Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

by Rajeev Balasubramanyam

  Chandra was pressing his fingernail into the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. He did this when he was nervous, or confused; sometimes he would draw blood. His father used to do it to him—a fact Chandra hadn’t registered in fifty years. He would walk up to Chandra and press his thumbnail into the flesh of his hand, always grinning, sometimes ruffling his hair as if it were a boy’s game, and if Chandra cried out or struggled his father would spit, “Sissy,” and cuff him over the head before sending him on his way.

  “For God’s sake, Chandra,” he muttered, shaking his head. Some parents used switches and canes to beat their children. Others used hammers. His grandfather always used a leather belt, or so his father had said. There had been a boy in Chandra’s class with burns on his arm from cigarettes. What was he whining about? He was being a…

  But it was his father’s voice he heard now…“Sissy,” “lazy,” “ungrateful,” “stupid,” “selfish,” “crybaby,” “pathetic,” “dunce,” “slovenly,” “wicked,” “slothful,” “foolish,” “idiotic,” “dumb-head,” “duffer.” These words might as well have been branded onto his brain. His critical voices were so obvious, and yet he had spent a lifetime ignoring them. Rudi Katz was a genius.

  Professor Chandra’s visiting professorship was over now. He would fly to Hong Kong soon, and then on to England. The timing felt auspicious, if unnerving. Chandra’s biggest fear was that he was, in fact, hardly different from his father. He had never hit Sunny, it was true, but he had called him names, had spoken with a similar contempt.

  It had always enraged him that Sunny hated cricket, and still did, preferring activities with unpronounceable names like Krav Maga, capoeira, and Zumba. He used to literally run away from the ball, which was all the more unbearable given that Chandra had named him after India’s former captain, Sunil Gavaskar. He used to call Sunny the same names back then: “sissy,” “wimp,” “pathetic,” “namby-pamby.”

  Chandra’s father used to sneer at him on account of his grades which, initially, were mediocre. When he was twelve his father had smashed a badminton racquet against the wall and called him a “knuckle-headed imbecile” before marching into his study and slamming the door five times. Chandra’s mother had sat beside her crying son and told him, “Your father knows you can do it. He’s only disappointed. You just need to apply yourself, Chandu.”

  Together they made a plan. Chandra would improve his grades and, in time, would take the IAS exam, following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a civil servant. When he knocked on his father’s door to tell him the news, his father said, “This idiot? Tell him to take the cleaning toilets exam!”

  It was the reason Chandra could never bring himself to clean a toilet, even today, something Jean had never understood, always attributing it to his Brahmin sensibilities.

  In his teens, Sunny had begun to take an interest in economics. It didn’t occur to Chandra that he was trying to win his father’s approval. He regarded it as normal that a boy of Sunny’s age should be fascinated by differential levels of human capital investment across Newly Industrializing Countries and responded as he would to any promising undergraduate—with withering contempt.

  “There are monkeys in the Amazon who know more economics than you,” he said.

  “I’m trying,” said Sunny.

  “Yes,” said Chandra. “You are.”

  When Sunny gained a place at the LSE, Chandra had mocked his choice of degree, Business and Management. “We could come and visit you at Woolworths,” he’d said, before asking, “Do you write your essays, or just highlight them?” and “Do you call yourself students or interns?”

  “I’ll be out-earning you within five years,” Sunny had replied, extending his hand to signal a wager.

  “And you’ll still be working class,” said Chandra, clapping his son’s cheeks between his palms.

  After his degree, Sunny was offered a position with Salomon Brothers as a strategy consultant. Three years later he sent his father a copy of his paycheck above which he drew a smiley face. It revealed that he had made good on his promise and was out-earning his father, at least in terms of base salary. Chandra sent an email in response:

  Good for you. Don’t forget money isn’t everything. Look after health. Spend wisely. Consider investing in an education at a later date.

  Best, Dad

  The following year, Sunny moved to Hong Kong where he joined a hedge fund, working sixteen hours a day. He and his father saw each other only twice a year, but even then they tended to argue. Whenever Chandra tried to speak about economics, Sunny would retort with, “The real world doesn’t work according to models. It works on happenings, events, moments. All that matters is what’s in play—”

  Chandra would put his fingers in his ears when he heard this, knowing the words “Now!” or “Stat!” were coming, accompanied by a vicious finger-snap.

  Paradoxically, this was also when Sunny’s deviation toward the mystical began. That Christmas he presented every one of his family members with a book called The Secret, by someone called Rhonda Byrne, handing them out with the air of a man who had not only seen the light but had trapped, bottled, and sold it. It was also then that Sunny began to shave his head and to talk with a distinctly South Asian lilt.

  In 2008, following the crash, Sunny went silent, refusing to respond to emails or SMSs. When Chandra called him at work he was informed that Sunny was no longer employed by Ponsford & Sons. Professor Chandra made a few notes before calling Sunny’s mobile. This was a delicate matter. He did not want to say anything hurtful or ill-considered.

