Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

by Rajeev Balasubramanyam

  Jean sat opposite Chandra at the bar. She was still looking at the printout, but he sensed she wasn’t taking anything in.

  “I don’t know, Charles. Do you really want her so far away from us?”

  “It isn’t so far. A few hours’ drive.”

  Jean shook her head. “Jasmine won’t like the idea.”

  “What does Jasmine like?”

  Jean nodded.

  “Sunny wasn’t like this,” said Chandra, “or Radha.”

  “They take after you, Charles,” said Jean.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Charles, when did you ever hear me say I liked anything?”

  Chandra stared at her in confusion.

  “I didn’t like chemistry. I just did it. I thought it was boring. I didn’t like ballroom dancing. I just did that too; I can’t even remember why. I didn’t like ice cream; I just said I did because everyone likes ice cream. I didn’t know what kind of music I liked, not really. Politics…I don’t know. Maybe I had opinions, but I never liked it.

  “I was exactly like Jaz, Charles, just drifting my way through life. Jennifer was the confident one. Me, I just faked it, way more than you realize. I always felt like everyone else had an identity and I was only…tagging along. I was nearly fifty when I realized yoga was what I wanted to do. Fifty. God, you didn’t even know, did you?”

  Chandra shook his head.

  “Christ,” said Jean, “if there’d been meth in my day I might have taken it myself. Well, there was, I suppose, but drugs just weren’t a part of my world. Nothing was.”

  He’d been a part of her world. He wondered if she’d liked him, or if she’d been faking that too. Perhaps he had been nothing more than a raft for her to hold on to.

  “I wish I’d spent more time with Jasmine,” he said. “I could have helped her find out what she liked.”

  “She doesn’t like economics, Charles.”

  He looked up, met Jean’s eye.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m on edge. I know you are too.”

  “I just mean if I’d spent more time with her she might have felt more appreciated,” he said. “Less invisible.”

  Jean had said she felt invisible once, he remembered. It was during a counseling session. He hadn’t understood what it meant at the time.

  “Maybe she wanted to be invisible, Charles. Maybe she wanted to hide.”

  Chandra shook his head.

  “She’s hardly seen me all these years. I was so obsessed with myself, my work.”

  “It’s not your fault, Charles. Or if it is, it’s our fault. Nobody’s blaming you.”

  “I’m blaming me.”

  “Well, that won’t help Jaz much, will it?”

  Jean looked at the papers in her lap once more.

  “Look, Charles,” she said. “Go and see this place. Just the two of you. And talk to her. Try. If she likes it, if she actually says she wants to go, then we can give it a shot. I mean, if the place looks all right to you.”

  “You don’t want to come?” said Chandra.

  Jean shook her head. “Maybe you’re right, Charles. Maybe she does need to spend more time with you. She doesn’t listen to me anymore. I don’t think she even likes me much.”

  “I don’t know if she likes me much either.”

  “Well, let’s just see,” said Jean, putting the printouts on the counter.

  They drove up that Saturday, heading for the town of Cove, eight thousand feet high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Chandra read out the entry on Wikipedia to Jasmine while they ate their sandwiches at a rest stop.

  The land, thousands of acres of it, was owned by a billionaire called Maurice Powers. He’d bought it “because of the energy there,” which he claimed was more powerful than anywhere else in the Americas, and had extended an invitation to any spiritual organization to come and build on it. Cove now boasted nine Tibetan Buddhist monasteries; two Theravada centers (one Thai, one Burmese); a Hindu ashram; a Catholic monastery; a Temple of Consciousness institute; a Sivananda ashram; an Episcopal mission; a Shumei institute; an Academy of On; and the Cove Zen Center, run by Dolores and Saul Blum.

  “Sounds like Epcot for loonies,” said Jasmine.

  Chandra grunted, unwilling to say anything negative, though he quite agreed.

  “You don’t have to go there, Jasmine,” he said, giving her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Just see what you think of it. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not.”

