Keep Off the Grass

by Karan Bajaj

  Suddenly, incomprehensibly, I thought of the Matrix. In a way, Sarkar was like the Neo of Matrix or the Frodo Baggins of The Lord of the Rings, an unlikely hero on an unknown but important quest. Of course, Sarkar didn’t behave like a hero—all he ever did was smoke, get drunk and bitch about the system. However, his relentless search for meaning would eventually lead him to the right door, I thought. And once there, maybe he would do something profound and dramatic, perhaps with consequences for the world at large. I didn’t reveal my thoughts to Sarkar though, as we made our way back to our seats for the night. It was probably necessary for him to run after illusions of happiness for now—IIT, IIM, a banking internship in London—before he eventually found what mattered. Or perhaps I was being dramatic as usual. He could just be a stoned pop philosopher after all.

  ‘My reasons for coming here are nowhere as deep, you know,’ I said. ‘But I must mention—and I don’t even know if this has any relevance—the character I related to the most in the Matrix was the traitor who ratted on Neo and his friends. Don’t remember his name, but I recall what he said. Something like, “I know this piece of chicken isn’t real, but I enjoy its taste so much that I don’t care.” I think I’m like that. I know there is a deeper secret, and what is apparent is not really real but I don’t care enough to find out. In a perverse kind of way, I enjoy my self-doubts and confusion so much that I don’t want to let go of them. Anyway, to hell with the pop philosophy. What are the chances of getting some action in Dharamsala?’

  *

  We changed at Delhi for an overnight train to Pathankot and then took a bus to Dharamsala. Ignoring the solicitations of the hundred-odd rickshaw-drivers who descended upon us at the bus stand in Dharamsala, we elected to walk to our destination.

  ‘It’s the only way to see the real India,’ said Sarkar. ‘Either that, or stoned on a bike.’

  Flashes from the past again: walking and biking with Peter and Radha across Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand after graduation.

  ‘It all goes downhill from here,’ Peter had said at the end of the trip, ‘adulthood and responsibility, mortgages, kids, financial planning, the works. From now on, happiness will mean remembering the ghosts of our time in Yale.’

  Peter had been right. Things had gone downhill from there even though I had effectively managed to shirk all responsibility. I always ran at the first sign of it—exited relationships when they demanded commitment, ended friendships when they called for an investment of time and abandoned my career when it was about to go places.

  For now though, I thought ironically, I’m going uphill. As we started our climb to the town, I was surprised to see more Westerners than Indians almost everywhere in the small picturesque Himalayan town.

  ‘It’s a dope haven,’ Sarkar explained. ‘It grows its own stuff so marijuana is easily accessible and cheap. Attracts a lot of foreigners.’ At least Sarkar was getting something out of business school, I thought, he seemed to have mastered the entire supply chain, distribution and marketing framework of marijuana in India.

  I also saw many signs for meditation classes.

  ‘The entrepreneurial Indian.’ Sarkar was quick with an explanation again. ‘Where there is a buck to be made, they’ll make it. There is a ton of money to be made in the spiritual rap. Very low investment—get a bunch of idiots together in an auditorium, play a pirated tape with eerie music, mutter “Om” a couple of times, scream in orgasmic ecstasy, provide stripped-down living quarters in the name of austerity and promise a piece of soul to the soulless foreigners if they pay enough. Very high returns—you get paid in dollars for the scam.’

  The whole town radiated a tense, frenzied energy as locals accosted foreigners with cheap bargains on food, accommodation, dope, sex and salvation. No one paid much attention to us. We looked like what we were—penniless students, without even the means to buy a first-class train ticket. Only the ubiquitous pimps, who immediately figured the equation—Two Indian Males = Desperate for Sex—tried to entice us. Words I had heard before were repeated: ‘Foreigner. Rs 1,000, all night.’

  We ignored them and made our way out of the busy town. The Vipaasana meditation centre was a couple of miles away and even higher up. It felt terrific to be in the mountains again and get some exercise. I had very specific objectives for the next ten days—run in the mountains, catch up on my reading, get stoned, sleep a lot, talk to the locals and spare whatever little time was left to this meditation gig.

