Walking Wisdom

by Gotham Chopra

  AFTER I HUNG UP with my father, I paced around my Italian hotel room. I turned back to the television and flipped through the channels. Every network imaginable was covering the news that Michael Jackson was being transported to a Los Angeles hospital. Most had backed off the earlier headline that he was already dead and resigned themselves to the more nebulous description of his being in a coma and in critical condition. I knew the notorious death watch was probably under way, with satellite trucks parked outside the hospital, Michael’s homes in Los Angeles and Neverland, his parents’ famous Encino compound, and more, eager for news and reaction to the slightest bit of rumor.

  Sitting in my hotel room, staring at the television—I had settled on an Italian news network that I couldn’t even really understand—I watched with a growing pit in my stomach. A grainy and shaky video loop from the gossip website TMZ depicted frenzied paramedics rushing a slight figure on a gurney into a waiting ambulance. These images would emerge as the final ones of the great Michael Jackson. More video now caught a growing vigil of fans outside the legendary Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills. The reporter rattled on in Italian, her voice almost tripping over itself while she relayed whatever the latest bit of news was. My cell phone was already buzzing with text messages and e-mails, friends eager to get an inside scoop if I had one. I glanced at the alarm clock again. It was now well after ten p.m. We were supposed to be up and out on the bikes in the early morning for our first grueling ride. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure that I’d be staying much longer in Italy, let alone making the start time. Conflicting thoughts raced through my mind—whether or not I should be sticking it out or rushing home. All the while that pit in my stomach kept growing, the suspicion solidifying that no matter what the news was saying about Michael’s condition, my own intuition was more reliable.

  In an instant I made a single choice: to turn off the TV and my phone. The combination of jet lag, nervous anticipation for the ride, and this gut-wrenching news had unsteadied me. I sensed that tomorrow would be that much more emotionally chaotic, but separating now and then were a few short hours where I could isolate myself and not confront it all. It was less an intellectual decision than an instinctive one.

  As I lay in bed a few minutes later, I thought about Michael, the first time we met, the summer I traveled with him as he toured Europe, and of the times we’d spent together since then. I felt a heaviness in my heart and tried to find more of the mostly humorous encounters that Michael and I shared through the years—the time we snuck out of his Los Angeles apartment on Halloween and visited a nightclub where he danced so feverishly that the whole crowd stopped and started cheering him—this anonymous man in a Godzilla mask. Or the time in a New York City recording studio when he told the rapper Ice-T that I was his bodyguard. Ice-T sized me up and told Michael he could help him “upgrade” if he wanted to get serious about his protection.

  But I couldn’t steer my own emotions away from the sadness I felt growing inside. “Let go of the illusion of control,” Master Shifu reminded me. So I employed a different tact. I decided to just go ahead and feel sad. To not try and dodge the emotions, but rather “take ownership” of them, as Dr. Phil might suggest, and let them wash through me. Within five minutes, I was immersed in a deep, hard slumber.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING I woke with a start. I didn’t need an alarm clock or anything else to wrestle me from my surprisingly restful sleep. I stared at the television screen, determining whether or not I should switch it on. Instead I turned to my cell phone and powered it up. Being overseas, I had the option of whether I wanted to turn on my “mail settings” and download e-mail.

  Before I could decide, the phone rang. It was Papa.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “You know . . .” I stopped, unsure what to say.

  “They confirmed the death not too long ago,” he said softly.

  “Right.” I nodded. Inside I felt a profound sadness, though an equally profound lack of shock.

  “I think you should stay in Italy and do your bike ride,” Papa suggested without my even prompting it.

  “Really?” It had crossed my mind again that maybe I should call it off and head home.

  “It’s going to be a circus here,” Papa countered. “I’ve already gotten calls from every news outlet you can imagine. Already did Larry King. They’re asking for you.”

  “Yeah,” I murmured, not surprised. The thought of rushing back to the growing media frenzy was not appealing.

