Cartwheels in a Sari

by Jayanti Tamm

  Oscar escorted my hand to the zipper of his jeans. I tensed and stiffened. He sensed my fear.

  “It doesn't matter,” he whispered. “Only you matter.”

  It was early morning when Oscar left. Dazed and lightheaded, I attempted to erase any signs that I had been in Ketan's apartment. Looking in all directions, I darted inside my parents’ house, dragging bags with uneaten desserts up to my third-floor apartment, and collapsed in my bed, not bothering to listen to the two messages from Sarisha inviting me to Guru's house.

  The next afternoon after the meditation at the tennis court had ended, I debated returning to Ketan's apartment to check if I had left any incriminating evidence of my rendezvous, but I decided against it. Instead, I asked Chahna to go to a diner for a late lunch. I needed to reveal my news, to have the pleasure of describing my very own boyfriend aloud. My mother was out of the question, my father was even more impossible; Ketan, I knew, would have reported me in an instant with glee. The other disciples were not to be trusted. Friendships in the Center were fragile creations formed by convenience or profitability. Aware that at any point Guru might sever the alliance depending on the changing status of both participants, many friendships remained loose and easily detachable. But that was not the case with Chahna. Though we never discussed it, it was always understood that our bond didn't fit into the normal Center protocol. Even though Chahna and I were different ages, lived in separate states, and held dissimilar positions in the Center, we loved each other completely, without effort. Since Guru often spoke about past incarnations, Chahna and I decided that over the course of many lives we had been sisters and best friends. The one time, however, when I had written a letter to Guru, asking him to confirm this, he never responded. Chahna and I, though, took his silence as an affirmation of what we already believed to be true, and we vowed to always remain sisters and best friends, no matter what happened.

  Struggling through high school, Chahna had started writing bleak poetry and wearing black combat boots under her sari. Still thoroughly devoted to Guru, Chahna, now more than ever, didn't fit into Guru's inner elite. Even as a small child, Guru rarely paid attention to her unless it was her birthday, when she, like all disciples who had been in the Center more than a certain number of years, had the blessing to stand before Guru with a small cake as we sang Guru's own version of a Happy Birthday song. However, unlike me, she neither expected nor required outer recognition from Guru in order to feel complete. But when Guru gave me special prizes and gifts, she delighted in sincere happiness for me. Sometimes, in private, when I would ask her if she ever felt sad that Guru didn't talk to her, she'd gaze at me with utter disbelief, as if she were unable even to imagine feeling sorry for herself when, by the mere fact that she was Guru's disciple, she had everything she needed.

  Playing with the paper from my straw, I jiggled my feet against the diner's booth, excited to unburden my exuberance about my true love. In between the busboy filling our water glasses, I confessed to Chahna everything that had happened in the two weeks that I had known Oscar, including the most recent news that he had gotten accepted into Yale Law School for the following September, and he wanted me to go to New Haven with him. As she sat motionless, I saw her take in the new breathless, transformed Jayanti. The way she looked at me made me feel older and wizened. She was quiet as I spoke incessantly. After I had started my job at the U.S. Mission, Chahna had told her parents that when she graduated from high school, she, too, wanted to get a job with the UN. She also said she wanted to live full-time in Queens. And now she listened, as though peering in on what else might be in store for her future. Instead of addressing the unspoken reality of why I was doing this and how I expected this to continue and when would I face the fact that this would not and could not work, she stared at me from her side of the booth, which felt at once too close and too far. As we walked home and I continued to elaborate on Oscar, retracing my earlier story for omitted details, I was relieved and unburdened.

  Prideful of my stellar ability to maneuver successfully between the realms of my boyfriend and my guru, I hadn't a clue that there might be a problem until, less than twenty-four hours later, I was summoned to Guru's house and, as I approached his front door, I understood something was wrong. The door, normally shut, was wide open. As I entered the porch, Guru immediately emptied the space, casting every other person out of his house. After a one-minute rush of disciples, squishing on sandals and running shoes on the front stoop, a shock of silence filled the porch. No one even looked at me in their haste to leave. Inside, Guru scanned me for a moment, as though he needed to be sure I was the person he was expecting, the soul he had selected to be his steadfast and most obedient disciple. Finally, he told me to sit in a disgusted tone that made it instantly and dreadfully clear to me why I was there.

