Walking Wisdom

by Gotham Chopra

  But there was a downside for the pup. Papa might have been a soft touch for treats, but he wasn’t fully up on her rituals and routines. For instance, when Cleo would snuggle up to Papa, as she was wont to do with any warm body, he generally moved away in short order. She reacted to this with a combination of confusion and irritation. Why wouldn’t he want her odor pasted to his? And why was he denying her his body heat?

  Cleo got the message all right. She’d retreat elsewhere and do whatever it is she did when Papa slighted her, but inevitably she’d come back and try again. No shame. No hard feelings. If at first you don’t succeed . . .

  These routines weren’t confined to Cleo and Papa. They were a pervasive part of all the relationships in the house, notably Krishu and Cleo’s. As Krishu mowed through countless milestones of physical, cognitive, and emotional development—feeling out his boundaries, learning to express himself through language, managing his own coordination—Cleo evolved her behavior around his. It wasn’t just about staying alert, maintaining physical space, or planning quick getaways, it was about calibrating her own emotions and reactions toward him.

  Our weekends had become a ceaseless therapy session that involved negotiating feuds between Cleo and Krishu, separating them, reprimanding them, reuniting them—rinse, lather, repeat. The most fascinating aspect of this merry-go-round was that neither Cleo nor Krishu ever seemed to tire of it. No matter how heated things became, no matter how many tears, snarls, fists, or snaps, after a few minutes of downtime, they’d reposition their chin straps and dig their heels in once more.

  When Papa finally returned from his Starbucks expedition—he had wisely disappeared for over an hour—he witnessed firsthand another common interaction between Krishu and Cleo. As Krishu ate his breakfast—waffles soaked in syrup—Cleo stood devotedly by his feet hoping he would toss her a few scraps. Krishu’s concentration, however, was fixed on the TV screen, where my mistress in times like these (also known as Dora the Explorer) cheerfully distracted him for thirty minutes at a time. Singularly focused, Krishu showed little likelihood of sending anything Cleo’s way. Cleo knew this, and slid behind him to see if she might snake a syrupy square away from his plate. On second thought, remove the doubt. By hook or by crook, Cleo was going to get her waffle on.

  Watching Cleo, it was obvious why the term is “cat burglar” and not “dog burglar.” She had no vanity about her technique, no desire for style. In that sense she was spartan. For Cleo it was about getting the job done, about bringing home the goods. Hind legs firmly planted for a solid foundation, front legs nimbly perched onto Krishu’s miniature table, she positioned herself straight for her main target, while maintaining enough balance to maneuver out of his crosshairs should he catch on.

  He caught on.

  Timing, as they say, is everything. With Krishu between bites and Dora apparently taking a beat herself, Krishu reached back for another waffle square but got instead a fluffy-headed, wet-nosed waffle thief.

  “Let go of my Eggo,” his eyes screamed.

  Simple defiance in Cleo’s.

  Outrage.

  One of Krishu’s recent milestones, despite our repeated reminders that we “shared everything” in our home, was a strong sense of possessiveness. In recent weeks, “Mine!” had become a constant exclamation around the house. It wasn’t just waffles. It was toys, clothes, furniture, even people. Notably his Oedipus complex had kicked in, for Candice had ceased to exist in any context outside of Krishu. Any mention of her as “my wife” antagonized him to no end. He’d hear nothing of it. She was his mama, his wife, his aunt, his daughter, his friend, or whatever other qualifier we could possibly come up with.

  Back to the waffle: Cleo’s snatch and grab had been compromised. She was caught red-handed, trying to pilfer his waffles. She had no defense. In matters like these, Krishu was Taliban-like. Punishment was stiff, harsh, and swift. In this instance, she also had no wiggle room—not just metaphorically, but literally. Lured and distracted by Aunt Jemima’s forbidden fruit, Cleo had not thought out her fail-safe option. She had no escape plan. By sneaking behind Krishu, she had confined herself between the wall, the couch, the table, and him. She was cornered.

  “My waffle!” he shouted, reaching for the square that hung from Cleo’s mouth.