  The Vipaasana centre, however, had other plans. As soon as we signed in, the instructors laid down the ground rules. For ten days we had to maintain complete silence, no verbal or nonverbal communication, no reading or writing, no running, jogging or other exercise, no smoking, drinking and of course no pot, no dinner, just two meals a day. The schedule stated that we had to wake up every day at 4 a.m., meditate for two hours, break for breakfast, meditate again for three hours, break for lunch, meditate for five more hours, attend a discourse by Goenka and go to bed by 10 p.m. So there would be six hours of sleep every day and barring the small breakfast and lunch breaks, we would pretty much meditate for the remaining eighteen.

  I pulled Sarkar aside. ‘What have you got us into? I’d planned on running and getting stoned in the mountains, but this is as bad as school. I’m getting out of here!’

  Sarkar confessed, ‘I wasn’t completely transparent, I know. I did guess you couldn’t run here, but I hadn’t bargained for the vow of silence. Anyway, we’ve come all this way, let’s just flow with it for a while and we can leave in the middle if we have to.’

  I relented. Goenka was about to address the hundred people or so who had signed up for the course. Sarkar had been right about him. A short bald man, he had a supremely peaceful, contented look on his face. He definitely didn’t look like the kind who would have to be pulled away from an orgy by his attendant so that he could quickly button up and preach the virtues of chastity to his unsuspecting class. Here was a man who looked like he had figured it out, I thought, and I liked him immediately. Still, an effective teacher doesn’t make an effective course. Remember financial accounting, boy?

  The calm in Goenka’s voice was enviable.

  ‘You’re all here for different reasons,’ he began, ‘but your underlying motivation is the same.’

  My underlying motivation, I thought as I scanned the lecture hall hungrily, is to father the children of that voluptuous dusky woman sitting across from me. Can your meditation course arrange for that to happen, please?

  ‘You are here,’ Goenka continued, ‘because you’re fairly restless, somewhat dissatisfied… searching but not knowing what to search for. Happy, perhaps, but at a loss to understand what happiness really means. Am I right?’

  I stopped staring at the woman. He had my attention.

  ‘I don’t think this ten-day course will change that, but it will definitely give you a glimpse of the solution. I’m on the journey myself, quite far from the destination, but I’m certain that this path is the right one,’ he continued.

  I believed him. He exuded a warmth that convinced me there wasn’t a fake bone in his body.

  Goenka then went on to explain what Vipaasana meditation meant, and his explanation appealed to my scientific side. Through a series of breathing techniques, the meditation establishes that even the smallest cell in the body is constantly changing, forcing the mind to recognize that the physical ‘me’ it knew a nanosecond ago was different from the physical ‘me’ it knows now. Realizing this impermanence of the physical form ensures that the mind doesn’t get attached to all the material comforts that the body seeks—wealth, power, fame, money, sex, etc.—the hunger for which is the root cause of all dissatisfaction. The act of the mind transcending all material cravings and becoming one with the universal soul, never to be born again in the human form, is nirvana, enlightenment or liberation. Easier said than done, though. Goenka didn’t promise enlightenment like a dandruff shampoo’s ‘100% flake-free hair in ten days’ guarantee. He w
as realistic and, in fact, somewhat pessimistic about the end state (consider these remarks from him—‘Few are called, fewer are chosen’, ‘It may take several lifetimes to accomplish the goal’, etc).

  By the time we went back to the dormitory, I had made up my mind to stay. Listening to Goenka had made me hopeful, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. There were answers out there if you really made a choice to seek them, I thought. Some people like Goenka had the courage to do so, and the results were obvious. Sarkar seemed to feel the same. ‘This Goenka chap is like a small boy running barefoot on the beach with waves softly washing over his feet—no baggage, no struggles, completely, absolutely free,’ he said.

  I embarked on an unexpected spiritual quest from there even as I struggled to transition from an overactive, restless lifestyle to one of quiet, constant meditation. Despite sleep here being even more difficult than it was in business school (hours of constant meditation dramatically energized me), my thoughts in bed were active, happy and positive. I forgave even the hippie Westerner sleeping next to me in the dormitory room who always emanated a sour, dirty smell, like curd. He must be ‘Kurdish’, I thought, and collapsed into helpless, silent giggles at my private joke. Happiness means calling someone who smells like sour curd a Kurd instead of cursing the bastard, I thought, and laughed some more.

