“No, Dad. I don’t think you have.”
“Oh?” said Chandra, realizing, for the first time, that this couldn’t possibly be true.
“Not at all,” said Sunny. “It’s a shame you and Mum couldn’t work it out, but I was always fine. Maybe Rad felt it more because she’s younger, but I never had any major problems. I have clients who had bad parents. It isn’t you.”
“Right,” said Chandra. “Well, that’s good.”
Sunny looked at his watch.
“Shall we go?”
They took a taxi to Central, spending half an hour going up and down the giant escalator that climbed halfway up the hill. Chandra had been on it before and found it magnificent, but his son stared into his iPhone for most of the time, his face inscrutable behind his Ray-Bans. Even on a Sunday, Sunny was dressed very well in black woolen trousers and a blue Lacoste polo shirt. It must have been something he had learned from his father, who was carrying his blazer over one arm in spite of the heat.
“Maybe we’ll see Melissa here,” said Chandra, gesturing to the Filipino maids who filled every inch of pavement as well as sections of the road.
“There’s a quarter of a million of them, Dad.”
It was like this every Sunday, apparently, when the maids took their day off, a giant refugee camp. As always when confronted with the poor, Chandra felt a tinge of envy. They looked so much happier, these women, with their boxed lunches and transistor radios and falling-apart guitars.
“A hard life,” he said, to compensate for this sentimentality. “Hard work.”
“We all get the lives we choose,” said Sunny.
Bullshit, thought Chandra, and replied, “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
“It’s not a conscious process, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Sunny. “And it can be changed. If these girls spent an hour a week at the IMB they’d be working there in a year.” Sunny pointed at the International Financial Center, those twin skyscrapers that faced off across the sea.
“Maybe I should take one of your classes,” said Chandra.
“Maybe you should.”
“It’s pretty different to what we learned at Esalen.”
Sunny raised his Ray-Bans, though only for a second. “Really?”
“I don’t know,” said Chandra. “Esalen seemed more psychological, I suppose.” He wanted to say “rational.”
“Everything is psychology,” said Sunny, to which Chandra could not answer, as his stock phrase used to be, “Everything is economics.”
Chandra tried to count to ten, and got to four. “So you really think those women chose to be domestic workers?”
“Yep.”
“Or the Jews chose the Holocaust?”
“I think that’s an emotive example.”
“I suppose it is.”
“The thoughts we think habitually leave deep grooves in the subconscious,” said Sunny, putting his phone away. “If we’re always thinking how useless we are, this becomes a subconscious belief that manifests in reality. It’s a natural law. I only observe it.”
“So all those women became maids because they had low opinions of themselves?”
“Not necessarily. Maybe they were born into poor families. Maybe they wanted to be maids. How should I know? All I can say is the minute they begin thinking they can be something else, it’ll start to happen.”
Professor Chandra didn’t know what to say to this. He felt like patting his son on the head and saying, “There, there.”
“Will this work for me?” he said, though he couldn’t imagine himself being anything other than an economist.
“It’ll work for anyone.”
At the Yacht Club they ate a buffet lunch accompanied by four different wines, though Chandra drank only a single glass. There were fifty tables in the room, all with an array of crystal glasses and lush tablecloths. Sunny spoke Cantonese to the waiters while Chandra made approving comments like, “Excellent,” or, “Quite the polyglot,” remembering how he used to give Sunny a hard time for not being bilingual like the two Gujarati girls at his school.
“Sunny!”
A young Chinese couple had approached their table and were doing everything but kiss Sunny’s hand. Sunny introduced them.
“I can’t believe you’re his father,” said the woman.
“Yes,” said Chandra, “since he was born.”
“He’s like a father to us,” said the man, before snapping his fingers and miming holding a pistol. “Who da man?” he asked Sunny.
“You da man,” said Sunny.
“No, you da man.”
“These two,” said the woman, shaking her head.
