Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

by Rajeev Balasubramanyam

  “There were too many people!” said Sunny, who had booked a room at the LSE when he was nineteen but run in the opposite direction when he saw it filled with drunken, dancing strangers.

  “I didn’t even consider having a party this year,” said Chandra.

  “Oh, Charles,” said Jean.

  “Oh, Charles, nothing,” said Chandra. “It was my birthday.”

  “Quite right,” said Radha.

  “Why, Dad?” said Jasmine. “It was your seventieth.”

  “I just didn’t feel like it,” said Chandra. “The thing about your birthday is you get to do whatever you want. I didn’t want to be around just anybody. I wanted to be around all of you.”

  “And now you are,” said Radha.

  “Well, we should thank Jaz for this,” said Jean. “It was Jaz who made this happen.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Sunny, and raised his glass. “To my little sister and her new weird life. To Jasmine.”

  “To Jasmine,” everyone repeated, with the exception of Radha who merely put her arm around her sister’s shoulder.

  “I’m happy everybody’s here,” said Jean. “It’s been a funny year, but this isn’t a bad ending.”

  “Hello?” said Jasmine. “I kind of, you know, fucked up. What are you talking about?”

  Radha laughed. Chandra hadn’t heard Jasmine talk like this in a while. He wondered if her suspension had turned her into a teenager again. He didn’t mind, so long as she stayed away from drugs.

  “What I want to know is where you got the joint from,” said Jean. “You live in a monastery.”

  “Mum, there’s a weed dispensary down the road,” said Radha.

  “I brought it with me,” said Jasmine. “Sorry, but I did. It was a kind of insurance policy.”

  “There’s an insurance policy down the road,” said Radha.

  “Can we stop talking about this now?” said Jasmine.

  “Leave it, Mum,” said Radha, before Jean could speak. “Jaz is right. There’s no point going on about it.”

  “We just worry,” said Jean. “Parents worry, you know.”

  “Jesus!” said Jasmine, who really did look like her old self now. “I’m not going to do it again and I feel like shit about it, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Jean, though she looked as if she still had plenty to say.

  “I have some news,” said Sunny. “I’m moving back to London.”

  Chandra raised both hands in the air in triumph. Sunny had said “the U.S. or the U.K.” earlier. This was definitive.

  Chandra looked at Radha, trying to will her to say the same. She met his gaze.

  “Well,” said Chandra, standing so he could survey the entire room and step out of Radha’s eye-lock. “I am very happy about so many things. But most of all I’m happy to be here now with all of you, especially Jean. I know it hasn’t been easy for all of you to watch us separate. Well, maybe I didn’t know. But I know it now and I want to say I’m sorry, from the heart, and I’m very, very glad we can be together anyway. And I am glad Steve is here too, or will be here, to share this holiday with us.”

  “Assuming nobody punches him,” said Jean.

  “Yes,” said Chandra, noticing no one else appeared to know what Jean was talking about and feeling mildly disappointed. “This is my seventy-first year,” he continued. “So much has happened, and so much has changed.”

  “You became a hippie like me,” said Radha.

  “Except he’s got a job,” said Sunny.

  Radha gave Sunny the finger while Chandra continued.

  “I realize now,” he said, “that my mistake was in thinking that I had nothing else to learn in life. I think if there’s nothing new to learn, there’s probably no point being alive at all. An hour ago Jean was asking me why I’ve been doing all these new things, and I said it was for me, but maybe it was for all of you too. I’m not even sure what I mean by that, but I think it’s true.”

  Chandra could hear a car pulling into the driveway. Steve.

  “I suppose I expected my life to be different at seventy, but what I want to say is that it’s perfect the way it is. With all of you here. So…Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you all.”

  Professor Chandra lifted his champagne glass, now empty, and held it aloft, looking at Jean and each of his children in turn, their faces lit by the muted television. He tried to imprint the moment on his mind so he would never forget it. There had been so many like this…in Chicago, in Cambridge. They’d been a family so long, and most of it, some of it, much of it, had been wonderful. Even if this was the last moment they ever shared together, he would have this memory. He would always have this memory.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING they all began to leave, one by one. Professor Chandra hadn’t expected this.

  But last night had been a success. Sunny had served them all a mammoth, quite over-the-top dinner, including turkey, champagne, and baked Alaska. Afterward they sat in the kitchen and Chandra and Jean told stories about their children, things only they could know. For a short while he and his former wife had held hands beneath the table where no one, Steve included, could see. Chandra loved her, but not in the way that he used to, and when she let go of his hand he didn’t miss it.

  Later, they played charades in front of the fire. Steve acted out the entirety of Titanic in two minutes, which moved Chandra to clap Steve on the back in a way that was almost entirely nonviolent. For a while he felt something fraternal toward his cuckolder, like a half brother, or a stepbrother, which moved him to go upstairs to call Prakash, though he hung up after only two rings. Phoning a Third World nationalist on an imperialist holiday was never a good idea.