  When he’d tried to sell the idea to Jasmine, he’d argued that people would be gentler there, that it would be a less punitive environment than a rehab center. She would be a free member of a community instead of an inmate. This had been working until she saw the schedule.

  “They hit you with sticks in Zen,” said Jasmine.

  “Not here,” said Chandra. “I don’t think so.”

  He showed her a picture of Dolores, which seemed to help, that broad smile, her lips upturned as if to say, “Me, a Zen nun? Well, if you say so.”

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Jasmine.”

  “Yes, I do. It’s this or rehab.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid that’s true.”

  “Well,” said Jasmine, “I guess I shouldn’t have fucked up then.”

  They drove for two more hours until the elevation increased and they felt the air become colder and thinner. The mountains were visible, blocking the horizon, and there were no other cars in sight, only wilderness ahead, a road to nowhere.

  They passed a marijuana dispensary, legal in Colorado, and Professor Chandra pretended not to notice when Jasmine’s head swiveled. He tried to focus on those operatic, full-bosomed peaks; if Jasmine lived here she would see them every day. He wondered what this would do to her. It could drive a person mad, being so far from civilization. You might start talking to the snow and the sky.

  By the time they reached the foothills the road was in shadow, the mountains blotting out the horizon. His headlights on high, Chandra turned onto the narrow road that led to the center. It soon became a dirt track, clogged with river water and stones.

  To their right they could see the entire valley, the corn stalks and aspen leaves and grasslands drained of color in that artificial twilight brought on by the mountains. To their left it was all forest land, inclining upward. They passed a Catholic hermitage, the sign instructing visitors to keep silent until they reached reception. Further ahead they saw a statue of Ganesha, so incongruous in this place that Chandra laughed until he saw Jasmine’s face. She looked scared now, staring at the directions in her lap, though they didn’t need directions anymore.

  “It’s beautiful here,” he said, in that same voice he’d used to tell her that having her ears pierced wouldn’t hurt a bit.

  “We’re miles from anywhere,” said Jasmine.

  “Yes,” he said. “How does it feel?”

  “All right, I suppose. It’s quiet.”

  The monastery was on their left, a swing board with the words COVE MOUNTAIN ZEN RETREAT (CLOSED) painted on it in white. Professor Chandra turned onto the graveled track that led up the slope.

  He remembered how Jasmine had told him she would have loved to go to summer camp, how she had missed all that by being born in England. But the truth was that Jasmine had never been an extrovert. She liked to spend a lot of time in her room. Other people exhausted her. She rarely said a word in group settings. But now, if all went according to plan, she would be moving into a commune where she would be forced to live with others all day long.

  They left the car in the parking lot and walked the rest of the way up the slope, heading for the building in front of them, a black wooden bungalow with a single oblong window, like a giant iPhone. There was a sign welcoming visitors to the monastery, advising them that intoxicants
were prohibited on the premises.

  Chandra slipped off his shoes and opened the door. The first thing he saw was a huge painting from floor to ceiling of a Japanese god with murderous red eyes and a scimitar in his hand, like an anarchist at a WTO summit. To their left was a trestle table that could have seated twenty. A shaven-headed man was sitting in front of a laptop. He wore a checked shirt and, apparent when he stood up, shorts, which surprised Chandra.

  “Chandra, right?” said the man. “And you must be the lovely Jasmine.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Chandra.

  The man laughed which, in Professor Chandra’s experience, was what spiritual types did when they didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m Saul, Dolores’s husband.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Chandra, with only the faintest tinge of jealousy.

  “And our oldest resident, which is why I’m not at zazen with the others.”

  “Well,” said Chandra, “it looks like I’m the oldest now.”

  “Oh, really? So you’re eighty-one?” said Saul, grinning. “It’s okay. I know I don’t look my age. It’s the mountain air, I guess, and lots of miso soup. Look at the Japanese. They always look ten years younger. So how was the drive down?”

  “Oh, very nice. Beautiful countryside here.”