  It’s not your fault. Whole world is hard hit.

  But I did warn you.

  Will help find you another job. Don’t worry.

  Come home for a while? Might do you good.

  As stated, I did warn you (so in a sense, it is your fault).

  It’s all right. Part of learning process. You’re not a complete idiot (joke).

  General philosophical statement. Ideas? Quote Mandela? Keynes? Jobs? “Turn your wounds into wisdom.” Yes, excellent.

  Another joke. Play by ear. Best jokes = spontaneous.

  “I resigned, Dad,” said Sunny, before Chandra could deliver point two. “I’ve set up my own management school: The Institute of Mindful Business.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s about positive affirmation.”

  “What?”

  “You bring your desires into being.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Sunny?”

  “Do you know why we’re in recession, Dad?”

  Chandra did know. He had been speaking about Mortgage Backed Securities on Sky News that morning.

  “It’s because of negative thinking,” said Sunny.

  “Quite the opposite,” said Chandra. “It was due to a marked excess of animal spirits.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Sunny. “I think the world chose depression. It started in the mind and it manifested.”

  “But I’m trying to tell you that isn’t what happened,” said Chandra. “No one was depressed. They all thought the bubble would go on forever.”

  “I’m not talking about economics.”

  “Well, I am.”

  “I’m talking about the mind.”

  “Sunny, I’m sorry you lost your job. If you need to come home for a while—”

  “I didn’t lose my job.”

  “It isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “There’s no such thing as right or wrong, Dad. Only the consequences of our actions.”

  Chandra looked down at his notes.

  “Success isn’t the result of our successes—”

  “Success is the result of our thoughts,” said Sunny.

  “What is all this bul
lshit?” said Chandra, pushing his notebook away.

  “People pay good money to hear this bullshit, Dad. I’ve helped dozens already.”

  “Then they’re idiots,” said Chandra. “Why would anyone pay for that?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  They spoke again the following week, and it was more cordial. But as time went by, Sunny began to speak almost exclusively in sound bites, saying, “We are already living the life we were meant to live, the secret is to know this.” And, “Money is psychic blood—a money clot is as dangerous as a blood clot.”

  “Are you arguing against a high savings rate?” said Chandra, recalling his recent rather regrettable spat with Krugman.

  “I’m talking about the heart,” said Sunny.

  “Good Lord,” said Chandra.

  In spite of all his outrage, there was one thing Professor Chandra could not deny. The Institute of Mindful Business was a success. Sunny was forever on a first-class flight to Beijing or Paris or, every couple of months, London. But Chandra was still convinced his son was a charlatan, albeit an excellent one, or else he had gone quite mad, irredeemably so.

  What Chandra couldn’t figure out was his own role amidst all of this. Jasmine had said Sunny wanted to “beat him.” Was that it?

  Chandra wondered if this was true of himself: he had always known he was trying to win his late father’s approval, but had he been trying to beat him? Was it victory he craved instead of approval, to smother his old man’s grave with prizes and accolades and doctorates and seventeenth-century cottages and hefty consulting fees, to shut his cruel contemptuous mouth for ever and ever, amen?

  But it wouldn’t work. It couldn’t work. Chandra knew that now. And if Sunny was trying to beat him, this also wouldn’t work. Professor Chandra needed to tell him that. He needed to sit his son down and share what he had discovered, to break the cycle, to apologize—yes, why not? He, Professor Chandra, who rarely apologized to anyone, would apologize to his son. Perhaps this was why he was going to Hong Kong.

  * * *

  —

  It was a sixteen-hour flight and Professor Chandra was rarely able to sleep on planes. When he landed, all he could think about was having a bath and a small glass of wine. Sunny wasn’t there to meet him, but had instructed Chandra to take a taxi, emailing him directions in Chinese which Chandra had printed and now gave to the driver.

  They drove across the bridge between Lantau and the mainland—a journey Chandra remembered from his last visit, a shameful four years ago—and traversed east across Hong Kong Island. This didn’t feel right to Chandra. Sunny’s apartment was in “the Mid-Levels,” one of the city’s most desirable spots, a flock of designer skyscrapers and serviced apartments with polished lobbies and doormen. Chandra remembered an uphill climb, but instead they passed between a set of vanilla colonial-style buildings that would not have been out of place in Bombay. They stopped by a pastel-green building which was a mere three stories high instead of the desired seventy.

  “What is this?” asked Chandra.

  “Heong Gong Business School,” said the driver.

  “I’m sorry,” said Chandra. “I want to go to the Mid-Levels.”

  The driver held up the printout and said once more, “Hong Kong Business School.”

  “Mid-Levels,” said Chandra.

  A man was tapping on the window of the car. “Professor,” he was saying, smiling like gently heated plasticine. “Professor.”

  Chandra rolled down his window. “Yes?”

  “Hey,” said the man, who was Chinese and in his early thirties, but had a British, public school–educated accent. “Great to finally meet you.”

  The man opened Chandra’s door, leaving him little choice but to step outside into the heat.

