by Jayanti Tamm
After a sleepless flight, Lalita greeted me at the arrival's gate. Tall and slender with gray hair swept off her heart-shaped face, Lalita was practical and kind. An original member of the Paris Center and an insider to Guru's inner circle, Lalita was the eyes and ears from France to Guru. Fluent in English, she breezily chatted, careful to avoid any mention of why I was suddenly in her charge thousands of miles away from Guru and New York.
After staying a few days in Paris at her elderly father's elegant apartment, we drove through the core of France to Montpellier. From my first sighting of the Eiffel Tower to the endless stretches of countryside blanketed with van Gogh's sunflowers, France felt too rigidly perfect. Its carefully aged villages, complete with faded hand-painted shop signs, felt staged. I waited for the wash of sprawling used-car dealerships, strip malls, and graffiti-covered underpasses, but I never saw them. Queens now seemed farther away than ever. My new terrain was not remotely comparable. Jamaica and Montpellier did not seem to share a single common feature. Outwardly, nothing overlapped.
Quaint pedestrian cobblestone walkways streamed into Montpellier's grand squares filled with outdoor cafés and markets. Ancient Roman aqueducts, now groomed into chic parks, braided the edge of the city. Its university, founded in 1220, seventeenth-century Arc de Triomphe, and eighteenth-century ornate opera house nonchalantly boasted Montpellier's permanent reputation as a cultural bastion of the south. Artisans, students, entrepreneurs, and tourists flocked to Montpellier for its coastal setting and carefree lifestyle. I, undoubtedly, was the only person for whom it was meant to serve as a rehabilitation facility, to break my addiction to boys. The orders came from Guru that Lalita was meant to be my counselor and guard. She did not hover over me, and I was grateful for the respectful distance that she afforded me. Never once did I catch her snooping through my bags or bursting into the small room inside her apartment that she had designated as mine. Cheerfully inviting me to help her give meditation classes or shop for supplies from the market for her divine-enterprise restaurant, Lalita presented the perfect facade that I was a normal guest on a normal visit. I figured if she could pretend, then I could, too.
But I wasn't happy. Inwardly I questioned my rushed evacuation from New York. Being so far away from Guru felt too risky; I needed to be in Guru's constant presence for my recovery to keep me focused on the right path. France was confusing; it lacked Guru's rigid structure, his protective grip. Since I did not want to disappoint Lalita in feeling that her kind efforts were magically working, I smiled, pretending I was in the process of being spiritually reborn, but inside I felt the same rumbles of uncertainty and desire. I had not changed nor was I transformed. Occasionally, if I suspected a phone call from Guru was approaching to check on my progress, I'd casually mention how happy I was, which I knew was better than any type of payment I could offer her. Reporting positive, tangible results was a sure way for her to please Guru, and, as a devoted disciple, that was priceless.
Feigning contentment, I surmised, worked to my advantage, as well. From observing the promotion, demotion, and expulsion of disciples my whole life, I understood the more a disciple showed outer signs of struggle, the more scrutiny the person received from both the genuinely concerned and the predatory opportunists. Unchecked displays of enthusiasm or devotion counted as normal acts, but absences or visible sulking only exaggerated and heightened the troubled disciple's state. It was safest to affix a smile, blending into the throngs to divert attention. Outwardly, when I was with the Montpellier disciples at meditations, the restaurant, or just alone with Lalita, with staged joy I'd mention postering for an upcoming meditation class, or I'd arrange a fresh bouquet of flowers upon the shrine. These small markers were more than enough to divert attention and provide cover for my frail and feeble reality.
AS POSITIVE REPORTS stretched back to New York that the initial toxins had been flushed from my system, Guru commanded that I stay in Montpellier to ensure a full and healthy rehabilitation, but I felt isolated in a way that I had never imagined. In Montpellier, Lalita was the closest I had to a friend, but even with her, I was fully aware of the clear boundaries of our friendship. Lalita was busy, and I already took up way too much of her time. Besides Lalita, the other women, all much older than me, were disciples I didn't know well. They all had their own agendas, and I didn't want to seem too needy.