  It was all over.

  My stomach swirled in anxious dread, and my cheeks flared. Busted, I now had to confess everything to Guru. I could not dare sit before him and make excuses or lies. How had it come to this? Rather than humbling myself and accepting the responsibility for betraying Guru, I felt angry. The sting of being caught overrode everything. I had been so careful the entire time, slinking around like a secret operative. I was meticulous in tending my undercover life so that it wouldn't leak back to Guru, but I had been outwitted. In dates with Oscar, if I had spotted a man in white, I had ducked into stores, feigning sudden interest in hardware or fishing poles. Even speaking to him on the telephone at home, I always made sure to stay in my carpeted bedroom and talk in a low voice, so my conversations didn't seep through the ceiling boards into the apartment below. Nobody knew anything, except Chahna, and I couldn't imagine her ever betraying me. Then I remembered my negligence of not returning to Ketan's house for dropped clues, but I was certain that I had been careful and not left anything behind.

  “Your disobedience is absolutely attacking me, giving me such physical pain, such suffering. Your soul wants to punish you mercilessly, ruthlessly. I have to intervene. This kind of life you are living, Jayanti. Oi. Oi. Oi. Your soul knows and your heart knows that the Supreme is your one and only boyfriend. It is your vital, your mind, your body that fight against divinity. In the past, I have prevented your soul from inflicting severe harm, severe punishment on you, but I cannot continue. Very, very serious consequences will occur. Physical danger can come. Karmic punishment for this wild, vital life you are leading.” Guru shifted, pushing a pillow behind his back. “Such pain you are causing me. Such physical suffering.”

  Lately, he had been limping severely, in obvious and constant pain. What was Guru going to do to me? What would this mean for my entire family? Was I now cursed? Were they cursed too? In his public teachings, Guru endorsed loving compassion, but often in private he advocated severe justice. I pictured a massive cave leading to the center of the earth with a plank for a one-way entry. He had no reason to use compassion with me now. I just hoped he would spare my parents from the endless pit of his justice. They were oblivious to my faults. They didn't deserve it.

  “The outer life, the ordinary, vital life is not for you. No married life. No children. No negative trappings. You were chosen by me to be my nearest and dearest disciple to achieve victory here on earth.” Guru's voice then turned milky and tender, but still edged with his own pain. “You can still be my victory, my Jayanti. You can still achieve the highest here on earth on my path, in my golden-boat. But your vital-life, your boyfriend, is killing both me and you.”

  “Yes, Guru,” I said, my eyes filling with tears, preparing myself for punishment.

  “To run faster than the fastest in your spiritual life, to be your Guru's divine victory, you need to tell your guru if you love him.” Guru opened his eyes, wide. “Do you love your guru, your Absolute Supreme?”

  “Yes, Guru,” I said, crying. Of course I loved Guru. He was the reason for my existence. He was my family and my God. He was the root of everything. Seated in front of his divine presence, I loved him more than anyt
hing in the entire world. In an instant, he had the ability to refocus my heart, my life.

  “Do you want to please the Absolute Supreme?”

  “Yes, Guru,” I answered. How could I not want to please the Supreme?

  I slunk my shoulders, suddenly overwhelmed with shame for my arrogant and undivine self.

  “Then do the right thing, Jayanti, my Jayanti. Give up your boyfriend. Take the Supreme as your only and beloved boyfriend. He will never leave you, never disappoint you. You listen to your Guru, and he will tell you what is best for your inner life. I am one hundred percent responsible for you. You surrender to your guru, and I take one hundred percent responsibility for your inner and outer life.”

  “Yes, Guru.”

  “You know Lalita?”

  Lalita was a French disciple in Montpellier, a university town in the south of France.

  “Yes, Guru.”

  “You will go to France and stay there.”