  “And how about you, Jasmine?” said Saul. “Did you like what you saw?”

  “It was all right,” said Jasmine.

  This was her stock answer to all questions nowadays, which he supposed was a Generation X thing, or was it Y? (It worried him that they were reaching the end of the alphabet.) You have to care, he wanted to tell her. If you don’t care about anything, you aren’t—what was her expression?—“in it.”

  “Want to see the zendō?” said Saul. “Maybe sit for a few minutes, see how you like it?”

  “Sure,” said Chandra before Jasmine could answer. “We’d love that.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Saul led them out, following a brick pathway lit by solar lamps. The sky looked much bigger here, vaguely threatening as if a giant spacecraft was waiting in the wings, preparing its attack, the darkness absolute save for two or three budding stars.

  “You’ll be able to see the peaks in the morning,” said Saul. “They’re magnificent. Just wait.”

  Jasmine was trailing behind, staring at the monastery and its buildings.

  “So,” said Saul, “this is our zendō.”

  In front of them was a raised wooden building with a covered veranda running around its outside. It was set apart from the rest of the site, surrounded by bare earth. Like the main building, everything was black and right-angled.

  “There’s a lot of ritual to follow,” said Saul, “but I don’t want to overwhelm you. They’re sitting zazen now. You know zazen?”

  “I don’t think Jasmine does.”

  “It’s very simple. You just sit. Got that?”

  “Try to count your breaths,” said Chandra, remembering what Dolores had told him.

  Jasmine scowled while Saul walked up the zendō’s steps, handing them slippers from a wooden cupboard. He pulled the screen door aside. The only light came from the candles on the altar where there was a golden statue of the Buddha. The room was colder than Chandra had expected, full of silent, brown-robed monks.

  Saul bowed, took two steps left, turned and bowed again. Chandra did the same, feeling ridiculous. He didn’t look at Jasmine, but suspected she had her hands in her pockets. He hoped she wasn’t looking at her phone.

  Around the zendō’s perimeter was a raised wooden bench with black cushions placed at intervals. Saul pointed to the two nearest the entrance and said, “These are yours.”

  Chandra slipped off his shoes and sat facing the wall like the others. He waited until Jasmine was sitting beside him before closing his eyes.

  They meditated for twenty minutes or so, but Chandra kept falling asleep. He’d think he was awake until he realized he was doing something unlikely, like talking to a tiger, and would open his eyes, trying to blink sleep away. After a while he decided it didn’t matter anymore. He’d had a long drive. Why shouldn’t he sleep?

  When the gong sounded, Jasmine touched his shoulder. She had turned around and was putting her slippers on. Chandra followed her outside, stopping to bow in various directions, copying Jasmine who was copying the monk ahead of them. There was something intimate about engaging in all this rigmarole with his daughter. He supposed she wasn’t used to seeing him so helpless. But that wasn’t true. He was helpless in most places save for universities. No, it was the sudden, categorical equivalence between the two of them. Sitting on that cushion they were just two confused people trying to still the madness for a while.

  Dolores was waiting for them outside. She was wearing the same brown robe as everyone else, though her head wasn’t shaved. In fact, she looked exactly as he remembered her, warm and fulsome, though somewhat incongruous in this place.

  “Professor,” she said, hugging him. “So glad you made it. And here she is! Here’s the famous Jasmine!”

  Dolores put out her arms and, to Chandra’s surprise, Jasmine tumbled into them.

  “So how’d you find zazen, honey?”

  Jasmine shrugged. “It was all right.”

  Chandra noticed that a couple of the younger monks were listening with interest.

  “How was the space in your mind?”

  “It was all right,” said Jasmine. “Yeah.”

  “I think you can do better than ‘all right,’ ” said Dolores. “How did it feel?”

  Chandra wanted to say something, like “Try,” or “Answer the question,” but he counted his breaths instead, getting to two.

  “It was big,” said Jasmine.

  “Ah,” said Saul.

