Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

by Rajeev Balasubramanyam

  They hugged at the airport. “Call me when you get there,” said Sunny. “And take care of yourself, Dad.”

  “Thanks, Sunny,” said Chandra, as Sunny gave him that finger-pistol gesture whose meaning Chandra still hadn’t deciphered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stay longer.”

  “So am I.”

  “You take care of yourself too. I worry about you, Sunny. I can’t help it. I worry about you all.”

  When he reached security, Chandra turned, expecting to see that Sunny had gone, or was talking on his iPhone, but instead his son was smiling and waving at him. Chandra tried to hold this image in his mind for as long as possible, but once on the plane his thoughts turned to Jasmine. As always, he couldn’t help blaming himself, except this time he suspected he was right: this time it really was his fault.

  PROFESSOR CHANDRA AWOKE on the ground in San Francisco. He was dehydrated, had eaten nothing for sixteen hours but airline coffee, peanuts, and a limp disinfected sandwich, and had not changed his clothes.

  He fell asleep in the taxi to Boulder, arriving in the middle of the night with no one to greet him. He had to knock several times before Steve emerged, pulling a black polo neck over his head. Jean followed, wearing the Garfield slippers Chandra had bought her for Christmas in the midnineties. Her hair was longer now, though still blonde. They did not hug. She simply said, “Jasmine’s in bed. Her trial’s on Tuesday.”

  He tried to ask her about meths.

  “Meth,” she corrected.

  “You ever see Breaking Bad?” said Steve.

  “Course he hasn’t,” said Jean, putting the kettle on.

  Her hands were still rough as old gardening gloves. He’d always liked this about Jean, her practicality.

  “It’s dangerous as hell,” said Jean. “Can be addictive the first time you take it.”

  “Good God.”

  “Meth is addictive,” said Steve. “But Jaz is no junkie. She just went off the rails.”

  “What do you mean she went off the rails?” said Chandra. “Why didn’t you stop her?”

  “We didn’t know,” said Jean. “She just got steadily worse, Charles. It was so…gradual.”

  “Have you ever taken this drug, Steve?” asked Chandra, moving to the breakfast bar and sitting on a stool.

  “Oh, no. It was mainly bikers who did it in my day. Today’s kids are different. Drugs aren’t exciting to them. They just want to get high, get out of it.”

  “But Jasmine isn’t an addict, is she?” said Chandra.

  “We don’t know,” said Jean. “We think it’s more a psychological thing. A protest maybe.”

  “I want to see her,” said Chandra.

  “You look like you could use a bath, Charles, and a drink.”

  “No drink.”

  He had thrown up somewhere over the Great Lakes, the result of instant coffee, anxiety, and an empty stomach.

  “Charles?”

  He had fallen asleep again, his face on the kitchen counter. Steve took his arm, leading him into the hall. Chandra had never been this far inside the house. Steve was running him a bath, laying towels on the edge of the tub for Chandra’s head.

  “Don’t lock it, okay?” said Steve.

  The bathroom looked cavernous and filled with heavenly light. There were jasmine petals floating on the surface of the water, spirals of golden oil beneath. He got in, turning off the tap before lowering his head onto the towel.

  It was the divorce. Surely it was the divorce. In Chandra’s experience, Westerners didn’t like to admit that divorce was bad for children. But now he sounded like Prakash, who always claimed that Indians were not as individualistic as Westerners. But Chandra had read in the Hindu about something called a “desi divorce” which was popular among the younger generation: the married couple would remain together only in name, sleeping in separate beds, often taking lovers, an arrangement known to everyone save their parents and children.

  There was music coming from behind him, deeper inside the house. Janis Joplin. Jasmine had played this album every day when she’d visited him in Bella Vista. She’d told him Steve claimed to have seen the singer in concert in 1972, which was impossible seeing as she died in 1970. “Try-hard prick,” she’d muttered, after which Janis Joplin became Professor Chandra’s favorite singer. He listened to her in his rooms sometimes, when he missed his daughter.

  He lifted himself out of the water and put on his pajamas before padding barefoot and wet-haired down the corridor, following the music.

  “Jasmine?” he said, standing in front of the door, his voice a croak. “Jasmine? It’s Daddy.”

  He opened the door. Jasmine was lying on the bed wearing white flannel pajamas. Her hair was longer than he remembered, almost to her waist. Chandra sat beside her on the bed, his hand flat against the hand-embroidered bedspread he had bought for her in Dhaka.

  She was staring at the skylight. He tried to think of something to say. “So, drugs, eh?” didn’t feel like a good opener.

  “You’re going to tell me you don’t understand, aren’t you?” she said.

  Her room was so bare. There was a fern plant in one corner, a hard chair, and a torn poster on the wall showing the phases of the moon. She had been here for three years but there was so little trace of her in the room.

  “What does it feel like,” he said, “this meths?”

  Jasmine sighed, then blew a strand of hair ceilingwards. It landed on her mouth and she chewed it before pulling it out.