  The rest of what Guru said vanished into the porch and beyond. I knew Guru was right. He was always right. My feelings for Oscar were wrong, delusional. I had not been happy; an outer life with Oscar would never make me happy. The only true path to happiness was with Guru. Time and again Guru told me what I already knew—without Guru, I was nothing. I belonged to him, to his path. I had strayed, nearly too far. I did not deserve Guru's forgiveness, but I would subsist on it. Time and again Guru told me he was the only one who could save me from myself and the wrath of my own soul.

  According to Guru, Romesh had a ticket for me to leave for France in two days. Guru handed me an envelope bulging with cash. I dried my eyes and nodded. I would take Guru's endless compassion and not abuse it, promising not to break his trust.

  Guru instructed my father to inform my job on Monday that I was not returning, and that I should not go back and “not talk to or see that boy again.”

  When I returned from Guru's house and I heard Oscar speaking into my voice mail, I numbly picked up the phone and told him that I was going away and wouldn't be back. From my tone, he knew I was serious. Frantic, he demanded to see me, but I told him he couldn't. He insisted that I tell him where I was going, and when I finally admitted it was France, he vowed if I didn't agree to meet him before I left, then he would fly there and meet me. His passport was ready, he said. I told him that was blackmail, utterly unfair. If he turned up in France, I worried, Guru's entire plan and my sincere promise could fail.

  As I sat stunned and exhausted on my floor, Oscar negotiated a deal—I meet him the next day and he would stay away forever.

  “I promise,” he said. “No funny stuff,” he added.

  I didn't know what he meant. Nothing felt even remotely funny.

  My mission was pure. To prevent Oscar from going any further, I needed to see him. Wanting to handle this myself and not cause alarms, I worried that maybe Oscar could not be trusted and felt I needed a chaperone, maybe even a bodyguard. The only person whom I could have dared trust for this most delicate and monumental task was Chahna. When I urgently called her to relay the news, she was numbly silent, but I made her promise to be my strength, my blockade.

  Without knowing the full story, my father obeyed Guru's request and, on Monday morning, awkwardly explained to my colleagues that I was offered a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go abroad” and would not be returning to work. Meanwhile, Chahna quietly accompanied me to meet Oscar. Avoiding my direct gaze, I thought she was trying to refrain from being too emotional, and I appreciated her giving me the support yet the distance that I needed.

  When I first saw Oscar waiting in the agreed-upon café in Forest Hills, all of my hardened resolve to Guru disappeared. I wanted to grab on to him, hop inside a cab, and disappear forever. But that was absurd. I had promised Guru, my soul, and the Supreme, my life. There was no place for Oscar. I forced myself to pause, breathe, and invoke Guru's presence. I remembered Guru telling me that Oscar was poison, pure poison. I looked at his poisonous body, face, and eyes, wanting to examine them closer, much closer, but Chahna positioned herself directly in between Oscar and me. He kept sweating, even though it was cold at our table near the door. Glaring at Chahna, he stammered with the frustration of being unable to talk to me alone. Chahna, with her eyes lowered, stirred her black coffee. He had frantic questions, and I was determined to block all of them. It was self-defense. The more information he had about me now, the riskier it would be later. I was here only because I was trying to fulfill my commitment to Guru. That was it.

  “Will you tell me where you'll be staying?” Oscar begged.

  “No.”

  “Can I get a phone number to reach you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know when you'll be back?”

  “No.”

  He wiped his hand across his sweaty forehead, and his chair scraped the tile floor. He took a few seconds to regroup.

  “Can I get a minute alone here?” He snapped at Chahna.

  A minute alone couldn't do any harm. If that was what it took to finally say good-bye and be done with the entire episode, to break free of him once and for all, then I could do it. I nodded to Chahna, assuring her that this was fine. I would walk him the half block to the subway alone.

  “I can't believe you're just taking off and are leaving me,” Oscar said, still sweating, the moisture now filling his eyes as we descended the stairs into the station.

  I didn't know what to say, so I remained silent, which made him shake his head in disbelief.

  “This is, this is, complete bullshit,” he shouted, then took a few quick breaths.