With patchy, fragmented French left over from high school, I was excluded from the ordinary ease of daily small talk and jokes. I stuttered, mispronouncing wrong words, while flicking through a dictionary. The disciples were courteous about switching to English or downshifting to basic greetings when I was in their company, the remainder of the city did not have the time or patience for me. Bus drivers blurted out their annoyance when I tried to cram bills into the automated ticket stamper, and waitresses rolled their eyes when asked to repeat the plat du jour for the third time. I had never appreciated the luxury of living in a society where I was in control of the language. Even when we had traveled with Guru through countless countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan, where we could not speak the language, there was never a sense of exclusion, of being invisible, since we were just tourists, dropping in for a week or two. Locals who wanted our business, whether it was for a taxi ride or an elephant ride, catered to us, cutting deals in botched English phrases; we were the guests, the special ones. Now, without the padding of a group, I was the single outsider, who appeared both deaf and dumb. Achingly conscious that as a disciple of an Indian guru exiled for rehabilitation, I already occupied a solitary position, but having the extra separation of language heightened my sense of loneliness. When I tried to flood myself with French by tuning in to talk radio, after a few minutes my head felt waterlogged. Nothing stuck. I tried to convince myself that maybe it was better this way, that I could remain aloof, unattached, which might help me jump-start my Guru-revival, but no matter how hard I pretended that being tuned out from the noise of the outside world was a spiritual boost, it just made me feel more lonely.
Used to having my family as filler between Guru's schedule, without them and without Guru, the fat lumps of unscheduled time in my days and evenings felt ominous. I didn't know what to do with my time, and even if I did, I didn't have Chahna with whom to explore. I both missed and worried about Chahna. She had seemed so harried and torn over my sudden departure. When we had said our last goodbyes, Chahna sobbed, unable to finish a single sentence, as though she sensed our separation would be as final and permanent as I had experienced with Oscar on the train platform. But Chahna, like Oscar, was thousands of miles away.
Enough time had passed, and it was clearer to me than ever that my pining to return to New York was not just because of my yearning for Guru's peace, love, and bliss; I could no longer deny that it was really because I missed Oscar. I imagined meandering through Montpellier with him, arm in arm, using up entire days in one small neighborhood. He would be my companion in a country filled with couples in love who roamed the streets, proclaiming their amorous affections under the brilliant public stage of open squares and street corners. I watched pairs of lovers seated upon the city's marble monuments, embracing tightly, ruffling each other's hair, biting each other's necks. Remembering Guru's proclamation that he had used repeatedly since junior high that the Supreme was my boyfriend, I'd look around, still hopeful to see if maybe, just maybe, the Supreme would actually turn up.
Since the Supreme was an aloof boyfriend, absent and uncommunicative, I turned my attentions back to Oscar. While walking around the city, I pretended I held his hand, experimenting with grips, knitting intricate combinations of fingers, palms, and thumbs. Setting the tables in Lalita's restaurant or chopping fruit to garnish her dessert tortes, Oscar was always with me, my hand skimming his cheek, softly landing in his hair. I secretly searched for Oscar, hoping that he would not have given up on me so easily. I fantasized about him hiring a private eye in a room with thick blinds and hazy smoke, intricately describing the details that led up to my
last appearance. When the detective didn't produce any tangible leads, Oscar devoted himself full-time to rescuing me. Vowing never to cease pursuing the love of his life, sooner or later Oscar's trail, perhaps beginning in Paris, would land him in Montpellier. In anticipation of his impending arrival, I carefully checked the mirror before retrieving the mail, just in case Oscar was waiting for me in the lobby of the apartment building. Anytime and anyplace, without advance notice, he could appear. I needed to be prepared. As I waited, peering over the tops of my sunglasses in large crowded areas, I often rehearsed our reunion, imagining a tight embrace, as pedestrians strolled past with knowing smiles.
By inwardly doting on Oscar, I rationalized, I wasn't doing anything wrong. If Guru inquired as to whether I had contacted Oscar, I could honestly answer him that I had not. Even though I wanted to, I restrained myself, so I could, on some level, try to please Guru and do what he wanted. I was still obeying Guru, even by a thread. I wasn't technically breaking my promise to be faithful to the Supreme. After all, I kept telling myself that Guru was the only person who really mattered, that the rest was an illusion, a trap, and I wouldn't allow myself to be carried away again, but it wasn't easy.
