Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

by Rajeev Balasubramanyam

  “She does,” said Sunny. “I told her you were all right, Dad.”

  Chandra liked to think that had Radha walked through the door at that moment he would have turned his back to the wall after calling security, but they all knew this wasn’t true. He missed her.

  “I had a heart attack, Sunny,” he said. “I could die at any time. Tell her that.”

  “That’s just the body’s way of telling you to make some changes. Follow the doctor’s orders and it’ll never happen again. Trust me, Dad. You’re fine.”

  “I’m sixty-nine, Sunny. People younger than me die every day.”

  “Not when they can afford proper hospitals.”

  “I could crash my car.”

  “You’ve got a Volvo,” said Sunny. “It’s practically a tank.”

  “I could get shot.”

  “In Cambridge?”

  “I don’t want to argue about this, Sunny. You’re not actually telling me I’m safe from death, are you?”

  “Theoretically, no, but the odds are that you’ll live until ninety at the least. My generation will all hit a hundred unless we grow up in slums or on council estates. The way health tech is going you could make the big one-double-zero yourself, so I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m not, and neither’s Rad. Worry’s like trying to live the future before it’s happened.”

  “So as long as we’re alive everything’s fine, is it? We need never see each other at all. I could just send an email each year saying, ‘I’m fine,’ and we all keep on swimming with the universe.”

  “Come on, Dad, don’t be like that. I’m dying for you to come visit Hong Kong.”

  “I will,” said Chandra. “I’ve been busy.”

  “It’s okay, Dad. I know you’ve got your work.”

  It was incredible how Sunny was managing to make him feel guilty, an almost impossible feat of emotional dexterity. The trouble with Sunny was that he was essentially a shy, insecure, oversensitive soul who pretended to be the exact opposite, and did so with such aplomb that he fooled nearly everyone.

  “All right, Sunny. Thanks. Good of you to call.”

  “You’re welcome, Dad. Look after yourself.”

  Professor Chandra stabbed at his phone, attacking each button in turn. He could hear Sunny talking in broken Hindi, and resisted the urge to drop the phone in the vase containing tulips sent by “the department,” which meant his secretary. He looked at the cast on his wrist which no one had signed and thought about calling Jasmine, except she never answered, would only text a few minutes later saying, Missed your call. Everything okay? at which he would reply, Yes. You? and she’d write, All good. Jxx.

  Jasmine had received her SAT results recently and wouldn’t tell him her score, no matter how much he pleaded, yelled, or emotionally blackmailed. All she would say was that she had “fucked them up royally” and, unfortunately, he believed her. Unlike her elder siblings who had aced every exam they ever took, Jasmine had never been a natural student, always requiring extra coaching, but Chandra hadn’t worried unduly because, until recently, she had always been such a happy, sweet girl. But now even that was changing.

  * * *

  —

  Before leaving hospital, Professor Chandra underwent a thorough check-up, the results of which he discussed afterward with his doctor, Dr. Chris Chaney, a thirty-two-year-old American with Converse trainers, sparkling teeth, and carefully affected stubble.

  “You’ve got to take this very seriously,” said Dr. Chaney. “Silent heart attacks are just as deadly. You need two months off, at least.”

  Professor Chandra smiled. It was obvious Dr. Chaney had no idea who he was.

  “The mayonnaise has to go,” continued Dr. Chaney. “And you’d be better off avoiding dairy altogether. And red meat, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” said Chandra.

  “Red wine, white bread, potato chips, French fries, sugar in your coffee, caffeine—”

  “What’s the point of telling me not to have sugar in my coffee if I can’t have coffee?”

  “You can have decaffeinated coffee.”

  “I see.”

  “Hydrogenated vegetable oil, trans fats, high-fructose corn syrup, white flour, and white rice if you can manage, though those are optional, bread and potatoes generally not a good idea, and obviously, cut out the cigars.”

  “I did.”

  “I said cut out, not cut down.”

  “Cut out for how long?”

  “And exercise,” said Dr. Chaney. “That’s the big one. You’ve got to do it. You simply have to. Nothing too strenuous. You’re not joining the Premier League. Even walking is enough if you do it regularly. But if I were you I’d add a little light resistance work, maybe some swimming. Can you swim?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Then how about yoga?” said Dr. Chaney, and looked at him meaningfully.

  Professor Chandra sighed. Yoga had become Jean’s obsession in Chicago when it was mostly unknown to Americans. But nowadays, everyone did yoga: Republicans, porn stars, serial killers. They didn’t care that he could pronounce the Sanskrit terminology they so blithely butchered but expected him, as an export from the subcontinent, to have the anatomical advantage, which was why Chandra had joined his wife for only one class before deciding his dog was better horizontal on the sofa with a Dick Francis novel than facing either upward or downward (on his gloomier days, he added this to his list of reasons why she had left him).

  “I think the sutras have been misinterpreted by the secular world,” he replied.

  “There’s always Pilates, if you’d prefer,” said Dr. Chaney. “Have you done much Pilates?”

  “Not a lot, no.”