  “I don’t know the first thing about biking,” Papa interceded again. “But if I were you, I would get on the bike and just focus on the road in front of you.”

  Not surprisingly, Deepak did know biking. As it turns out, his advice was the same sage wisdom offered by the experts. Never try to conquer the race, just take one stage at a time. Don’t even worry about the whole stage, break it down into sections and ride it modularly. Listen to the greatest riders and they’ll tell you, they don’t even think in sections as much as they just look downward where the wheel spins on the road. Sometimes they’ll find the traffic lines in the road and use them to help find their rhythm and pace, until everything else—the course, the other riders, even the time itself—falls away. It’s the same experience the greatest athletes use to describe being “in the zone” or “the runner’s high” when all the details fade away and they become one with everything around them, including themselves. It’s in fact the state of awareness that the great scriptures, both East and West, describe.

  “I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last,” the Bible depicts.

  “I am their beginning, their being, their end,” Lord Krishna chronicles himself in the Bhagavad Gita.

  Master Oogway concurs: “You are too concerned with what was and what will be.”

  I thought for a moment about the road ahead, of my father and my friend. I thought about my mother and Nana, of Candice and Krishu, and of how life is so fleeting, how it’s gone in the blink of an eye, the veritable parenthesis in eternity.

  We go from potty training to being regular. We wrap ourselves up in a web of expectation, anticipation, and memory and we find comfort in it because it offers a sense of stability and predictability. We chart out our lives with goals and codes. We plan. We prepare. And even those of us who do get those rare and powerful moments of being fully rooted in the present find that it can be fraught with perils. For when they are out of it—like my friend Michael Jackson—they find that ordinary existence lacks the same high.

  Papa broke the silence. “Remember when Michael took us to his studio on that first visit to Neverland?” Papa recollected. “And he put on ‘Billie Jean’ and started dancing?”

  Michael was almost bashful at first, just nodding his head to the beat of the music. But within minutes, as if he couldn’t control himself, he was snapping and moving to the hard beat of the bass, dancing fluidly like only he could.

  “It was beautiful,” Papa described. “Because he was in the moment. He wasn’t just the dancer—he was the dance and the music itself.”

  I did remember.

  Chapter Five

  Do you know who Miley Cyrus is?

  No. Who is she?

  Do you know who Hannah Montana is?

  Isn’t she Tara’s friend?

  Yeah, sort of.

  MY EIGHT-YEAR-OLD NIECE, TARA, IS A SPECIAL KID. THE oldest among a trio that includes her younger sister, Leela, and my son, Krishu, she takes her elder role seriously. She’ll often recall the rigors of years two through five when watching her younger siblings.

  “Let him be scared,” she once advised me when the kids and I sat huddled together on the couch watching Finding Nemo. Krishu had bristled when the shark showed up and was chasing down Nemo’s dad, Marlin, and loyal friend Dory. “It’s okay to be afraid once in a while because then you know how people sometimes feel in the real world when bad things happen.”

  The mentor role suits Tara. S
he is thoughtful and contemplative. And because she feels things deeply and seems acutely aware of what’s going on, the adults in the family are particularly aware of what they say when she’s around.

  It’s common lore in our family that Tara only really started speaking when she was almost three, quite late by common standards and far later than her siblings reached the same milestone. Most explain this by noting that first children don’t have the same level of interaction with elder kids that their younger siblings do. Tara explains it differently: “I was a thoughtful child.”

  Inquisitive too, as the question mark has always been her favorite form of punctuation. These days Tara is adept at picking up on tone, so we have to be mindful not just of what we say, but of how we say it.

  “Why did Candy Mami (what she calls Candice) look at you that way when you told her not to eat that cheesecake?

  “Did you mean it when you said you weren’t ever going to talk to my mom again?

  “Why did you tell your friend that that lady at Coffee Bean looked like a bad girl?”

  Did I mention that she’s eight years old?

