Walking Wisdom

by Gotham Chopra

  After being offered flat sodas and sickly sweet Indian desserts, Candice and I were escorted into a dilapidated structure where droning chants from a portable CD player echoed off the yellow walls. Before formally starting, Mishra confided that the readings were generally done in private, involving only the reader, the visitor, and the translator.

  “You just never know what’s on the scroll.” He spoke with a tone that suggested informed experience. “It’s not just the skeletons from the past that may lurk in your closet, but possibly future ones as well.”

  I wasn’t sure how to react to this. Candice and I were pretty open with each other. Neither of us had significant secrets buried in our pasts (at least as far as I knew). However, the thought of future secrets being revealed was quite the mind twister. As it turns out, that was just the tip of the iceberg. Though in this case, the iceberg actually sat in a sticky south Indian village.

  Those who have studied the Nadi, Papa included, explain the phenomena with a mixture of mystical terminology and quantum physics. “Inside every individual, the genetic memory of the whole cosmos is contained. There’s a broader architecture to the universe and everything in it that connects all living things.”

  Consciousness, if you’re keeping score at home.

  “When you extract a little piece of information from an individual, it’s like a holographic representation of the whole organism. If you know how to read it—and the Nadis do—then conceivably it makes perfect sense that they should be able to see the course that any individual life will take.”

  Perfect sense, right? There is, of course, so much to try and understand about the nature and mechanics of astrology, a system of prophecy, soothsaying, and science that has fascinated human civilization almost since its conception. Is it so far-fetched to suggest that we are indeed stitched into the fabric of the universe, that there is an intrinsic connection between the individual and the cosmos? This is the basic premise that the science of astrology assumes. Add some ritual, a few chants here and there, a ceremony that involves some formality, and you end up with something like the Nadis. The mystique and mythology that surrounds them is at once invigorating and also intimidating. That’s why, when Mishra advised us to do it a certain way, we were inclined to take him at his word.

  A young English-speaking woman appeared and offered her translating services to Candice for a modest price, leaving me with Mishra and his ubiquitous toothy smile.

  Over the course of the next hour or so, Candice and I sat through our respective readings. The experience was nothing short of jaw-dropping. For both of us, our scrolls were uncannily accurate. Each of us had our birthdates and the circumstances surrounding them (locations, parents’ names, exact timings) correctly identified. The fact that Candice’s parents both had decidedly non-Indian names—Josephine and Hyland—and they were correctly (phonetically) identified on the scroll was astonishing. For me, obscure details from my adolescence, including the litany of sports-related injuries—broken fingers, twisted ankles, torn rotator cuff, ripped ligaments—were literally spelled out on my scroll.

  Indeed our Nadi experience did anything but disappoint. For all those who had described it to us as the most amazing thing they’d ever experienced, our few hours with them certainly met those lofty standards and more. Along with the game-show-like revelations from our pasts that hit the bull’s-eye, there were also prophetic-like predictions of the future, including work-related ups and downs, children, and yes, even death. Indeed it would take a book by itself to delve into the details surrounding the readings, not to mention the mythology and mechanics that surround them (including, of course, the many critics who dismiss the Nadis as nothing more than ancient hucksters).

  Among the most incredulous portions of the readings occurred when the astrologer read from a specific section of the scroll that supposedly corresponded with my “past life.” As the theory goes, these individual identities that we take on in the course of a singular life are nothing more than roles that we temporarily play. It struts and frets its hour upon the stage, but then fades into a far greater context. The real self is the role player beneath and it is timeless and immortal. Hindu theology proposes—and Nadi astrology certainly subscribes to Hindu doctrine—that an individual soul will spend numerous lives via reincarnation in pursuit of higher learning. Ultimately the goal is to arrive at a point where this cycle of reincarnation is no longer necessary, where true wisdom has been achieved, and the individual soul folds back into the collective one. The CliffsNotes version is that you want to be closer to the end than the beginning.

  It was with this context that midway during my reading, my astrologer announced that I was a relatively evolved soul.

  “Relative to what?” I asked.

  “No questions,” the reader blurted, irritated. For the most part, the Nadi asrologers don’t take questions. They read what’s on the scrolls, nothing more. They don’t claim to be architects of the universe, just that they have the skill to read the blueprints. My reader proceeded to rattle on in Tamil, the south Indian dialect that I couldn’t understand in the least.

  After a beat, my translator turned to me. “He says that you are doing a good job in this life. Coming closer to moksha—spiritual liberation.” Mishra nodded his approval. “Good job.”

  “Thank you.” I smiled. I wasn’t sure what else to say. Who didn’t like to have their spiritual parking ticket validated, if even they weren’t sure what it all meant?

  “He says”—Mishra swiveled his head in the way only Indians can, somewhere in between a nod and a shake—“to make sure you listen closely to your god.”

  Okay. I nodded, confirming my piety. My god? I wondered to myself. I’m not very religious. If you asked me 100 times which god I was going to lay this one on, you likely would have gotten 100 different answers. The 162-game baseball season had confirmed this, in fact, for the amount of times I had cut deals with gods, swearing never to ask again, was well into triple digits.