  He grabbed my hands, urging me toward the turnstiles. Inwardly I chanted to Guru for strength. I was doing the right thing. This was the right thing.

  “I can't let you go,” Oscar said with a weak smile, trying to pull me toward him. “I just don't understand any of this,” he said, exasperated.

  I knew it wasn't fair. I hadn't told him anything, and now I was abandoning him. No reasons. No explanations.

  He slipped two tokens into the machine and whisked us through the turnstile. The squealing raspy engine of an approaching train echoed through the tunnel. He tugged me, with increased urgency.

  The E train skidded to a stop where we now stood. The doors opened.

  “Come with me. We'll escape together.”

  He backed into the subway car, still clasping both my hands, pulling me inside.

  For a moment I visualized our perfect future together, burrowed in the comfort of a domestic oasis. With him I would gain a loving partner, but I would lose my holy trinity— Guru, my soul, and the Supreme. My life with Oscar was impossible. I was Guru's Chosen One, and because of that, Guru left me no choice.

  I took a decisive step, backing out of the door's threshold onto the platform as the doors snapped shut. Oscar pressed his face against the glass and his hands frantically clawed at the doors, attempting to pry them open.

  I studied his face, absorbing as much as I could to store away with me.

  “Jayanti,” Chahna called from a few feet away. “We need to go.”

  With his mouth open, Oscar's words were gone as the train vanished into the black tunnel. I watched as my once-possible future sped deep underground and away from my life forever. Feeling empty, sick and cracked, I walked over to Chahna, who waited for me with her arms open wide and squeezed me so tightly I couldn't catch my breath. When we steadied ourselves, we ascended from the darkness up the stairs, to the streams of brilliant and aching light from the world above.

  7

  Exiled to France

  WITHOUT INTERROGATING ME AS TO THE FULL REA- son why Guru was airlifting me out of New York, my mother and father dutifully helped me pack. Ketan, sensing juicy scandal, doggedly scrounged for more information, but I remained quiet. Any attempt to explain what had happened only made things feel worse, until everything hurt. Each time an Oscar memory began to form, I dug my nails into my arm to force it to stop. I unplugged my telephone. I threw away my c
ache of perfumes and oils purchased to entice Oscar. All the outfits that I had worn with him, including my favorite purple silk dress, I gored with a scissors before dumping them into the garbage. From movie stubs to his phone number written on a napkin, I systematically eliminated all physical reminders of Oscar.

  Before the drive to Kennedy Airport, Guru invited me to his house. With a blessingful letter, explaining how proud he was of me, and another wad of blessingful cash as parting gifts, Guru pressed both hands upon my forehead, covering my third eye. His touch was forceful, as if embossing his protective imprint for my long journey ahead. He beamed a wide smile, proclaiming his eternal love, pride, and joy for me. I consciously worked to preserve Guru's dousing of sweet affections, knowing I needed his affirmations to be even functional. I felt unsteady and weak, as though I was in the fragile stage right after a serious illness, and Guru sensed this. Without a single scolding or warning, Guru became once again the doting grandfather who years past had beamed while his dearest Jayanti climbed upon his lap or delivered to him a bouquet of hand-picked dandelions. I was reminded of his transformative love, and by the time Guru waved his final round of farewell blessings, I felt strengthened by his enthusiastic confidence in me.

  When my father pulled up to the departures area at the airport, I feared that Oscar might be waiting for me, that despite his promise, he could have bought a plane ticket. I scanned the chain of people waiting to check in—every man with dark hair and jeans caused me an anxious jolt. At the security screening, where passengers without boarding passes said their final good-byes, I barely flicked a farewell gesture to my mother as I squinted through the knots of people in case Oscar was entangled with them. At the final boarding call, long after all the other passengers were seated and safely buckled for the long flight, the overrouged ticket collector, impatient at my refusal to budge, snickered, inquiring if I were expecting a Hollywood last-minute movie airport reunion scene. Her comment broke my vigilant stake-out. I surrendered my ticket, while wondering if somehow Oscar would already be on board, relaxed and smiling, waiting for me.