  Flashing her agility, she dodged him. It was an impressive stall, but just a temporary one. Because still, she had nowhere to go: Krishu had her wedged in and he knew it.

  He reached for the waffle again, this time even more forcefully. Still not the master of his own anatomy, he missed the sugary treat and landed his open palm on Cleo’s snout. Candice and I had become more attentive in detecting Krishu’s recent aggression with Cleo, doing our best to defuse the situation and/or break up brewing trouble whenever we could. But every so often the laws of the jungle took over and physical violence gripped our household. It wasn’t pretty, nor something we were proud of. But then again, we told ourselves, life on the streets of Santa Monica was not always easy. Survival of the fittest and all that.

  Krishu and Cleo went at it, but in the end it was Cleo’s raw survival skills that won out. Every dog has her day, and on this day the dog had her waffle too. In the aftermath of the epic struggle, Cleo limped away with a soft but triumphant whimper while Krishu erupted in a monsoon of devastation and shame.

  Papa, witness to this dramatic unfolding, was at a loss for words. But not for long.

  “It’s Leela,” he announced, describing the relationship between Krishu and Cleo. Leela is the name of Krishu’s older sister, Mallika’s daughter, but in this case it was the deeper meaning of the word that papa was invoking. Leela means “the play of the universe.”

  “More specifically,” Papa said with a nod, “it means the exquisite dance of all creation, the cosmos inhaling and exhaling, the interaction of everything and everyone in the universe.”

  “How so?” I asked as I consoled Krishu by promising to make him some turkey sausages.

  “Because . . .” Papa pointed toward Cleo, who had wolfed down whatever waffle she had managed to get away with. Her tail wagged with renewed energy as she slowly returned ready to play with Krishu one more time.

  “Cleo—like the universe—doesn’t hold grudges. She knows how to forgive and evolve.”

  WHILE IT’S HARD to recall what life was like before the ceaseless storm of parenting, there once was a time when Candice and I lived a more adventurous life. Several years into our marriage, after she at long last completed her medical training in Los Angeles, we decided to move to India for a few months. It wasn’t an easy decision, but the timing felt right. Candice had just completed almost a decade’s worth of schooling and the next inevitable step was to get a job and start working. We both knew that once she started that path, it would be hard to get off it. Meanwhile, I had launched a new and exciting media company with two friends. The company was primarily based in India, which, while I had visited almost every year since I was alive, I had never really spent considerable time in as an adult. To me, India was where my parents were from, where my grandparents lived, and where my ancestors had toiled. It wasn’t particularly a place where I felt at home, and yet so much of the culture and thinking that anchored my life had its roots there. If there ever was a time to really experience India more intimately, this was it. There was only one problem. Cleo.

  Cleo had become our fixture and companion. She was our third wheel and our best friend. Still, despite the depth of our feelings for her, Candice and I both knew it was now or never with India. It certainly wasn’t our intention to move there for good, but we also didn’t want to have a rigid time line for our return. India had been a land of obligation until that point. Most of our visits had been for the purposes of attending family weddings, weeklong affairs that involved party after party, ritual after ritual, and made doing anything else—especially traveling away from New Delhi, where my family was based—just plain impossible.

  This time, however, Candice was excited by
the prospects of traveling to different parts of the country, going on adventurous pilgrimages to sacred sites, more rural regions, and various other exotic locales in the mountains of the north, the deserts of the east, and the seaside cities of the south. Meanwhile, I wanted not just the freedom to focus on work and the new company, but to really connect with India’s soul. To me, India was not just the land of my ancestors, but increasingly as the years passed I realized that its lore, culture, and traditions were a dynamic part of my own being. There were parts of my own self that I was discovering just by familiarizing myself with the stories and culture of India. I was hungry for more. It was an itch and I wanted to scratch it.