  “You really want to know?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s like you’re in it. You’re just in it.”

  He looked at her, wondering if she was saying unintelligible things on purpose.

  “You’re right in there, Dad. In life. You’re not on the outside anymore.”

  He closed his eyes, wanting to understand.

  “Can I try it?”

  “No, Dad. You can’t.”

  “Why did you do it? The break-in?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time. I never thought anyone would care. I just wanted to do something crazy.”

  He put his hand on hers, resisting the urge to tell her how stupid she’d been.

  “I’m scared, Dad, in case you’re wondering. I could go to jail. I know I messed up.”

  “It won’t happen.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I won’t let it.”

  “What are you going to do? Smuggle me into Mexico?”

  “We’ll get good lawyers,” said Chandra. “You’re young. You’re from a good family. You’re sorry. It’ll be okay.”

  “I don’t think sorry is a defense, Dad.”

  “It is,” he said, raising his voice. “Remorse. They take that into account.”

  Jasmine turned away from him, facing the wall. He put his hand on her shoulder. She was trembling.

  “Never mind what I said,” he said. “Forget it. I will take care of everything. Just sleep.”

  He lay on top of the covers facing his daughter’s back, her hair touching his face. After a few minutes her breathing deepened and Chandra stared at the square of black night he could see through the skylight. He had neglected Jasmine, the small one, the quiet one, the tiniest baby he had ever seen. He thought of that blue vase in the hospital, those little white petals. She looked tiny even now.

  * * *

  —

  Chandra checked into a hotel the following morning, and from that moment on he was busy. He and Steve spent hours vetting lawyers, sifting through testimonials on Google. In the end they chose a woman recommended by one of Steve’s customers who spoke in short, clipped sentences and smoked incessantly.

  When the trial came, however, it was a cursory affair. Any lawyer would have done. The judge said everything Chandra hoped she would�
��that Jasmine was young and foolish, that this was her first offense and that she had clearly been under strain, corrupted by poor influences. Jasmine stared back at her as if the whole procedure were too predictable for words. Chandra worried that the judge might take this as an affront, but she didn’t seem to care. She sentenced Jasmine to two weeks of community service and a court-mandated rehabilitation program, looking her in the eye and saying she was confident there would be no repeat offense.

  They went out for hamburgers and milkshakes afterward at a faux-1950s diner, as if treating a child after a visit to the dentist. Jean, for once, seemed flustered, spilling her Diet Coke all over the table and making comments like, “Well, I must say I’m relieved it’s over,” or, “Community service sounds all right, doesn’t it, Jaz?” to which nobody replied. Halfway through the meal Jean’s mobile rang and she walked to the back of the restaurant to answer it before summoning Jasmine over. Radha. Chandra pushed his jalapeño burger away in protest.

  When the bill arrived, Professor Chandra announced his decision to remain in Boulder for the following weeks. Jean told him it wasn’t necessary, but this time Jasmine spoke up, saying, “Why don’t you stay at the house, Dad? There’s room.”

  “I’ll be all right where I am,” said Chandra, feeling hungry again, though they had already taken his burger away.

  Every morning from then on, Chandra drove Jasmine to community service. She was capable of driving herself, but it was the only opportunity he had to be alone with her. She would give him a report of her day on the way back. Usually she’d been out in national parkland, picking up litter, painting signs, putting up fences.

  “It’s not so bad,” she always said. “Everyone’s pretty cool. Seriously, Dad, it’s not what you think. I’ve met some really nice people.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” he said, imagining a flock of amiable psychopaths.

  “They are. You should hear some of their stories.”

  He did, all about women who couldn’t afford healthcare for their children, or had abusive husbands they couldn’t leave for financial reasons, or who had lost their jobs or homes or savings in the recession. He tried not to feel guilty about the last part—that was his critical voices talking.

  In any case, Chandra was far more concerned about the rehabilitation center where Jasmine would spend three months in the company of “other addicts.” Steve said the good centers were more like spas, with arts and crafts and music alongside various types of therapy, but Chandra worried nonetheless. The more skiers, the slippier the slope, was his belief. The idea that Jasmine could be “cured” by talking about drugs for hours every day was highly suspect. There was every chance she would leave able to synthesize her own cocaine in the greenhouse while Steve watered his LSD plants in the nude, his liberalism dangling for all to see.

  Chandra was in the hotel’s sauna, wrapped in a towel, when the solution came to him. He returned to his room at once and found his wallet where he had kept her number.

  “Dolores,” he said. “This is Chandra. We met at—”

  “Well, well, well, the Professor of Esalen! How are you? Breathing the joy?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, that’s all right too, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” he said, slipping back into cuckoo talk against his will.

  “So how are you?” said Dolores. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Boulder.”

  “Boulder! That’s wonderful! Come see us. You must.”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” he said. “We’ve had an emergency.”

  To his relief, Dolores did not say a word until he had finished.

  “Wow,” she said at last. “Sounds like you’ve been through the wringer.”