“I hope you’re practicing,” said Sunny.
“Every day,” said the man, “or we wouldn’t be here, would we?”
“Look after yourselves,” said Sunny, that subcontinental inflection returning to his voice.
“Friends of yours?” asked Chandra, after they had left.
“Clients.”
“Ah.”
It crossed Professor Chandra’s mind that Sunny might have asked them to do this, like the planted questions at his talk.
“So Jaz is going to a community college, I hear,” said Sunny.
“Her SATs didn’t go according to plan.”
“So she’s staying in Boulder.”
“For a while. She can transfer when her grades improve.”
Sunny signaled to the waiter for more green tea.
“I told her to come here. I could have given her an internship for the summer.”
“Yes,” said Chandra, deciding on a second glass of wine after all. “I think she’s depressed. She needs to strike out on her own instead of being stuck at home.”
Sunny shook his head. “We get the lives we choose.”
“I don’t think she chose this,” said Chandra, looking at the enormous pile of rocket leaves and avocado on Sunny’s plate, a tremendous waste of a sixty-dollar buffet.
“Like I said,” said Sunny. “It’s not a conscious process.”
“So if I tell myself I’m happy every morning, I’ll be happy.”
“That’s an oversimplification. But yes.”
“Then why hasn’t it worked for you?”
Sunny was looking over Professor Chandra’s shoulder, raising his eyebrows as if to acknowledge an acquaintance.
“I’ve already told you, Dad. I practice what I preach and I preach what I practice, and I’m happy because of it.”
“Yes, of course. But even Rudi Katz admitted he felt unhappy sometimes.”
Sunny put a forkful of leaves in his mouth. “Who is Rudi Katz?”
“My teacher at Esalen.”
“Perhaps his method isn’t as effective as he thinks it is.”
“Isn’t it more complex than that?” said Chandra. “What about all the terrible things that happen to people? How does someone who has been raped or lived through a war just tell themselves they’re happy?”
“It doesn’t happen overnight.” Sunny placed his fork at a perfect forty-five-degree angle to his knife. “But if a severely traumatized person says their affirmations every day, their life will begin to change. The same is true for Jasmine, and for you. Do it for long enough, and your desires will manifest.”
“So if I desire to be Prime Minister of India…?”
“What do you actually desire, Dad?” said Sunny. “Your deepest desire.”
“To be with my family. To see my daughters, both of them.”
“Then I will write some affirmations for you to say. It will manifest.”
Professor Chandra stared at his son, searching for signs of doubt and finding none.
“I don’t think you believe all this, Sunny,” he said. “You’ve done very well for yourse
lf and I’m proud of you, but I don’t think you believe everything you say. And I do think you’re unhappy.”
“What kind of father tries to convince his son he’s unhappy?” said Sunny.
“A father who bloody cares,” said Chandra. “A father who wants to know his son. Nobody can be this perfect, Sunny. Nobody can be this in control. Nobody is happy all the time.”
“Did I say I’m happy all the time? I’m happy ninety percent of the time, and when I’m not, I work on it.”
“Okay, fine. Nobody is happy ninety percent of the time. Who even knows? It’s more complex than that.”
“So you think I’m a fraud,” said Sunny, his adult face replaced by a child’s for an instant.
“No,” said Chandra. “No, I don’t believe that. I think what you do is very helpful, positive thinking, subconscious thinking. All I am trying to say is—”
Sunny picked up his phone and answered it, even though Professor Chandra hadn’t heard it ring. Chandra’s head hurt. He closed his eyes and tried to count his breaths. If he had a heart attack now Sunny would only tell him to think positively.
“On the twenty-fourth,” said Sunny. “Yes, vado direttamente in palesta.”
“I mean,” said Chandra, even though Sunny was still on the phone, “don’t you ever have doubts? Don’t you ever think, ‘What if I’m wrong about this?’ ”
Sunny put the phone down and called the waiter over, signing for their lunch.