  As the days went by, I began to feel calmer and happier than I had felt any time before. On the third day I had, or rather I imagined I had, a transcendental experience just as I was drifting off to sleep. A sudden energy seemed to radiate through my whole body, filling my mind with a sense of complete, absolute peace. I floated deliriously, light-headed, all my senses suddenly, intensely acute. It didn’t happen again, but that day was the turning point, and meditating afterwards filled me with a rare sense of contentment and bliss.

  As the tenth day dawned, I felt a massive pang of regret at having to go back to the frenzied pace of soulless activity at the IIM. I was happy here, meditating, listening to discourses, not speaking to a soul, eating the strictly vegetarian food and feeling fitter, healthier and happier by the moment. I debated for a second whether I should stay on. Should I go back to being a mouse in a B-school rat race, or should I try to achieve enlightenment —get mukti from the cycle of birth and death that binds us humans? There couldn’t have been a clearer choice.

  And of course, once again, I didn’t make the clear choice. At the end of the tenth day, I found myself outside the centre, waiting patiently for Sarkar. We exchanged notes about our stay, but soon fell silent, our experiences too intensely personal to discuss. Instead, we talked of comfortable trivialities.

  ‘Did you notice there were only four or five Indians and at least a hundred foreigners in our class?’ Sarkar said. ‘Ironically, more foreigners are interested in historical, cultural and spiritual India than Indians are. As Westerners flock to India for spiritual awakening, we go there for all the gross material things they set out to escape—a house in the suburbs, two cars in the garage and easy access to Playboy, Penthouse and strip clubs. It’s pretty fucked, if you think about it.’

  I didn’t feel like getting into any deep stuff then. Ten days of intense self-reflection were enough to last me for some time. ‘Dude, what’s our plan of action? We don’t have reservations for the trip back, remember?’

  ‘No, man, but we can easily pay off the ticket collector and get a berth to sleep. Let’s play it by ear,’ Sarkar replied. ‘Want to catch a beer first?’

  I hesitated. Goenka had suggested quitting drinking, drugs and smoking, all vices that distract the soul from its higher pursuits. More than that though, in the last ten days I had experienced the joy of living a pure life, a high in not seeking a high. Abstinence felt right, not just something I ought to do.

  ‘Come on,’ said Sarkar, as if reading my thoughts. ‘Abstinence will require effort, and I am sure IIM won’t give us a chance to make that effort. Maybe after we graduate, yes?’

  Perhaps it was his sound logic or perhaps it was the uncomfortable feeling of behaving like a recovering Bible belt ‘I found Jesus’ alcoholic, but I gave in and let gross, material desires vanquish whatever little spiritual progress I had made in Dharamsala.

  We stopped at a small dhaba and ordered a spread of spicy chhole-bhature and paneer parathas (ignoring Goenka’s rule about sticking to simple, saatwik food) and some beer (another tenet broken). We smoked a quiet cigarette (one more!), enjoying the immediate hit, and were making plans to source dope (yet another!) before our train ride back to Bangalore when—

  ‘Weren’t you guys at the Vipaasana course?’ asked a sexy voice in a thick European accent. We turned to see a twenty-something buxom brunette who had been with us in the course. Sex was the final craving that Goenka had asked us to abstain from, now I was eager to break this last tenet immediately.

  ‘Yes, we were, but don’t take this meal as an indication of how much impact the course had on us.’ I smiled. ‘Why don’t you join us?’ Vipaasana notwithstanding, I was now stirred by the thought of getting some action after months of celibacy. What a cheap pervert I’ve become, I thought. Why does Westerner = sex come to my mind here in India, despite having spent an entire lifetime in the US? It’s all India’s fault, I concluded, women are just too prudish and inhibited here. So the country was to blame, not me. I was a manager after all, and managers are never at fault. If you look hard enough, there is always someone to blame.

  Roxanne was from Denmark and had been living in India for several months. She was planning to backpack her way from Dharamsala to Tibet and then Nepal. She was surprised to know that we were business school students.