  “And you are?” said Chandra.

  “Professor Martin Cheung. Dean of the Business School.”

  Martin Cheung was wearing a blazer with jeans, the uniform of the newer mold of managerial schemers, the ones who had transformed universities into the intellectual equivalent of oil companies.

  “I see,” said Chandra. “Look, I think there’s been some mistake. I’m supposed to be at my son’s place, in the Mid-Levels.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” said the man, paying the driver. “Your son’s inside. I’m sure he filled you in.”

  “He did no such thing.”

  “Well, what can I say? I’ll let him explain. Welcome to Hong Kong, Professor, or foon ying, as we say here. Dr. Chandrasekhar is waiting for you upstairs. I’m the reception committee.”

  Martin Cheung laughed while Chandra glared. In front of them was a stone staircase on which a seemingly endless supply of girls in tiny shorts and T-shirts passed up and down while two white men leaned on the balustrade and drank from Starbucks mugs. Business lecturers: they had that smug look about them that said, While you were busy learning things, we were getting rich. “F.I.L.T.H.” he muttered under his breath, an acronym he’d once tried in front of Sunny with disastrous results—Failed In London, Try Hong Kong.

  “All right,” said Chandra. “Let’s go then.”

  They filed up the stairs into a hallway at the end of which was a conference room as cold as a meat factory. Two female students stood on either side of the doors, one with a tray of champagne flutes, the other with a stack of flyers. Chandra took one of each.

  HONG KONG BUSINESS SCHOOL / EVENT

  “The Neglect of the Mind in Contemporary Economics”

  A Masterclass with Dr. Sunil Chandrasekhar, Director of the Institute of Mindful Business.

  Starts: 14 July 2017–19:00

  Finishes: 14 July 2017–20:30

  Professor Chandra looked at his watch: the talk was today and started in six and a half hours, except his watch was on London time, which meant it had started half an hour ago.

  Inside the room, row upon row of students were sitting in those steel chairs with red upholstery found in business schools everywhere. Sunny was in an armchair on the podium dressed in a cream linen jacket and purple silk shirt. His head was shaven and he wore his usual prescription-free glasses, but there were creases on his forehead now that even the hundred-dollar moisturizers he used couldn’t erase. Sunny was becoming middle-aged. Chandra felt at fault, as if it were the task of a father to prevent this.

  “Raise your hands,” Sunny was saying. “Who works hard? Come on? Who?”

  Every hand in the room was in the air. At least half the audience were wearing suits, even though the semester had ended, which was typical of MBA students. They were fond of questions like “Can this be summarized in a single sentence?” or “On what page of the handout is this?” Any sign of rigor had them running to their parents who’d write letters complaining the course was “not hands-on enough,” meaning their children were too stupid to understand.

  Economists younger than Chandra had discarded years of training so these Mediocre But Arrogant rich kids from France, Greece, and South Africa could return to their Management Consultancies with pieces of paper confirming they’d spent a year as a foot soldier in the war against intelligence.

  “So let’s try an exercise,” said Sunny, who didn’t seem to have noticed his father’s entrance. “Close your eyes. You are in darkness now. Try to feel the end of your nose. Don’t touch it. Just feel its presence; know it exists.”

  Chandra sat near the back, ignoring Martin Cheung who was trying to escort him to the VIP seats at the front. He looked at the flyer in his hand once more and then it dawned on him: Dr. Sunil Chandrasekhar. As far as Chandra knew, Sunny had never gained a doctorate.

  “Now imagine the tip of your nose is illuminated like a flashlight. What can you see in the blackness now? It depends on you. What you see is what you desire. All you have to do is let it manifest.”

  Professor Chandra could see a bed. A pl
ush multicushioned bed floating in the center of the sea. And on that bed he saw himself.

  “Now, open your eyes.”

  Sunny slipped deeper into a subcontinental accent as he continued: “So, welcome to the world of your desires. They don’t go away once you open your eyes. They are you and you are them. You can as little escape them as you could the tip of your nose.

  “All our lives we’ve been told to feel ashamed of our desires. All our lives we’ve been told we are too ambitious, too greedy. As small children we were taught self-abnegation, self-denial. We learned this everywhere, from our teachers, our religions, our parents.”

  Nonsense, thought Chandra. This from the boy who had an electric BMW tricycle at the age of seven.

  “We were taught to be grateful for what we had, ashamed of wanting more, ashamed of being ourselves. ‘Don’t enter the race,’ they tell us. ‘You’ll probably lose. Sit aside and watch the runners instead. Just give up, just give up, just give up.’

  “You see, as you demonstrated only moments ago, we all work hard. We all strive. But who has everything they want? Who looked into the blackness and saw their lives exactly as they are now? And why? It isn’t through lack of striving, I can tell you. It’s through a lack of believing. You haven’t allowed your dreams to come true.”

  This, Chandra remembered with an involuntary snort, was what Sunny had told him after his accident, talking from the lobby of the Mumbai Oberoi; that he had willed the bicycle into being.