Sitting in the sun in the main square writing postcards to my parents and Chahna, I composed postcards to Oscar, but as I dropped the others in the post box, I cast his into the garbage can. When I was alone in Lalita's third-floor apartment, I dialed Oscar's number numerous times but hung up before it connected. Still, I knew that these dangerous indulgences were not what Guru, my soul, or the Supreme expected from me. Being aware of my disobedience made me feel worse. Each time I scurried off to call Oscar seemed like I was being twice as deceitful. Knowing it was wrong and yet deliberately pursuing it was a confirmation of my spiritual sickness. The last time I dialed his number, I looked at a framed photograph of Guru smiling with the sun illuminating the back of his head, creating an aura of white light. Guru's divinity, relaxed and utterly easy, felt like a slap. Again and again, I was not worthy to be the recipient of Guru's compassionate smile, his love. I disgusted myself. Seated before my shrine, I ripped up the one photo of Oscar that I had smuggled with me, and begged Guru for inner assistance.
Assistance came in the form of the Montpellier disciples, my new spiritual compatriots, who showed me a way to be quietly at peace. Long before I had arrived in their city, I was known to the group of twenty-five disciples from Center legends. I had not noticed any of them when they pilgrimaged to New York twice a year for celebrations to honor Guru's birthday and his anniversary of arriving in America. To me, the majority of the thousands of visitors who arrived in Queens from all over the world blended together simply to cause long lines, fewer seats, and general gridlock. Very few visiting disciples emerged from the masses to capture Guru's personal attention, and those who did were either well-connected, rich, or celebrities. With few exceptions, the rest of the international visitors came and went without notice.
Lalita was the only Montpellier disciple who stood out. Having joined the original Paris Center in the seventies as a young engineering student, her unflustered, fearless determination to spread Guru's message in every province of France had quickly earned her Guru's counsel. With much of her initial grunt work now passed on to the next generation of eager new disciples, her position was Guru's unofficial leader of France. Attending Guru's concerts and trips abroad, she left her crew of workers to the arduous labor of running a restaurant. As in most divine-enterprises, disciples believed it was a privilege to work in a spiritual atmosphere and avoid the dreaded outside world. Their privilege most often included twelve-hour days, no benefits, and subminimum wages. At the restaurant, I was given the light and clean tasks, but I was still relieved when my few hours were over. In contrast, I noticed that the women disciples who labored for hours seemed joyful and content. Because Guru's laws prohibited men from working with women, the men who toiled the overnight shifts of dishwashing and cleaning did so happily. With Guru's music on an endless loop, and pictures of Guru plastered on all the walls, they worked without a hint of a complaint. Twice a week they met together for a one-hour meditation followed by a short singing session, and sometimes on the weekend they ran along the beach. Their lives seemed private and peacefully contemplative.
Though Lalita was always in the loop, up on what Guru said or did at the last function, the majority of disciples were removed from Guru as a personal adviser and didn't seem to mind. Most were drawn to Guru's extended philosophy of meditation and service. Guru himself was not what they chose. Having a personal relationship with him was not what they had expected or, I suspected, what they wanted. They had a deep reverence for Guru, but their lives did not revolve around needing Guru's daily affirmations. Their days and nights weren't composed of sitting at the tennis court wishing Guru would acknowledge them. They understood that Guru did not know them personally, but that did not seem to bother them. They attended weekly meditations and made the biannual pilgrimage to New York, but the rest of the time was theirs to spend as they chose.
In this serene and independent climate, disciples didn't eye each other, waiting for acts of disobedience to call and report to Guru. I doubt anyone had reported another disciple. Beyond the handful of disciples in Guru's top clan, the rest labored hard and lived simple, quiet lives apart from the tension and intrigue of being first-class disciples. To me, this was a revelation. I had no idea that there were alternatives to the kind of discipleship that had been expected of me since birth. Had my parents known about these more-relaxed approaches to Guru's path? If they had, why wouldn't they have selected a calmer, more balanced life in which to raise Ketan and me? I realized that in all the blurry years of sleep-deprived nights, my parents never suggested we stay to enjoy the quiet pleasures of an evening at home. I wondered, if I had been allowed some independence, some freedoms and flexibility, would I have been a better disciple and a more balanced person?