  ‘But that is so different from everything that Vipaasana teaches. Don’t business schools teach you to worship money and all the other things that come with it—power, ambition and fame?’

  ‘Yes, they do. All that and more,’ Sarkar replied. ‘We’re the tortured misfits who came here to escape that. What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a philosophy grad from the University of Copenhagen,’ she replied. ‘I’m taking a year off to travel the world. I teach English in a local school here but I’m leaving soon for Tibet. Actually, I’m leaving tomorrow.’

  We chatted for a long time—about Vipaasana, India, Western and Eastern philosophy, hiking, backpacking, B-school, the emptiness of life—everything. Conversation, alcohol and cigarettes flowed freely. I was having visions of hiking with her in the icy slopes of the Himalayas in Tibet and making love in a warm, cosy tent when she broke my reverie.

  ‘It’s been great talking to you guys. You know you won’t believe this, but I haven’t ever actually sat and conversed with locals about anything meaningful. Before coming here, I was warned that most locals think of Westerners as ATM machines or sex objects, and we were told to avoid them as much as possible. But I’m so lucky to have found you guys on my very last day here. I really did want to meet locals—there is no fun in hanging out with your own people, especially when you are in a country as diverse as India.’

  I felt ashamed. I was guilty of neglecting to mention that I was actually American. Yet, I didn’t want Sarkar to communicate this to her.

  ‘Well, we’re not exactly locals…’ Sarkar began, but I signalled to him to shut up. ‘Whatever,’ I rationalized to myself, ‘my accent screams I am American, and if she really can’t tell, it’s all the best for her.’ Whatever floats her boat, I thought.

  She went on, ‘My friends here are meeting tonight for a sort of a farewell party. Why don’t you join us? We would love to get to know you guys.’

  So we ended up staying an extra day in Dharamsala instead of rejoining school on time. At least our priorities were clear. We made our way to Roxy’s one-bedroom apartment on top of a hill. Our going-away present for her was a pound of hash we’d secured from a local dealer, which was greeted with great excitement by her friends. They were mostly European, American and Israeli hippie bums (‘We are children of Tierre Madre, Mother Earth,’ they told us)—
excellent company for an evening. We strummed on the guitar, traded stories of our spiritual experiences and our interpretations of the universal questions of ‘Who am I? Why did I come here? What is this world? Who is the creator?’ while passing around the hash. Sarkar, who was in his element, delighted the hippies with a rare glimpse into his twisted world.

  ‘Shambhu, Shambhu. This is the ultimate truth,’ said a dreadlocked American as he absorbed Sarkar’s ‘God is a mathematical equation’ bullshit.

  ‘Prabhu. You are… God. I have nothing more to live for,’ said an Israeli stoner, crashing on Sarkar’s feet.

  In the meantime, I had been busy reading everyone’s body language to figure out if anyone showed a level of intimacy that could qualify him as being Roxanne’s boyfriend. To my utter delight, there seemed to be none. As the night progressed into early morning, I decided to regress back to being the pervert I was. I approached Roxanne.

  ‘Hey, do you want to go for a short walk?’

  ‘Sure. And listen, thanks so much for agreeing to come—you guys made the party special. My friends just loved hearing your experiences.’

  We chatted for a while about her travels, her life back in Denmark. I was keenly aware of the increasing sexual tension between us as we kept walking in the bracing mountain air. We had walked a couple of miles downhill to the main Dharamsala city when she stopped.

  ‘I can’t walk any further. Should we just take a hotel tonight and stay here?’ she asked.

  I looked to see if she was flirting, but her expression didn’t give away anything.

  ‘Sure, but I don’t think I have enough cash for two rooms.’

  She seemed fine with that as we stopped at a seedy hotel and checked in with the desk clerk, who gave me a knowing smirk. On the way to the room Roxanne kissed me lightly and I was immediately aroused. Abandoning all attempts to hide my true intentions, I kissed her passionately, gently fondling her big, soft breasts through the thin fabric of her dress as I shut the door of the room. I admitted to her that I had wanted her the moment I had set eyes on her at the dhaba.