  Before we left for our trip, Candice and I flew to Atlanta to deliver Cleo to Candice’s mother, who lived there. Their reunion was another example of Cleo’s curious recognition of family. Even though she only saw Candice’s mother intermittently, maybe once every six months on average, she was emotionally bonded to her in a way that defied explanation—or at least my amateur ability to do so. In this instance, there was no period of reacquaintance or familiarization between them. Cleo’s immediate exuberance upon seeing Candice’s mother rivaled only what she exhibited when she was reunited with Candice after they’d been separated. Her tail wagged furiously and she elicited rapid high-pitched yelps as if she could not properly express her excitement. Finally, as was her custom though we had tried to train her not to, she hopped on her hind legs, grasping at my mother-in-law, struggling to land as many licks and kisses as possible. It was precisely the reason why we had determined that the only possible person Cleo could stay with while we were away was Candice’s mom. The perks and comforts in her life in Atlanta would be plenty. Together they’d go on long walks a few times a day. They’d eat at outdoor cafes and frolic in dog parks. And at night, Cleo would not be remanded to some dog quarters or elaborate dog bed that she didn’t care for; she could expect a place on the master bed itself, just the way it was at home. In fact, we rationalized, Cleo was probably better off this way. Candice and I had been so wrapped up in our lives recently and we hadn’t been spending the time we once had with Cleo. Her walks were no longer neighborhood excursions, but rather quick bombing runs where she was expected to drop her payload within half a block, after which we’d hustle home. In Atlanta, Cleo was going to get so much undivided attention from Candice’s mom, who was freshly retired and was still trying to figure out how to fill her days. We were killing two birds with one stone. Each of them would be happier to have the other.

  At least that’s what we told ourselves.

  Not surprisingly, Candice articulated this better than I, wondering aloud at the last minute if we should pull the plug on the whole thing. That our excitement for our big adventure was tangled with so much emotional baggage and guilt was a constant sore spot for both of us. We both claimed to love Cleo so much. And yet, there we were so easily leaving her for however long our wanderlust would fuel us in exotic India. Would we ever do such a thing with our child? both of us wondered separately. Definitely not. Yet again, there we were shamefully excited about our upcoming Indian adventure.

  While these mixed emotions flowed like the ocean tide in me, back and forth, back and forth, some deeper sense convinced me that it was indeed the right move for us at the right time.

  “Yes, Candice,” I declared with false bravado. “We have to go. And we have to leave Cleo. She’ll be fine.”

  Several days later when we at last boarded our flight for India and crammed ourselves into our cramped seats, Candice turned to me and asked, “Do you think Cleo’s angry at us?”

  For days, I had wondered the same thing. We both were surprised when during our parting with her in Atlanta, Cleo had been cold and distant. When I had picked up Cleo to kiss her good-bye, I hadn’t even earned a lick in return. It was enormously unlike her.

  Sensing though that Candice remained deeply conflicted about our journey, I insisted that she was imagining things. In fact, Candice’s mother had assured us that Cleo was fine. She’d adjusted well to the house and even forced Candice’s father out of the master bed and into the basement, a sure sign that she was asserting herself with confidence and comfort. Sure, our parting had been tinged with awkwardness, but rage toward the family was not really part of her emotional arsenal.

  Thinking back, the only time in Cleo’s life I had actually witnessed her express serious anger or malice toward anyone was years prior, when Candice was in medical school. Enraged at Candice’s roommate’s dog, Sampson, who was from the same litter and constantly bothered her and ate from her food bowl, Cleo in front of all who were watching proceeded to his bed, squatted, and pissed in it. Then after Candice punished her and washed the dog bed, Cleo did it again.

  On the surface it was an act of defiance and rage that was a bit unnerving. But I actually found myself quietly impressed by her willfulness. Sampson had clearly crossed some Rubicon with her and she was letting him know she wasn’t just going to roll over. For a dog who, well, so easily rolled over, to know that she had some sacred boundaries was reassuring. I concluded at the time that Cleo was more than capable of understanding certain events and acting on those emotions if she felt so moved.

  In this instance, though, I just couldn’t convince myself that Cleo had it in her to direct that same anger toward us, let alone harvest a grudge while we were away. While I had the utmost respect for my dog, that sort of emotional vindictiveness and cerebral complexity certainly seemed beyond her.