“Are you all right, Dad?” he said.
“I’m not feeling so good.”
“We’ll get you some treatments. It’ll help.”
They had massages using hot stones and aromatherapy and sounds from the rainforest. Professor Chandra fell asleep in the middle, but when he awoke he did feel better, though he still had a headache, probably a result of the wine.
They went to the steam room afterward, wrapped in towels and sitting in silence, Sunny’s six-pack beside Chandra’s one-pack.
“Any news from Radha?” said Chandra, trying to sound as casual as possible.
“She doesn’t want to see you, Dad.”
“Where is she?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters. I have a right to know where my daughter is.”
“Then affirm it, Dad. It will manifest.”
“My daughter will manifest?”
“Yes,” said Sunny.
They reverted to silence. As the seconds dripped on, Chandra tried to remember if Sunny had ever had any spiritual inclinations as a child. Theirs had been a secular home, without puja or Diwali or even Christmas carols. When he was nine or ten Sunny had had an imaginary friend called Moonie (the converse of Sunny) who lived in the lampshade. Moonie hated cricket, economics, and Indian food. Sometimes Sunny would bring Moonie to the dinner table, tucked into the top pocket of his shirt; he would whisper to him, usually while Chandra was talking.
Once Moonie spilled ink all over Chandra’s desk, which led Chandra to mime breaking Moonie’s back with his fingers before handing his dead body to Sunny who buried him in the garden, crying all the while, before finding him “reborn in the sink” the following morning.
This was the only religious experience Chandra could remember any of his children ever having. But it was possible that this had been Sunny’s true calling all along, that he had never been interested in business or finance or money, that Chandra had ruined it all by making himself the center of his son’s world. Perhaps, then, Sunny’s deviation in the direction of mysticism was inevitable; it was the one direction in which his father could not follow, an arena where there could only ever be one winner.
Observing his son, Chandra was struck once again by how middle-aged Sunny looked: the receding hair, the washed-out appearance in the eyes. It was a look Chandra knew only too well. It was to do with loneliness, the absence of the touch of a loving hand.
He remembered an incident from when Sunny was nineteen and at university. He had returned home for Christmas in his second year and the five of them had eaten lunch together wearing Santa hats. Chandra, somewhat drunk on sherry, had begun to mock LSE lecturers (which equated to mocking Sunny), describing one as “five brain cells short of half-witted,” and doing an unfortunate impersonation of him which led Sunny to say:
“So are you suggesting that Professor Martinez is a homosexual?”
“Oh, God, how should I know?” said Chandra, not wanting to speak of such a thing in front of the girls.
“Because if you are,” said Sunny, “that’s a very hurtful comment.”
“I wasn’t,” said Chandra.
Jean, Chandra noticed, was looking at him very seriously.
“What the hell are you talking about, Sunny?” he said.
“I’m saying I’m gay,” said Sunny.
Chandra had stared at the turkey, its missing left shank, the pink ribbon Radha had tied around its neck. This was a trial, he concluded, an ordeal by fire and bird. But Professor Chandra was no stranger to challenges. He was accustomed to thinking fast under pressure, had digested more examinations than most people had Christmas dinners.
“That’s wonderful, Sunny,” he said. “I’m proud of you, of whatever you choose to do.”
“So you think,” said Sunny, “that I chose this?”
Chandra had looked down at his plate for ten leaden seconds before his son, eldest daughter, and wife collapsed into peals of laughter while Jasmine looked up in confusion.
As far as Chandra was concerned, the episode had been a way of outing him, the family fool, the patriarch with less dignity than the partially disemboweled turkey on the table. Since then, however, Sunny’s sexuality had remained a mystery. Though he was convinced the rest of the family knew everything, all Chandra knew was that Sunny had never brought a girlfriend home, or a boyfriend. There was the possibility that he was asexual, or “self-sexual,” terms Professor Chandra had discovered via Google, but how was he supposed to know?