  “But it isn’t just about exercise. It’s your whole attitude to life. You need to cut back on everything. Work less. Relax. Take a holiday. Get some sun. Do things you like, within moderation. Stress is physical, but its origin is mostly mental. Have a little fun. Just, you know—”

  “Take it easy?”

  “Exactly. And I know it’s easier said than done. I mean, I’m a doctor for Pete’s sake. We spend our time telling patients to relax and then we work eighteen-hour shifts. It’s modern life. Maybe it’s just life. We can’t all chillax all the time. I certainly can’t. I’ve got two young girls and a mortgage. But you’re at the top of your profession, Professor. Even I’ve heard of you. And you’re past retirement age. You need R and R. I can give you a whole list of possibilities. There’s aromatherapy, reiki, acupuncture, flotation chambers…it just goes on. And then there’s meditation.”

  “Work is my meditation,” said Chandra. “Homo laboris. It’s ontological.”

  “I’m sure it is,” said Dr. Chaney, “but if you want to go on working for another decade, you’re going to have to start enjoying yourself. You know what we say in California?”

  “No,” said Professor Chandra. “What do you say in California?”

  “You gotta follow your bliss, man. That’s all there is to it.”

  “So you’re from California, Dr. Chaney?”

  “Chris, please.”

  “Chris.”

  “Yes I am. Born and bred, though I lived in Seattle for years.”

  Seattle was where his wife met Steve, the child psychiatrist. The memory made him scowl.

  “But San Diego sure is sunnier than Seattle,” said Dr. Chaney.

  Professor Chandra looked out of the window. It was late November. In the forty-five years since he had left India, he had failed to develop any capacity to withstand winter. Even October left him huddled against radiators while his colleagues sauntered around as if at an embassy ball in the Bahamas. And when summer finally came he always spent the season terrified of winter’s return, bracing himself for its arrival as one might a punch to the solar plexus from a prison warden.

  * *
*

  —

  That night, at home, Chandra pulled out his old Rand McNally atlas, purchased on New Year’s Eve in Times Square in 1982, the year Sunny was born. Dr. Chaney was right, he decided: he needed to go somewhere warm, and not Australia, where alligators roamed freely in the streets and lecturers gave tutorials in swimming shorts.

  He thought about Florida, but Florida was too far from Colorado, where Jasmine was, and he still blamed them for failing to elect Hillary Knows-Some-Economics Clinton, which was more than could be said for the Oaf who wouldn’t know a demand curve if it wrapped itself around his pizza-laden stomach. No, Dr. Chaney was right. It had to be California.

  Chandra hated San Francisco with its freezing, fog-ridden microclimate and those placard-carrying mummy’s boys at Berkeley who paid thirty thousand dollars a year to protest income inequality. No, it had to be Los Angeles. LA was always warm, and the people were realists who actually enjoyed their lives. When Professor Chandra closed his eyes he visualized a string of parties, drives out to Malibu in a convertible with Doris Day belting out from the stereo.

  Chandra didn’t know anyone at UCLA, but an old colleague of his, Felix Radison, was now professor at UC Bella Vista in Orange County. This was an hour south of Los Angeles, which might even be preferable, away from the prostitutes and drug addicts, and with starry pollution-free skies, looking out over the ocean at the end of the day with a good Napa Valley Sauvignon. And of course, Boulder would only be a short flight away.

  He called a few days later.

  By Christmas time it was all settled. He would start at the end of January. His official position would be Distinguished Visiting Professor at UC Bella Vista, which meant nothing more than giving the occasional lecture to a theater packed with adoring acolytes and jealous colleagues.

  Chandra would have liked to have arrived earlier, but Dr. Chaney had warned him not to do anything for at least two months, and so he remained alone throughout Christmas, neglecting even to attend the departmental and college Christmas dinners. Sunny said he might visit, but proved too busy in the end (Chandra called him twice on Christmas Day to make certain he wasn’t actually in Boulder). Jasmine elected not to make the trip either as she was planning to resit her SATs in January although, as far as Chandra knew, it would be too late for college applications then. She insisted there were colleges who had promised they’d accept a late application but when he asked for names she told him “Hogwarts,” which he looked up online before realizing it was a ruse.

  He spent the first weeks of January trying to hold off working on his new book, one that would constitute a critique of the left’s critique of the right (essentially a rehash of his old ideas though delivered with a more concentrated dose of bile). He had already rejected titles such as The Importance of Free Trade in favor of something more upbeat like In Praise of Wealth or Why We Need Corporations. The liberals would hate him for it, but Chandra didn’t care what they said—he had given up trying to have a dialogue with the kindergarten of the left.

  Not working proved so difficult that he ended up stuffing all his notes into the freezer along with his pencils and erasers only to discover them a week later conjoined to a packet of frozen spinach like a new and threatening life form.

  He stayed in bed watching television instead, making his way through the entire first season of Friends, finally understanding the jokes his children had made throughout the nineties. It was about six promiscuous yet deeply conservative youngsters who lived well beyond their means and, with the exception of the academic, lacked any ambition, drive, intelligence, or common sense. In economic terms they were idiots, though this was also true of ninety percent of undergraduates.