  More than just Mallika and Sumant’s baby girl, Tara was the family’s baby, a firstborn treasure that all of us would cherish in a special way. That included Cleo, who got her literal first licks in on Tara within days of her entering the world. It was January of 2002 and the imminent arrival of Mallika’s baby kept us all close at hand. Mallika’s delivery was a difficult one that ultimately ended up in her having to undergo an emergency C-section while my teary-eyed mother, anxiety-ridden father, and I waited for the good word to be delivered by my pale-faced brother-in-law. When the all clear at last came from him that Tara was healthy and Mallika would recover fine with some added days of rest, we rejoiced.

  When Tara arrived home from the hospital a few days later, I was unsure whether or not I should bring Cleo over to the house to meet her. At ten pounds, and with no real history of aggression or violence, there wasn’t any reason not to, and yet I found myself hesitant to take the risk. Candice, likewise, expressed her concern. Both of us loved Cleo to no end, but that didn’t necessarily mean we trusted her entirely. What was the rush anyway? we reasoned. Tara was going to be around for a very long time and eventually she and Cleo would meet when things settled down—whatever that meant in the context of a newborn’s life.

  “On the contrary,” my father demanded, surprising us all at the time, “bring the dog immediately. Let’s not make any assumptions and prejudge their relationship.”

  On the contrary. In anticipation of Tara’s arrival, Papa had been preparing for her the only way he knew—by reading intensive amounts of research on how best to nurture a child’s consciousness from the very earliest stages of existence. He had big plans for Tara—using the word perfection not so sparingly when discussing what he envisioned for her.

  “Just look at her,” he said to me less than a day after she was born. “She’s absolutely perfect. She’s a real star—just like her name.”

  I smiled, reminding him that most grandparents perceived their grandchildren—especially the first ones—as being perfect.

  “No.” He shook his head vehemently as if I were missing a most obvious point. “She’s not like other babies.” He surveyed dismissively the rest of the babies in the unit, and came back to Tara with a smile warming his face. “Tara will change the world.”

  As part of this expansive ambition and strategy, Papa had come upon research indicating that infants’ exposure to animals at an early stage—notably dogs—had hugely beneficial effects.

  “There’s a lot of data that suggests that infants who grow up around pets make for better leaders. Their sense of compassion and empathy for other beings is cemented at an emotional level. Bring the dog immediately,” he ordered again, as if fearing we were already getting a late start on her leadership training.

  I remained wary.

  Papa turned to science. “Studies now show that kids who grow up with dogs in the house have a reduced likelihood of developing certain allergies and even asthma. The fact that dogs are dirty animals and track dirt and allergens into the house is a good thing,” he assured us all. “They stimulate and strengthen the baby’s immune system.”

  This was consistent with his theory that babies were way overimmunized in the West. On the great parent debate of inoculations, he therefore fell somewhere in the middle—get the basics but then throw caution to the wind and let the baby and the world—or in this case Cleo—find their own equilibrium.

  “Don’t let the dog have a bath,” he reminded me.

  “Okay,” I said, though I had Cleo washed anyway.

  I remember clearly that first time Cleo and Tara met. Mallika was hopped up on painkillers and Sumant was at work, so parent paranoia was not a factor. Tara—just days old—was propped up in a little chair bouncing lightly and rocking back and forth. Like most babies at that stage, she was up and cooing, or as my father liked to describe her, “Like Buddha awake and aware of her own implicit enlightenment.” I brought Cleo close and, as my parents carefully watched, held tightly to her leash to let her sniff out Tara from a safe distance. I wasn’t taking any chances. I would let Cleo scope out the baby, but stay far enough away so that she couldn’t actually make any contact. Gradually, as the pup became more comfortable with her surroundings, I released her leash some so she could poke her snout near Tara’s feet.

  As Cleo got her first licks in, Tara cooed and gurgled loudly. And then, shocking all of us, she reached out and stroked Cleo’s snout with her tiny little hand. It was so gentle and graceful and un-baby-like, we all just stared with amazement. Even Cleo—the most frenetic of dogs—seemed calmed. She nuzzled closer to the baby, letting Tara brush her hand more over her snout, across the bridge of her nose, up her crown until her hand lay on top of Cleo’s head. Cleo seemed almost entranced. In all her years, I had never seen her react like that to anyone she didn’t know very well, let alone a child.