As the silence in the steam room lengthened, Chandra noticed that Sunny shaved his chest as well as his legs. He made a note to google this too, when he got the opportunity.
“All right, Dad,” said Sunny, sighing. “Yes, I have doubts, and yes, I get lonely, and yes, I get sad, and no, I’m not perfect, but who are you to tell me I’m not happy?”
“I’m sorry for doing that,” said Chandra. “I was tired. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“I’m trying,” said Sunny. “I’ve built a good business.”
“You’re doing splendidly,” said Chandra. “You out-earn me by miles, it’s true.”
“It isn’t just about money,” said Sunny. “I believe in what I do.”
“I believe in it too. I just hope you have enough friends and you don’t keep it all inside. I get lonely sometimes, you see. That’s why I’m saying it.”
They left the club an hour later, going back to the apartment where Chandra took a nap. When he awoke, Sunny was pedaling on the exercise bike in the living room. Chandra poured himself a small brandy from the bottle he’d bought at the duty free and had been planning to give to Maurice, the head porter, on his return.
“I’ve never seen your workplace,” he told Sunny.
“Maybe you will.”
“Or we could go to Macau. I’ve never been there.”
“Yes,” said Sunny. “We could.”
“Maybe it will manifest,” said Chandra.
Sunny continued to pedal, his face unreadable.
“So what affirmations should I say, Sunny?”
“I’ve told you before, Dad. Affirm your deepest desires. Just make sure you say them every day.”
The phone rang. Sunny hopped off the bike in a single movement and answered in Cantonese, saying, “Wai,” and then, “Oh, hi, Mum. Yeah, he is. He’s just having a little dri
nk. Okay, sure.”
Sunny passed the phone to Chandra.
“Hello, Jean,” said Chandra. “Lei ho ma?”
“Charles.”
The moment he heard her voice, he knew it was serious.
* * *
—
After putting the phone down, Chandra collapsed onto the sofa, his face in his hands. “Dad,” Sunny kept saying, but it was minutes before Chandra was able to look up and explain. He kept thinking about those books that Sunny used to read in primary school called Choose Your Own Adventure. They contained passages like “The dragon paces toward you with outstretched wings. If you try to poke his eyes out with your fingers, turn to page 86. If you turn around and run screaming, turn to page 92.” And then you turned the page and found out you were dead, or you poked the dragon’s eyes and he dissolved and you realized he was a hologram. And on it would go.
This was life, it seemed. It didn’t matter what decision you made because the consequences were determined by someone else whose imagination far outstripped yours. Who could have foreseen AIDS or Ebola? Or that someone would fly a plane into the World Trade Center one fine Tuesday? And who could ever have predicted that Professor Chandra’s youngest, sweetest, most loving daughter, who at the age of five used to fall asleep wearing 1930s-style aviator goggles in imitation of her heroine Amy Johnson, would ever do something like this?
Jasmine had been arrested while under the influence of something called crystal meth. She had been stealing money from her mother, and when this wasn’t enough had broken into a burger joint at night with two companions and raided the cash register. Now she was facing charges of breaking and entering and petty larceny.
Crystal meth, Jean had said, was not the sort of drug girls like Jasmine usually took. It was a poor person’s drug, but Jasmine had been keeping some unlikely company recently. “I don’t even know where she met them,” said Jean.
“So she’s become a…” Chandra replied, unable to say the words “drug addict.”
“We think she has a problem,” said Jean. “Yes.”
Sunny helped him to find a flight. It left after midnight, which meant he would just make it. He’d have to change in San Francisco. They took a taxi together to the aiport. To Chandra’s relief, Sunny didn’t tell him to say his affirmations; his comments were the usual platitudes: “Don’t worry,” and “She’ll be all right,” which, coming from Sunny’s lips, were almost enough to bring Chandra to tears.
Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss Page 20