After months in Montpellier, with Guru's full permission I drifted across the great capitals of Europe, visiting the various Centers. Though I always stayed with disciples, I didn't have any set schedule or timetable. If I wanted to work at a divine-enterprise I could, and if I wanted to head off to another city, I could do that as well. Armed with a Eurail pass, I was free to decide where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. Not having to be at the tennis court or a meditation, the pressures of Guru's tight grasp loosened and dropped. For the first time in my life, I was in charge.
The evenings I spent at various centers for meditations, but the majority of my days I spent alone idling through ancient palaces transformed into museums, cinemas, piazzas, and monument gardens, acquiring a self-guided cultural education. Guru never endorsed visiting art museums or cultural centers. Even though I had traveled extensively on Guru's Christmas trips, Guru did not encourage us to absorb the local culture and rarely wanted us to venture beyond the meeting room of the hotel. Though Guru wrote songs and plays and painted, he had no interest in the works of anyone else and didn't expect his disciples to either. As far as devout disciples were concerned, Guru's creations were the highest, greatest, and would prove to be the most significant in the future—forget the Renaissance masters, Sri Chinmoy was better.
Without a regular routine, I ventured places alone but had a built-in network of disciples who were only too eager to extend their homes and hospitality to me. In Vienna, I stayed with a female disciple who had a framed picture of Guru holding me as a baby on her altar. I had never seen this woman before, and when I tried to introduce myself, she gushed that of course she knew who I was. Prior to my visit, she, like so many other visiting disciples, was a nameless, faceless seeker who worked in one of the divine-enterprise stores in Vienna that sold discounted items imported from China. Daily, she took three trams to work a ten-hour shift in the store. She was always smiling and cheerful, and I was again struck by how different the path was of a “visiting disciple.”
As the months accumulated, I, too, found myse
lf slipping into their Zen-like ease. Even with regular phone calls and letters from my mother about Guru's latest news, like the Sri Chinmoy Peace Blossom site, a program to rename major landmarks in Guru's honor, I received the reports from Jamaica with a newfound sense of distance. In laboring to restrain my thunderous longing for Oscar, I had managed to train my emotions to be muted and still, even those for Guru. The source of my life, the reason for my being, Guru, like all of my former attachments, was no longer something I actively missed.
One crisp morning, as I was about to depart for Barcelona, Lalita called with a desperate request, urging me to Paris. As an offering to France, Guru bestowed upon the French disciples the opportunity of arranging a free public concert for ten thousand people. From the raspy sound of her voice, I could tell she had been on the phone for hours. With the event only weeks away, she was staying at her father's apartment in Paris, transforming his study into a makeshift concert command center. Accommodations were arranged for me. I would be the guest of a new dynamic disciple named Josette, and the sooner I could arrive to help, the better. After all that Lalita had done for me, and the fact that I didn't really have a legitimate excuse with which to decline, I reported for duty.
Guru's public concerts, billed as the “Peace Concert with Sri Chinmoy,” were the supersized version of Guru's original humble lecture series from the early seventies. He was no longer content to play in classrooms and gymnasiums for small crowds; for Guru to perform, the venue needed to be impressive and the audience overflowing. Visiting Centers that had produced concerts to Guru's satisfaction received a boost in their standing. For the disciples of the Cologne Center in Germany, the first international Center successfully to fill a concert hall with ten thousand, their rewards included many disciples receiving their official “spiritual names.” To outshine the Cologne Center, the stakes were raised. The British Centers booked Royal Albert Hall; the Australian Centers countered with the Sydney Opera House. Guru had recently scolded the French disciples for not adequately aspiring, and he offered them the chance to produce a concert for ten thousand in Paris as a boon to rekindle their weak inner lives. Lalita, although she no longer lived in Paris, raised her hand and gratefully thanked Guru, promising him the French would victoriously succeed. Uttam, a well-known composer of contemporary classical music, was the Parisian Center leader. An effete man who carefully guarded his delicate piano fingers, Uttam had discovered Guru through the music of the legendary guitarist John McLaughlin, when McLaughlin had been one of Guru's devoted disciples. Hailing from an aristocratic Parisian family, Uttam was more than pleased when the new crop of hungry disciples clamored to become more involved in Guru's mission. As Uttam's role became more of an honorary position, he gratefully watched from the sidelines, letting the others run around until exhausted.