  “It’s not her fault,” said Chandra. “But—”

  “Oh, of course not. But I mean, it sounds like y’all are struggling. How’s the mommy doing?”

  “She’s okay. She’s worried about a relapse. We all are. She thinks rehab might even make things worse.”

  “And is this what you think?” said Dolores.

  “I suppose it is,” said Chandra. “And then I remembered what you told me about your place and I thought I’d ask.”

  “I see,” said Dolores. “So, if I understand you correctly, you’re wondering if Jasmine could come serve her court mandate with us.”

  “Would that be possible?”

  “Well, does she want this too? Have you raised it with her?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “I wanted to check with you first.”

  “Theoretically it could work. I mean, we don’t have anyone else in those circumstances at present, so there’s what you might call a vacancy. But it’s not so simple. First, the mommy has to agree, and then you’ve got to get the court to give the all-clear. And then we’ve got to agree, which means we’ve got to meet the girl. Now, I know she’s the apple of your eye, but if Saul or I get the sense the kid’s likely to use again when she comes to us, then it’s got to be a big old no.”

  “I understand.”

  “So she lives in Colorado?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the misdemeanor was in Colorado?”

  “Yes, Boulder.”

  “Well, that helps,” said Dolores. “But don’t forget it isn’t easy living in a monastery. It’s practically a prison. Up at four, rain, shine, or snow, and we get plenty of all three. Every day will be a struggle. And it won’t work unless she wants to meditate. If she thinks it’s all baloney…”

  “Jasmine doesn’t believe in anything,” he said, feeling depression heading his way.

  “Well, that sounds about perfect.”

  “It does?”

  “You heard of ‘beginner’s mind’?”

  He shook his head, forgetting she couldn’t see him.

  “It means a lack of preconceptions. It’s a good thing.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “I’m just giving you the bad news first, honey. This could all work out. Let’s try to make it work, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Chandra.

  * * *

  —

  Professor Chandra called the house, telling Steve he was coming over. While driving, Chandra tried to rehearse what he might say, but however he phrased it, it sounded ridiculous on his lips. He had printed out some information about the monastery in the hope that this might make him look more like a respected academic and less like a crackpot. He could imagine Jean saying something like “Honestly, Charles, do you even have the slightest idea what you’re talking about?”

  He couldn’t think of a response apart from “I’ve got a feeling this will work out,” which was only two steps away from “The universe has already said yes.”

  Jean was out when Chandra arrived, so he waited for her in the kitchen with Steve. He and Steve did not hug or shake hands. It was different without an audience; the faux-warmth between them had disappeared.

  He opened his briefcase, prepared to marshal his argument.

  When Jean arrived she was carrying her yoga mat and was dressed in sweatpants instead of those awful leggings that students seemed to think appropriate for tutorials nowadays.

  Chandra executed a nervous namaste, a throwback to the nineties when he used to laugh at her pronunciation of Marjaryasana and Patanjali (he regretted all of this now).

  “So you’re still studying yoga?” he said.

  “I’m a yoga teacher, Charles. Didn’t you know that?”

  “Oh,” said Chandra. “That’s wonderful.”

  “Actually,” said Steve, “Jean has her own studio now. We decided it was a good investment.”

  “Everyone does yoga in Boulder,” said Jean.

  “Of course, it’s not one hundred percent authentic,” said Steve, switching to that faux-familiar tone now
that Jean was present. “But it’s quite a revolution, when one thinks about it. Extraordinary that such an ancient practice could become as American as apple pie.”

  “Well, I’m not American,” said Jean. “All I’m about is posture and core strength. We keep our third eyes closed in my class.”

  “But it’s still an awareness practice, isn’t it, honey?” said Steve.

  “You become more aware of your body,” said Jean, “yes, but there’s nothing cosmic about that.”

  “Jean’s wiser than we give her credit for,” said Steve.

  “Thank you,” said Jean, who looked tired. “Anyway, what have you got there, Charles?”

  Chandra had already opened his briefcase, rehearsing his arguments in his head. He handed her the printouts. “I had an idea about Jasmine,” he said. “I met a woman at Esalen, you see, in the hot tubs.” He was probably blushing now. “I mean, she’s a nun. She lives in the mountains, and she said Jasmine could serve her rehabilitation at their monastery, feasibly. They’ve done it before. The courts allow it. It’s very good for young people who’ve had problems with drugs. Very calming.”

  Chandra had no idea what Jean’s opinion on monks was. She was staring at the printouts and frowning.

  “It doesn’t say anything about rehab on here,” she said.

  “It’s not an official thing,” said Chandra. “It’s just something they do occasionally. I thought it’d be better than leaving her in the company of addicts.”

  “I think so too,” said Steve.

  “This place is in the middle of nowhere,” said Jean.

  “Exactly,” said Steve.

  “Have you ever even been there, Charles?”

  He shook his head. Jean sighed.

  “Honestly, honey, I think it’s a wonderful idea,” said Steve, but then his mobile began ringing and he took himself outside, talking rapidly about order numbers and bouquets.