without wiping the dust off, he opened the cover, put it on the counter and hooked up a modem and a USB cable.
“Now, okay,” he said after ten minutes and gave the laptop to Max.
The Internet Explorer was slow, his Gmail even slower. The connection went in and out for half an hour before it eventually connected in basic HTML. Max scanned his email. A note from Sophia.
‘Maxi, I’m really worried you are never coming back . . . you don’t give up. Ever. But this time you aren’t chasing trinity or harvard or private equity, you’re asking questions that have no answers . . . I just think you’ll never stop looking. Don’t do this, Max.”
Max wrote quickly to Sophia before the Internet went out again.
“Don’t be crazy, Sophie. I’m just traveling for a bit. Chill ok?”
No email from Andre. It didn’t surprise him. Andre wouldn’t feel right telling Max he was making a mistake once again when Max had paid for his college and living expenses for years. The silence between them had grown even before Max left New York. They weren’t equals anymore. Was any relationship pure? Even friendship was complicated. Max returned to his email.
A long note from Anna. She was thinking about their night together and how they had shared something special. Why had he been so abrupt, she asked? Would they see each other again? Their brief encounter seemed such a distance away. He closed the email and went on to the next.
Notes from friends. The word had spread that he had quit his job to travel. People were surprised, shocked, even glad that one frog had jumped the well. They sent updates of their own lives.
Just five days in silence and he felt overwhelmed by this sudden influx of information. He inhaled and exhaled six times and shut down his email.
Outside the shop, he wished he had written a longer email to Sophia and at least acknowledged Anna’s message.
“Someone looks like they are missing their girlfriend.”
Whoa, could Shakti also read his mind? Max turned around. She flashed him a cheeky, flirtatious grin. A tall, toned, auburn-haired astronomer with a cute accent and cuter glasses, Shakti was the ultimate geek fantasy. Yet he felt only a distant, detached sort of attraction for her and one he had no desire to pursue. All he wanted was to start making progress in his quest. He had left behind far too much to fritter away his time.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said.
Shakti walked up and high-fived him unexpectedly. The hardware-snack-Internet shop owner stared at them curiously.
“Good for you,” she said. “I should break up too. This path is lonely. No one understands. My parents will disown me now because I don’t believe I was born because Adam and Eve had apple for breakfast. My boyfriend thinks watching football leads to enlightenment.”
Max laughed. He felt his tension break. “You’ll find someone in India,” he said. “Like Hari, the handsome film actor.”
“I do not think he knows difference between Ramakrishna and me,” said Shakti.
“Is he very serious?” said Max.
“He has lived with Ramakrishna two times before. I think this time he makes promise to himself that he will not leave the ashram until he achieves enlightenment,” she said. “He never comes to town. He never talks for more than a few minutes even on the tenth day.”
Max wanted to be like him.
Shakti pulled her hair out of her ponytail. “For last
six months, I speak so little. I feel happy you came. Do not go away soon.”
Their eyes met.
“I need to buy some snacks,” said Max, looking away.
“Why?”
“I’m still adjusting to two meals a day. Sometimes I feel hungry in the night,” he said.
They walked up the mud street and turned toward the snack shop.
“Be careful about food,” she said. “Ants, insects, other things may get into them.”
Max paused in front of the dangling biscuits. He remembered the snake from the night before. “I saw a snake in the bathroom. Are they poisonous?”
“What color was it?”
“Grayish-black with white bands.”
“That’s a krait,” she said matter-of-factly. “Very poisonous. It won’t bite unless you tease it though.”
Max recoiled. “I would never tease a snake,” he said.
“Yes but a half-open packet of chocolate biscuits in your bag?” she said.
Max lost his appetite.
“Come on, snakes don’t eat biscuits,” he said.
“How do you know? Do you have snakes in your bathroom in New York?” she said.
Max laughed. “I don’t, but I wouldn’t feed them biscuits if they were in my tub,” he said. He turned around. “But now I’m not hungry anymore.”
They chattered and laughed as they made their way back to the village. On the tractor ride back, Shakti asked him how long he planned to stay at the ashram.
“I don’t know. As long as it takes,” said Max. “You?”
“I have to decide soon,” said Shakti. “My sabbatical ends in six months in July. I don’t know whether I work toward enlightenment after that or I join back university, marry, and make family. I am more than thirty. If I miss the time, I never have it later. For a man, it is easy.”
Max didn’t think it was any easier for him. He had quit the job he had worked all his life to get. He was racked with guilt about leaving Sophia. Yet in the moment of sudden silence when he felt his navel lift off the ground that morning, he had seen a glimmer of something. Still far but more complete, more real than anything he’d known before. Even so, he felt a hollow emptiness in his stomach when they approached the lonesome huts. It was dusk and Max felt more alone than ever. Another ten days of heavy silence. No talking, no comforting sounds of laughter, just the all-encompassing joyless strife toward eternal joy.