Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

by Rajeev Balasubramanyam

“Why is it important to you?” said Rudi. “What does her ethnicity matter to you?”

  “Because she’s the only other Indian in the room and…”

  “Yes?” said Rudi, leaning closer.

  “And I supposed that might mean we had a connection.”

  “And when she responded in the way that she did, how did that make you feel?”

  “As if she was rejecting that connection, as if she…didn’t like me, maybe because of it.”

  “So you were reaching out to her and she was pushing you away and you felt hurt.”

  “Yes.”

  “And how do you feel about all this, Daisy?” said Rudi.

  “I feel we’re being sidelined, Bryan and I. Like these two have started up all this father–daughter Indian–not Indian stuff, and we just have to shut up and watch them play out their dramas, like it’s all about them.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Pam. “I’m so sorry all this minority shit is getting in the way of you taking center stage. We’ll just shut up and let you get on with it, shall we?”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Daisy.

  “You didn’t have to,” said Pam.

  “Feelings, please,” said Rudi.

  “I feel angry,” said Daisy. “Mindy Kaling here thinks the whole world revolves around her.”

  “And I feel you’re a racist bitch,” said Pam. “Do you know how many times I’ve been called Mindy Kaling? Do you? Because I’m brown and I’m not a size zero and I like to shop! And Mindy Kaling isn’t even dumb, she just plays dumb.”

  “Whereas you actually are dumb?” said Daisy.

  “I don’t think so,” said Bryan. “I think you play dumb too. I think it’s a defense mechanism.”

  Pam was rubbing at her eyes now and sniffing. Chandra couldn’t see any tears. He wondered if she was pretending.

  “I feel this was all my fault,” said Chandra.

  “Because everything’s about you,” said Pam.

  “What?”

  “Why am I here with my fucking father?” said Pam. “The minute I saw you…”

  “That’s the law of karma,” said Rudi. “You get what you need, not what you want.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Daisy. “I shouldn’t have said the Mindy Kaling thing. I actually said it because I thought it was funny and it might ease the tension, but obviously I was wrong.”

  “Who is Mindy Kaling?” asked Chandra.

  “Never mind,” said Pam.

  “She a comedian,” said Daisy.

  “She’s Indian,” said Pam.

  “Ah,” said Chandra.

  “You know,” said Bryan, “we seem to have forgotten everyone’s strings. We all just went off about thirty seconds into the thing. Maybe that’s okay, but I want to point it out.”

  “I’m a cold bitch. She’s shallow. He hates himself, and you’re a cop-out,” said Daisy. “You didn’t tell us one thing about yourself, Bryan. We all saw it.”

  “How do you feel, Bryan?” said Rudi, lifting himself to his feet before stretching to touch his toes.

  “I feel scared,” said Bryan, putting his fingertips together, a Californian yogi posing for a cover shoot. “I feel scared of being judged.”

  “Good,” said Rudi. “Good.”

  Rudi Katz wandered off. Chandra, whose knees had been hurting since they began, fetched a chair and sat on it, waiting for someone, probably Pam, to tell him how superior he looked on his throne, but nobody did.

  “Why are you scared, Bryan?” he said.

  “I know the point of this exercise,” said Bryan. “I’ve done things like this before. The whole point is to let us go after each other. And—I don’t know—I guess words can’t kill you, but I’m afraid that they can. I’m afraid one day someone will say something that destroys me.”

  “What I can’t understand,” said Chandra, “is how he can be so sure that everything is happening for a reason. How does he know?”

  “He doesn’t know,” said Daisy. “It’s faith.”

  Chandra shook his head. “I don’t think I have faith.”

  “Course you do,” said Bryan. “You couldn’t get through any minute of any day without faith. If we didn’t have faith we’d kill ourselves.”

  “I don’t know,” said Chandra. “I only believe what I know.”

  “That isn’t possible,” said Bryan. “It’s like how our eyes pick up only about forty percent of what we think we see. Our brain fills in the rest. That’s faith.”