  I reassured Candice that Cleo would be just fine with her mother and that we really should’ve been excited about the journey in front of us. We had determined that we would base ourselves out of Bangalore, a bustling city in the south of India where my company’s operations were based. Being of northern stock, I’d really never visited much of the southern portion of the country, which by reputation had very much its own distinct culture and feel. Candice too had already planned a number of excursions, some of which I would join her on, and others she intended on embarking with various friends and family members. With all of this in the works, and for us to fully embrace it, I sensed we needed a clean emotional slate, to not be weighed down by guilt or second thoughts. For Candice especially, I wanted her to be fully free of the rigid constraints of the prior decade, when her life had been regulated by the rigors and deadlines of the academic and medical world.

  To that extent, everything went perfectly. Candice and I spent just about six months in India. I managed to stay relatively focused on the company, interacting and networking throughout Bangalore and Bombay in a way that I had never before. Candice sprinkled the months with excursions to a long list of temples, tea plantations, a jungle safari, a pilgrimage site, and even a stint observing doctors and volunteering at a famed medical clinic run by some missionaries. All in all, we got what we paid for. More than just immersing myself in Start-up 101 or Candice getting away from textbooks and emergency rooms, we both had needed our own detoxification. Back in LA, life had become consumed by stress. Our energy had become so cluttered—so many motives—that it was difficult to understand why we did anything anymore.

  Papa had once told me that most people in life ended up “working hard at a job they don’t really enjoy to buy stuff they don’t really need to impress people they don’t really like.” I had seen myself doing just that before India allowed me to reflect on what it was that really mattered to me.

  Over the course of the six months we were away, we’d check in with Candice’s mom every few days. We’d ask how she was enjoying her new life post-retirement, what activities she had gotten herself involved in, and news surrounding the rest of the family. Really, though, what was most important to us was finding out how Cleo was doing. Without exception, the reports were the same. Cleo was happy as a clam.

  It was toward the end of our fifth month in India that Candice and I took a road trip from Bangalore to a village famed for the Nadi astrologers who dwelled there. The Nadi are one of the countless
phenomena that lurk all over India, a land where science and spirituality coexist unlike in any other part of the world. Today a city like Bangalore nurtures and generates some of the sharpest minds in the world, masters of physics, computer engineering, and technology, and exports them to the top companies in the world. At the same time, it seems that all of these kids—and most of them are indeed kids—live by spiritual and religious codes that defy the very science and theories that define the rest of their lives. They themselves don’t see any contradiction between the two. If anything they are complementary: The same underlying intelligence that orchestrates the universe also animates its deeper mysteries.

  The Nadi, a sect of astrologers descended from an ancient lineage, claim the ability to read the fortunes of all the visitors who come to them. The fortunes themselves are scrawled on old palm leaves rolled up into scrolls and archived in seven different locations around India, one of which Candice and I were visiting.

  Here’s how it works: Each visitor provides nothing more than a fingerprint, the right one for men and the left one for women. No names, no Social Security numbers, PINs, passwords, or other locator numbers. Based on those fingerprints, the Nadi astrologers recover a corresponding scroll (to each individual) and proceed to read from it the “story of your life.”

  Unbelievable?

  You bet, and precisely the reason Candice and I decided it was a trip we had to make. With such spectacular mystery surrounding the Nadi, not to mention the majestic lore from which it stemmed, I had expected a most glorious setting for our prophetic readings. But once again India proved most contradictory. Rather than an elaborate mystical abode, after several hours’ drive Candice and I found ourselves in a dusty little village of decrepit storefronts separated by narrow dirt roads. The legendary Nadi readers themselves, whom I had mentally fashioned as sage-like mystics with wizened beards and dressed in flowing saffron robes, were, in fact, instead sleepy Sadhus who chain-smoked native bidi cigarettes and chirped on cell phones when not on the clock. We had brought with us a young Indian translator named Mishra. He was native to the region, spoke the language, and knew the roads. He was eager to please and knowledgeable about the history and culture of that part of India. Noting my blank expression, he smiled. “Just like your Disneyland, no?”