  “See.” My father nodded. “I told you. Tara is enlightened.”

  From that day forth, Tara and Cleo’s relationship seemed special. As she grew from an infant to a toddler to a kid, not a day would go by that she didn’t make time for Cleo. Amongst her first words were “I love Cleo.” She insisted on accompanying me to the pet store once a week to buy special treats and toys. Some nights my sister would call me late, insisting that I bring Cleo over because Tara could only sleep if she was able to lay her hand on little Cleo’s chest as they nuzzled together.

  More recently as Tara’s pre-preteen schedule got cluttered up with school, friends, and activities, she made sure Cleo wasn’t left behind. Often she’d drop by the house before she went to school or alternatively in the afternoon after she was done for the day. On the weekends, we’d regularly drop Cleo off for an afternoon or even overnight at Mallika’s house so she and Tara could spend a few hours together. For her part, Cleo would just follow Tara around the house wherever she went. Tara, meanwhile, would make sure to clear a spot for Cleo beside her no matter where she ultimately ended up. If she was doing homework, she’d make sure that as she dutifully practiced her handwriting with her right hand, her left was free and equally at work rubbing Cleo with affection. If she was plopping down to watch High School Musical or a new Bollywood movie her father had retrieved from the local Indian grocery, Cleo got an even better perk, usually earning a spot in Tara’s lap. Even when it came to family time—when we all got together for dinner or were just hanging out—Cleo chose her spot and stuck close to Tara’s side.

  The more I witnessed Cleo and Tara’s interactions, the more it brought a smile to my face because it was a reboot exactly of Mallika’s relationship with Nicholas when she and I were kids. While over the years that we had him, Nicholas had become a sort of rough-and-tumble buddy of mine, always wrestling and playing, he and Mallika had developed a more affectionate and loving bond. Whereas he loved to roll around in the fallen foliage with me when summer turned to autumn
or chase me as I slid down the hills after a winter snowfall, with Mallika, Nicholas always found a loving hand or warm embrace to snuggle in. As with my mother, it was no coincidence that after he died unexpectedly, Mallika would never seriously contemplate getting a dog again. The potential for hurt was too much. I knew it was difficult for her to watch Tara’s bond build every day with Cleo. One part of her was witnessing her own past replay itself. Would the same ending play out as well?

  I certainly hoped not.

  THE RIDE THROUGH the Dolomites had been everything it was cracked up to be: physically grueling, spiritually and emotionally exhilarating. There were indeed moments as we climbed frigid peaks, and the air thinned out, that my mind drifted to Michael and pinches of sadness crept in. But the demands of the task drew me back, kept me focused and, in many ways, happily isolated from the brewing madness seemingly everywhere else. As soon as Sumant and I arrived at the airport in Milan, preparing for the flight back to LA, I sensed that even though a week had passed since Michael’s death, there was no letup in the press’s covering it.

  When we landed in LA, things only intensified. Rumors about how Michael had died (including if he had really died) were being broadcast and talked about everywhere. Was it an accident, murder, or suicide? Was it related to drugs, medical issues, or even mob-related, considering some of the huge debts Michael was alleged to have amassed?

  On TV, cut and pasted documentaries and commemoratives had started to pop up everywhere. It was impossible to change channels without seeing Michael doing the moonwalk or flinging his fedora across the stage. His death was nothing short of a cultural event, and even though I recognized that at an objective level—even contributed to it in the ensuing days by appearing on shows like Larry King Live—I couldn’t separate myself from the enormous sadness I felt inside. Though I was probably the closest in my family to Michael, we all felt the same inescapable emptiness. In addition to my mom being away in India, it was just another reason for us to circle the wagons and huddle around the dinner table every night to see if we could make one another feel better.