  “Yes,” said Chandra. “Maybe you’re right.”

  Pam rolled her eyes and said, “God.”

  “Why are you so angry with me?” said Chandra.

  “I’m not angry with you.”

  “You are. You were angry with me before I spoke.”

  “I told you. It’s not about you. It’s about my father.” She looked at Daisy. “I may be dumb, but I know that.”

  “Then why are you so angry with your father?” asked Chandra.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “He brought you up. He clothed you. You wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for him. How can you hate the person who gave you life? What sense does it make to hate him? Why does everyone of your generation have to hate their parents? Does it make you more intelligent?”

  Pam stared at him.

  “I never hated my parents,” Chandra continued. “I wouldn’t have dreamed of hating my parents. They gave me everything. They weren’t perfect, but why does that matter? They gave me everything I had, everything I have now. Nothing can repay that debt.”

  “Did you ask to be born?” said Pam.

  “I think you are ungrateful,” said Chandra. “I think your whole generation is ungrateful, as if you think you invented the world and everyone else should thank you for it, as if it was you who created your parents instead of the other way around. All you know is the last twenty years, and you think that’s all you need to know, as if nothing of any consequence happened in this world until you were born, that you are the sun and the rest of us are orbiting around you. You are not a bad person. You are not dumb. And you are not this Mindy woman. But you are selfish and ungrateful and that is why you are unhappy. And if I sound like your father then I’m sorry, but perhaps you should listen to your father.”

  Pam stood up and left the room. It was like watching his daughter’s receding back and yet it felt liberating, if only for an instant.

  “Wow,” said Daisy. “I couldn’t have done that.”

  “It’s all right,” said Bryan. “She’s okay.”

  “No,” said Chandra. “I shouldn’t have spoken. That was wrong.”

  “It’s okay,” said Daisy.

  “No,” said Chandra. “I’ll go after her.”

  “Look.” Daisy put her hand on his wrist. “All this time Pam has been prodding all of us, trying to make us angry. It was obvious to me because I used to be just the same. You said exactly what she needed to hear and she knows it. She’s just gone to process what you said. It’ll do her good. Of all the people here, you were the one in a position to help her, and you did help her. So don’t beat yourself up.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Bryan.

  “Rudi saw everything,” said Daisy. “He was laughing, and if Obi-Wan Kenobi says it’s okay, it’s okay.”

  “Who is Obi-Wan Kenobi?” said Chandra.

  Bryan patted his leg.

  “You’re quite a character, Chandra. I’ve never met anyone like you at a place like this.”

  “Yeah,” said Daisy. “Kudos for coming here. That takes guts.”

  Chandra felt irritated, as if they were telling him he didn’t belong, that he was making a fool of himself, that he should have stayed at home. He did not want to be the joker, or the fool.

  “So why did you
come here, Bryan?” he asked. “If you don’t want to talk about yourself?”

  * * *

  —

  At lunch, Chandra kept hoping to catch a glimpse of Pam. He was concerned she might have left, a diminutive firearm tucked inside her Prada handbag.

  “My daughters are just the same,” he told Bryan. “I don’t understand them. Even my wife, my former wife, I mean. I used to know her, but now I only think I knew her. She left me for someone else. His name’s Steve. I think he understands her. I don’t think I ever did.”

  “It’s a bit clichéd, isn’t it?” said Bryan, whose grin seemed to have prevailed for three hours now. “The aging male whose wife left him all alone and now women are this giant cosmic mystery…”

  “So now I am lonely and a cliché?”

  “I don’t think it’s about understanding women. You’re just up against a universal conundrum. Look, I have a partner, right? I like him. I love him. But I don’t understand him. Sometimes I think I don’t even know him. And that’s not because he’s an atheist or Hispanic or an only child. It’s because he’s another human being. Humans don’t understand one other. Punto. That’s the way it is. But start saying you don’t understand women and you’re making yourself the problem. Let it go. You’re just a human like anyone else. This is what happens. We fall in love and then one day we realize we have no fucking clue who that other person is, and sometimes it falls apart and sometimes it makes us stronger. Yours fell apart. She left you for Sean.”