  “Expansive?” said Dolores.

  Jasmine nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Vast,” said Chandra.

  “That’s wonderful, honey,” said Dolores, and hugged her again.

  They had missed dinner, but Dolores gave them some soup in the kitchen after which she sat at the table and explained the schedule for the following day.

  “Zazen is at five, but you’ll likely be exhausted from your drive and the altitude takes its toll, so sleep if you like. Just try to come for breakfast at seven-thirty. After that someone will show you around the monastery and then Jasmine and Saul can have a little chat in the tea room.”

  Professor Chandra wanted to talk to Dolores on his own, but after dinner she left to go to her home outside the monastery’s grounds. “Means we can have wine,” she told him, with a wink. In any case, he doubted he could stay awake much longer. Dolores had been right about the air.

  Saul took him to his room, and led Jasmine away to the “women’s dormitory,” perhaps to ready her for the experience of life without privacy. Chandra wished they were together. He wanted to interrogate her about this business of “expansiveness.” It sounded like drug talk to his ears.

  Professor Chandra hadn’t thought to bring a book, so he went straight to sleep and for the first time in months, perhaps years, slept all the way through the night without interruption. It was eight o’clock when he awoke, which meant he was late.

  Chandra rushed to the main building where he found Jasmine already at the breakfast table, sitting with Saul and Dolores while the monks cleared the plates away.

  “Jasmine was up for zazen,” announced Dolores.

  “Seems she likes it,” said Saul.

  Chandra poured himself some coffee and tried to make eye contact with his daughter.

  “You okay, honey?” asked Dolores.

  “Never better,” said Chandra.

  “You should know we’ve come to a decision,” said Saul. “As of this morning, we have invited Jasmine to join us.”

  Jasmine re
turned his gaze in that neutral way he had come to expect, revealing nothing. He looked back at her, wondering if he had lost her forever.

  “That’s wonderful,” he said.

  PROFESSOR CHANDRA RETURNED to Cambridge late in August to prepare for the Michaelmas term. He called Dolores every week to check up on Jasmine. The report was always the same; that she’d been up every morning for zazen, that she was “a natural.” Saul was convinced that she’d done it before, that this was the case with most who took to meditation so easily, but Chandra was allergic to talk of past lives. He was simply happy his daughter had found something she liked and, most of all, that she was out of harm’s way.

  When Dolores asked him if he was glad to be home, Professor Chandra told her the truth: after being around his children for so long, he was finding it hard to live in that empty house by himself. “Then don’t be alone,” said Dolores. “It’s not rocket science.”

  It was something Jean had suggested several times, which was probably why he’d never done it, but the following week Chandra called Ram Singh and told him that if he was still looking for new accommodation, he and his fiancée Betina Moreira could rent the top floor of the house for a hundred pounds a month.

  Since Betina’s move to England, they had been living in Ram’s bachelor pad with three other Indians, whisky-guzzlers who filled their living room with games consoles and made a single communal meal each day in the pressure cooker. Betina was grateful for the escape, and Ram proved himself an excellent lodger: discreet, respectful, and not in the habit of talking economics, largely because he knew so little about it. Betina was more affectionate; she would massage Chandra’s shoulders, make him smoothies from spirulina and goji berries and, worst of all, attempt to talk to him about his feelings, clasping his hands in hers and looking into his eyes before asking, “How is your heart?”

  Most of the time, however, Chandra enjoyed their company. Even when he was grumpy and told them he wished he was on his own they would only laugh and Betina would make him a cup of hot chocolate, with some gummy bears in a silver thali bowl on the side.

  In October, Chandra failed to win the Nobel Prize once more, losing out to a man known for his attacks on the Chicago School, to which Chandra de facto belonged. The winner described his contribution to the discipline as based on “the recognition that economic agents are human.” “I intend to spend my prize money as irrationally as possible,” he said. To Chandra’s surprise, he felt no rancor at all when he read this in the Times. He even felt happy for the man.