  Days before his departure, Professor Chandra called Jean and told her of his impending sabbatical. He didn’t know why he had waited so long to inform her, but it did occur to him that she might be angry with him, that she’d prefer it if he remained five thousand miles away across the water. But this turned out not to be the case.

  “It’ll be good for Jaz,” she said. “She’s just not herself. I know she’s been sullen before, and she’s a teenager and she’s got hormones and, God, I know what girls are like, but this is different. She’s going out of control, Charles.”

  In the seventies, at the LSE, he had insisted everyone call him Charles, so impossible did they find Chandrasekhar, but as his stature had grown Chandra had rescinded his request. Jean was the only person who had never switched.

  “I don’t know what to say,” said Chandra. “I had no idea.”

  “Yeah,” said Jean, not unsympathetically. “How could you?”

  “You could have told me.”

  “I am telling you, Charles.”

  He wanted to say that she could have let him know earlier, that he needed to know everything when it happened, not weeks later, but when antagonized Jean often cut the conversation short. It had been a long time, in fact, since they had spoken in any depth.

  “Is she talking to anyone?” he asked.

  “Of course she is,” said Jean. “This is America. There’s a shrink at her school.”

  “And?”

  “And there’s Steve. He’s always there for her to talk to. Oh, don’t make that face, Charles. It’s his job.”

  He had been making a face.

  “I meant,” said Chandra, “has the shrink at school helped?”

  “Well, she hates him, which Steve says is a good thing—at least she’s getting her anger out.”

  “And what do you think?”

  Jean sighed. Whenever he thought of her she was sighing.

  “Look, Charles, we got divorced, it shook up her whole life, and she’s a teenager and angry as hell. It’s hard, it’s real, and we’ve got to deal with it as parents, which means being parents. We can’t let her get away with blue murder.”

  Chandra put his head in his hands. “I’ll spend time with her in LA,” he said. “It’s her SATs that are bothering her. It’ll be all right. We’ll get her into a good university.”

  “She isn’t you, Charles. College isn’t the meaning of life to her.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” he repeated.

  “Talk with her,” said Jean.

  “That’s what I said,” said Chandra. “We’ll spend time together in LA.”

  “Teenagers don’t want to spend time with their fathers, Charles. But I do agree it would be good for her to see you.”

  “I know—”

  “I don’t think you do. You’ve got to be firm with her. Set the rules, Charles. Decide the boundaries. And listen to her, if you can get her to talk at all.”

  “I’ve been a parent for over thirty years, Jean. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Like I said, this is different. Most days she doesn’t even say hello till afternoon.”

  “She wants to see me,” said Chandra. “She said so.”

  “Are you all right over there, Charles?” said Jean. “Alone for the holidays.”

  “Oh, God,” said Chandra. “I’m glad of some time alone. This year has been—”

  “Well, good,” said Jean. “It’s sad thinking of you all by yourself in that house.”

  Chandra thought about hinting at the presence of a significant other in his life, saying something like, “Well, I’m relatively alone.” He wished he could have recorded a woman’s voice on his answering machine saying, “Chandra, come back to bed…” but Jean would probably have seen through this at once.

  “Well, see you at Jaz’s graduation, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Great,” said Jean. “She’d see us together then too. The school counselor says that’ll be good for her.”

  “I understand,” said Chandra, flinching at the knowledge that this would mean meeting his cuckolder again. “Of course I’ll be there. I’d never miss her gr
aduation.”

  “Good. I’m pleased.”

  Feeling lonelier than ever, Chandra wished he could persuade Jean to stay on the line, to talk about something else, anything. Nothing came to mind.

  “Well, adios, Carlos.”

  He had lied and told her he was learning Spanish in preparation for LA.

  “Yes, adios.”

  “And remember your Green Cross Code.”

  * * *

  —

  In 1973, when Chandra and Jean first met, he had been quite the romantic, accompanying her to ballroom dance classes even though the idea terrified him. He came close to a panic attack during the tango and might have succumbed had it not been for the smell of rose from Jean’s cheek, which reminded him of India.

  Seven years younger than Chandra, Jean was studying chemistry at Brunel and, like him, felt out of place in London. Jean was the only one in her family to have gone to university. She had grown up in a town called Bolton, in Lancashire, a place she described as “like London except different in every way.”

  They used to spend a lot of the time at the cinema, losing themselves in disaster films then relishing their reentry into a world that looked far less frightening afterward. Sometimes they would take day trips out of the city, walking along the beach at Brighton or Bournemouth, sharing ice creams and riding the Ferris wheel as the sun went down.

  Neither had many friends. Jean felt cowed by the display of middle-class elocution that came so naturally to everyone around her, while Chandra, in his first lecturing job at the London School of Economics, was wrestling with his fear that the English might actually be as superior as they believed themselves to be. On the few occasions they went to parties they found themselves talking mostly to each other, and concluded they were better off at home playing board games.

  Chandra remembered those early years as filled with a quiet joy. His career had felt unimportant by comparison, a necessary but trivial task like brushing his teeth or filing his taxes. But he had worked hard. He had to. Had he lost his job he would have needed to return to India, four thousand miles away from Jean.