  “Steve,” said Chandra, looking at the sea.

  “Well, I can tell you this. Steve doesn’t understand her either. He might pretend to, and he can come up with all the psychobabble he wants, but he doesn’t. And he’s not better than you. He just came after you. It’s not your fault, man. Let it go. Nothing is anyone’s fault.”

  “My God,” said Chandra. “You people are as ideological as economists, aren’t you? Everything happens for a reason. Follow your bliss. Nothing is anyone’s fault.”

  “Yeah,” said Bryan, laughing. “That’s California. I wasn’t into any of it till I got to the Bay area and then…it just kind of happens to you. You go to one thing, then you go to another, then you go to some sort of couples rejuvenation therapy, then both of you are into it, and then you get a whole set of friends, and before you know it…you’re a Californian. But, hey, it’s happening to you, Chandra. You can’t deny it. You’re here, aren’t you? You gave yourself to that workshop, man. You didn’t hold back. It was awesome what you did.”

  Chandra pushed his plate away. Lunch had been excellent: organic chard and kale from the garden, parsnip and coriander soup, a large fruit salad with yogurt, the sea air. He was feeling healthier already.

  “The thing is,” said Chandra, “when I saw Pam I knew something would happen. I knew we’d end up in some sort of…situation. I just knew it.”

  “She said she knew it too,” said Bryan.

  “But I don’t think she and I made it happen. It was like we couldn’t help it.”

  “The Universe made it happen,” said Bryan, leaning forward and grinning. “That’s the word people traumatized by religion use for God.”

  “I’m not traumatized by religion, but I can’t believe God has nothing better to do than see that Pam and I yell at each other.”

  “Well, let’s not call it religion then,” said Bryan. “But it’s something spiritual, the whole workshop is.”

  “It didn’t feel spiritual to me,” said Chandra. “It was just…arguing.”

  “It was group therapy,” said Bryan. “But they’re kind of connected. It’s like Jack Kornfield says about Westerners: if you’ve got so much unresolved shit floating around, deep meditation’s wasted on you.”

  “I don’t know if I’m Western,” said Chandra, “but I think troubled childhoods and problems with relationships are universal. Anyway, India’s not as religious as it used to be. We economists used to say that India suffered from the Hindu rate of growth, you know that?”

  Bryan shook his head.

  “But not anymore. It was 7.1 percent last year.”

  “You’re quite a character, Chandra.”

  Professor Chandra smiled. He had no idea why Bryan kept saying that.

  * * *

  —

  When they returned for the afternoon session Pam was already present and meditating. She was wearing a bright blue cobalt necklace, which Chandra thought might be a good-luck charm, or perhaps to ward off evil (meaning him). She opened her eyes and, for one breathless second, seemed to smother him in her gaze, before returning to her meditation.

  “Well,” said Rudi, once they were all seated. “We had quite a morning, didn’t we?”

  There were calls of “Amen” amidst much laughter.

  “You see what happens when we’re honest about our feelings?” said Katz, pausing to do some facial exercises. “Not a pretty sight, is it?”

  There was further laughter, of a more nervous variety.

  “This afternoon,” continued Katz, “I want you to use your notebooks and write down all the judgmental things you can remember yourself saying about other people this morning—forget what anyone else said. Find a quiet spot outside, or stay here if you like. After you’ve done it, sit quietly and think, ‘Whose voice was that? Where did I get that voice from?’ Try to remember. And when you’ve done that, write down anything you can remember them saying about you in that same judgmental tone. We’ll meet back here at a quarter of four. Any questions?”

  Professor Chandra knew where he wanted to go: the bench a few yards away from his room. He took a cushion and, afraid someone might take his spot, practically ran down the steps toward the sea. But when he got there he was the only person in sight. It appeared that most of them had remained in the yurt.