  “Which God?”

  Again the astrologer didn’t wait for Mishra.

  “D-O-G.” He looked at me with his brow furrowed.

  I stared back at him confused. “Dog?”

  “G-O-D,” he spat back, even more annoyed.

  “Okay.” I nodded. “But you said D-O-G just then,” I pointed out. I looked at Mishra for confirmation. He gaped blankly back.

  “Yes.” The astrologer nodded vigorously. “Dog. D-O-G.” He stared at me.

  I’d always been terrible at staring contests growing up. Mallika regularly stared me down whenever we played. I had no chance against this guy. It was as if he were channeling the gods themselves. And he seemed angry.

  Still I remained confounded. I knew what I had heard. I turned back to Mishra. “I think he said God but then he spelled Dog, right?”

  “Maybe your dog is your god?” He smiled at me.

  “Not my dog.” I laughed. “She’s not even trained to roll over.” Mishra looked blankly back at me. We might as well have been speaking about obscure baseball statistics like on-base or slugging percentages: He neither understood what I was talking about, nor did he care. In his world, I was just another interloper into the Disney World of Indian mysticism.

  But I had a feeling. I shook my head. “Mishra—can you just ask him? Did he mean dog or god?”

  Mishra shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the astrologer. But before he could even ask, the astrologer interrupted him harshly.

  “No questions!”

  The dog-god anagram may as well have been the highlight of my Nadi reading. There were other details about my future that ensued, but I perhaps purposely didn’t hear them or never let them imprint too much on my consciousness. I preferred the free will approach to life. Reunited in the car ride back, Candice and I compared notes. Predictably, some things aligned, while others confused us even more.

  “Did Cleo come up at all in your reading?” I asked Candice hesitantly.

  She laughed.
“Sort of.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The guy said I was kindred spirits with Cleopatra. Either you should watch your back or he was talking about Cleo.” She shrugged, unconcerned by this troubling disparity.

  My mind too, however, had moved on.

  “I think it’s time to go home.”

  “We are going home.” Candice nodded.

  “No, I mean back to America. Back to Cleo.”

  ...

  A FEW DAYS LATER, packed into our tiny seats on our flight to the United States, Candice turned to me.

  “You know when you said we should go home, you equated Cleo with it? That’s really sweet. Does that mean Cleo and I are now your family? Your home?”

  I was boxed in. I mustered all that I could to ensure that I didn’t respond with some greeting card platitude like “Home is where the heart is . . .”

  But she was right and we both knew it. Practically speaking, there wasn’t much that we were going back to. No house, no jobs, no community of friends who had been missing us all of these months. Our parents and siblings were all relatively cosmopolitan globe-trotters themselves. They would hardly be waiting for us at the airport with banners and fruitcakes.

  I once asked my father to define the concept of home. If you didn’t have a big mortgage or lived a lifestyle that was not so anchored to a single neighborhood and community like we did, then the traditional definition felt unaligned.

  “Home is a state of consciousness,” he said. “It’s what emotionally anchors us, where we feel most at ease. It’s the people or places in whose reflection we see, or aspire to see, our own best qualities.”

  The more I thought about it on that flight back from India, the more the shoe fit. Over the near decade that we had had her, Cleo had become a part of my emotional balance. She had gone from being the dog I had had serious doubts about in the first place to becoming a central part of the life Candice and I envisioned building together. Indeed, she embodied so many of the qualities—loyalty, trust, bliss, presence, and more—that I admired and aspired toward.

  I knew at that moment that the act of going back to America, back to Cleo, was an admission of a new life stage. While the notion of “settling down” remains foreign to me even today, there was no doubt on that flight that I was headed toward a new and significant “grown-up phase” of our lives. Candice and I had both talked about starting a family and the Nadis had confirmed it was imminent. Candice was also likely to start a new job. And my company had moved from start-up to survival stage. All of the above would require a significantly new amount of focus and energy. I was actually excited about it. The grand design of the universe was indeed convening around us.

  But there might be a hitch.

  Candice ripped me from my gleeful optimism. “What if Cleo is really pissed off at us for leaving her?”

  We gave it some thought.

  “I mean, it’s been six months . . .”

  For the remainder of the flight, the thought lingered. In my brave new world where Cleo was synonymous with the concept of home, where she was declared my god by the Fates (literally), I had failed to account for the notion that she might be one angry and vindictive bitch.

  IF CLEO DID have any resentment toward Candice and me, she stored it very well, presumably scheming to unleash it on us at a more strategic moment (we’re still waiting). In fact, quite the contrary ensued. This time, Candice’s mom brought her back to us in Los Angeles and despite the prolonged separation, when we initially reunited with Cleo at LAX, it was as if no more than a few hours had passed. Cleo reacted with all the puppy dog glee and energetic enthusiasm that had become her trademark through the years.

  It was quite remarkable, really. On the drive home from the airport, she seemed determined to spread the love, rotating between my lap and Candice’s every five minutes or so, lapping up kisses whenever she could get a lick in. A few hours later, it was literally as if no time at all had passed. Cleo followed us around the temporary town house we had rented, planting herself beside me as I watched TV or as Candice lay on the couch reading. Being that she had never lived in this new apartment, it was quite amazing just how fast she seemed to get comfortable with it. She had in fact made the platitude that much more crystal clear: Her graceful acclimation to our new physical space seemed directly connected to our being together. She had scoped out the place, figured out where we had put her bowls for food and water—but to her those seemed only the superficial guideposts. Where Candice and I were was where she was most at home.

  Within a few weeks, Candice and I also got more comfortable back “at home.” We found a house (a few blocks from my sister), laid down every last penny we had for the down payment, and moved in. With the house in tow, Candice got in full nesting mode, settling the place, and within a few more weeks she was pregnant.

  Forgiveness seems like a clunky term in this case because it implies a certain amount of hurt feelings or betrayal that needs to be overcome. Cleo demonstrated no such signs. Her welcoming us back into her life with open paws not only allayed our fears, in hindsight I realized it actually paved the way for a truly transformative life stage. Whatever nervousness we had brought back with us from India, whatever ambiguity around our fortunes (cemented by the Nadi astrologers) was embedded in us, Cleo seemed to calm. Her graceful acceptance of having us back and her confidence in us that no matter what, we would take care of her, inspired a sense of confidence that spontaneously manifested itself in the ensuing weeks and months.

  To that extent, Cleo’s forgiving non-forgiveness was so unhuman-like that it made me respect her in an entirely new way. She seemed to embody a set of qualities that were beyond admiration and aspiration. She was so beyond the petty emotions of ordinary human beings, our delicate feelings of abandonment and hurt. She was detached from the emotionalism that gave rise to suffering and yet at the same time, she showed a deep emotional connection to those she loved most—namely Candice and me. All together, this skillful braid of qualities was almost divine-like, something Buddha would be proud of. Maybe my cantankerous old Nadi astrologer wasn’t that far off.

  Forgiveness is a pretty simple word and the concept behind it easily understood. And yet the components that make it up are various, and the act of forgiveness is perhaps one of the most challenging for humans to undertake.

  “Patience, empathy, tolerance, grace, admiration, and compassion—those are just a few of the qualities that form the ribbon of forgiveness. Often those we love most are the hardest to forgive,” Papa proposed. We were halfway across the small neighborhood park that sits between our house and Starbucks. Cleo yanked on her leash, poking her nose into the grass where an early morning dew shined. Up ahead, Krishu spotted a few ducks up and at it early, sitting in the pond.

  “Ducks, Papa!” A wide smile spread across his face.

  I nodded and turned to my father, informing him that we needed to stop for a few minutes so Krishu could watch the ducks, a favorite pastime of his. He shrugged and consented, so the three of us took a seat on a bench beside the pond. Cleo circled and sat by my feet.

  Papa picked up where he had previously left off. “The nuances of human relationships, the constant contextualizing of every moment as it relates to some prior or future one, the analytics of our interactions, make the act of forgiveness monumental at times.”

  Cleo’s relationships, on the other hand, with those whom she loved, were pretty straightforward. As her love was unconditional toward those she considered part of her circle, the act of forgiveness came easily to her. As much as it might be her instinct to mark her territory when we went out for her walk, it seemed just as intrinsic to her to forgive those whom she loved.

  This, of course, was not a spontaneous nor distinctive characteristic of Cleo’s, but rather one that, upon some research, was clearly bred into her through generations’ worth of evolution.

  In early civilizations, only certain dogs qualified as candidates to be domesticated and b
rought into settlements and homes. These dogs were the ones that not only proved helpful, submissive, and protective, but most importantly were calm and friendly around their keepers (and their children). If these ancient dogs served as the starting point, the vast majority descended from them, bred through the centuries until today, only served to refine these qualities, making them more tame and more lovable. It was simple natural selection.

  Ironically, whereas the original wolves from which dogs are genetically descended were instinctively pack animals, hunters, and predators in order to survive, today’s dogs are for the most part anything but. In other words, this whole “man’s best friend” thing has literally changed the biology and physiology of our dogs.

  Today’s socialized dogs like Cleo are physiologically hardwired to love and forgive those they are bonded to. The study of dogs also tells us that the more they socialize or play with their owners—especially at an early age (both the dogs and the owner)—the more their bond is cemented for life.

  “In other words,” Papa said as he leaned back on the park bench, “Cleo’s behavior toward Krishu—her ability to forgive and forget—is a biological characteristic, not just a behavioral one.”

  I nodded hesitantly. Was this how Watson and Crick contemplated the double helix?

  We humans are complicated animals. For better or worse, our wiring is a lot more sophisticated than dogs’. It’s what makes us human, after all. So the question of whether or not we are capable of the same instinctive, biological ability to forgive, forget, and reconcile is certainly debatable.