  He opened his notebook and looked at the ocean. So: what judgmental things had he said? Pam, of course. He had told her she was ungrateful and selfish, that her whole generation was like that, that her father was right.

  Had he judged anyone else? How about Bryan? Yes, they were thick as thieves now, but at the beginning?

  No, he hadn’t judged Bryan; everyone else had judged Bryan. And he couldn’t recall having said anything to Daisy. He’d been too afraid of her. It was only Pam. He had asked if she was Indian—that was what started it all—and she had taken this as a judgment. But he couldn’t write, Judged Pam for thinking she might be Indian. Was it still a judgment if it was true? But surely judging someone meant saying they were stupid or selfish or ungrateful, not Indian. How could that be a judgment? Unless you considered being Indian a terrible thing? Was that it? Was that why Pam reacted? Because she secretly believed all Indians were devious, plotting, smelly, oily, lascivious, repugnant beasts, good only for cheating and begging and making nasty comments down here in the Black Hole of Esalen?

  Radha used to call him a racist, said he had swallowed the colonial world view, that he was the brown poster child for global corporatism. When he thought about this now, the first thing that popped into Chandra’s mind was Sunny, who actually was the brown face of global corporatism. The difference was that Sunny plotted and planned these things; Professor Chandra simply did what he believed was right. And if Radha judged him for it then to hell with her. Everyone couldn’t agree with everyone. In any case, there were plenty of Indians who weren’t rabid Marxists. But Radha hated being called a Marxist now. She was a P.O.C. anarchist (“Pests on Campus,” Chandra called them), a Third World cyberpunk, an Eco-Womanist. He couldn’t keep track of all her twists and turns through the Walmart of ideological juvenilia.

  The problem with Radha was that she had too many choices. She said she didn’t believe in duty or obligation; but obligation, by definition, wasn’t something you believed in. It was something you did because you had to. Belief was irrelevant. However, when life became some kind of giant ho
tel buffet—which happened when your father had a chair at Cambridge and you went to private school and had holidays in Oman because the south of France was “too clichéd”—then the minute anyone hinted that you should “Sit your spoiled backside down, and eat what your mother gave you” you started wailing about child abuse. You talked to therapists who made you write letters telling your parents you forgave them even though they’d wasted the most potentially wondrous years of their lives running after you like a pair of underpaid waiters at that same hotel buffet you didn’t even know you were sitting at.

  But Radha hadn’t done that. That was Jasmine. Radha had turned around and said she didn’t want all the advantages he’d practically killed himself to give her. Radha had decided she wouldn’t be happy until the whole world took holidays in Oman, and until then she would blame him for caring about her and not “them.” He wanted to ask her whom she had helped, whose life she had made a difference to, how many students she had sat with while they cried about missing their parents or lack of money or their inability to understand first-year calculus. How many? Yep. The Indian contribution to mathematics. Zero. Om. Nada, Radha.

  Chandra wrote in his notebook:

  You’ve done nothing to help others. And you’ve contributed nothing to society except antipathy and rage. You’re a professional complainer who still benefits from the economy you claim to want nothing to do with and so frankly, dear Radha, go to hell

  Chandra looked up, hoping to see whales blowing froth in front of him, but instead it was still the same old sea with its giant know-it-all grin. He tried to recall what he had said to Pam but the only word that came to mind now was “ungrateful,” which she was, and “Indian,” which she was too.

  He decided to read his paragraph aloud. When he reached the final three words he whispered them into the breeze, just to see how it felt. To his surprise, it felt good, so good that he set down his pen and pad, took a deep breath, stared into the sea, and yelled, “Go to hell, Radha, you spoiled little brat. I wish you’d never been born!”

  He looked over his shoulder. There was nobody there. He looked over his other shoulder, toward the yurt. Elke was sitting on the steps, watching him. He wondered if his words had carried. Probably. But she of all people would not care.