  They shifted to the basement after midnight. There was a ping-pong table there, which was Chandra’s number one game now that he was too old to play cricket. To his surprise, Steve wasn’t bad at all, and Chandra found himself having to strip down to his undershirt to gain more leverage. It was important to strike the ball at shoulder height if you wanted real power in your smash. He’d been telling people this for years.

  He was disappointed when, at two in the morning, everyone announced they were calling it a night, as he could happily have gone on until dawn. But Jasmine put her arm around him and said, “You need to go to bed, Dad,” which was code for “You’re drunk.”

  But he felt fine this morning, fresh as a woodpecker. And yet everyone was leaving. He hadn’t realized Steve and Jean had planned to return to Boulder so soon, and of course Jasmine was going with them on account of her suspension, which didn’t seem so bad now, not to anyone.

  And so here he was, hugging his youngest daughter and trying not to cry as she got into the back of Steve’s Lincoln with her inch of black hair.

  “Bye, Jean. Bye, Steve,” he said. “Take care of yourselves.”

  “All the best, Chandrasekhar,” said Steve.

  “Look after yourself, Charles.”

  By the time Dolores came over and put her arm around him, the Lincoln had disappeared from view. He wanted to tell her how sad he was, but last night’s misadventures were still fresh in his mind.

  “Well, Professor,” said Dolores. “It’s been quite something.”

  “Thank you for everything, Dolores,” he said. “This couldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for you.”

  “My pleasure,” said Dolores. “You look after yourself, Professor Chandra. You’re a very special guy, you know that?”

  Dolores’s arms were around him, hugging him tight without any apparent self-consciousness. When they separated he found he couldn’t make eye contact with her and, after mumbling a few non sequiturs, he excused himself and went to his cabin, trying to get the thought out of his mind that perhaps life with someone other than Jean wasn’t as impossible as he had imagined.

  Shortly before lunchtime, Sunny left too. H
e had booked a holiday in Hawaii, some remote island outside the tourist trail that boasted eco-tourism and swimming with dolphins. Chandra hoped he wasn’t going alone, but knew not to ask.

  “I’ll miss you,” he said. “I always miss you, Sunny.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “I know I shouldn’t worry. I know you’ll be all right.”

  Sunny took off his sunglasses.

  “Is anyone really all right, Dad?”

  Chandra did not know what to say to this. He was trying to think of a reply when Sunny stepped to one side to answer his phone and began speaking in Cantonese.

  Chandra looked up at the sky, which was mostly blue today, and saw a couple of geese flying overhead. Sunny finished his call and put the last of his bags into his rental car.

  “I’m sorry I go on about things,” said Chandra. “It happens at my age. I just want you to be happy, Sunny, but that doesn’t mean you have to be anything different. Just be yourself. That’s enough.”

  “I’ll see you in London,” said Sunny.

  “I can’t wait.”

  “Ciao, Dad.”

  “Ciao,” said Chandra.

  Chandra stood in the parking lot until Sunny’s car was a tiny dot on the horizon. He realized that Radha had not been there to see them all off, but even as a child she had hated goodbyes. Sometimes she would stay in her room and refuse to come out when he left for a conference.

  He found her outside the zendō. She was walking the perimeter, her head down, looking at her feet.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said. “On your own?”

  “We’re the only ones left.”

  “So we are,” said Radha.

  “Are you going back to New York?”

  “In a few days. I’m going to stay here and meditate some more.”

  Radha was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jogging pants, her hair tied back.

  “I’m going to New York,” said Chandra. “For New Year’s.”

  “Yes,” said Radha, “you said.”

  He had announced it last night, a pure fabrication. He’d told her he had been planning it for weeks.

  “We could go together,” said Chandra. “I have a car.”

  Radha reached the zendō’s steps and sat on the lowest one, cupping her face in her hands. Chandra sat beside her. They looked up at the mountains.

  “Are you nuts?” said Radha.

  “Maybe still a little drunk.”

  “You want to spend the trip fighting? The free market, remember? You’re for it. Me, not so much.”

  “We can’t fight all the time.”

  “You sure?”

  “Even if we do, it’s better than being apart,” he said, smiling.

  “Dad, you just made that up, didn’t you, about your New York trip?”

  “Yes,” he said, hanging his head.

  “Look,” said Radha, “we can give it a try. Let’s see if we can get to New York without tearing each other apart.”

  “How long will it take us by car?”

  “A couple of days.” Radha shuffled closer to him, so their arms touched. “At least. Why don’t we fly instead?”

  “I don’t like flying.”

  Radha looked up at him with those saucer eyes that so resembled his own.

  “Road trip, Dad?” she said.

  “Yes,” said Chandra. “Yes, I’d love that.”

  For my parents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS NOVEL BEGAN with the Hemera Foundation whose marvelous fellowship made everything possible. My warmest, deepest thanks to everyone there, in particular Andrew Merz and Dan Halpern, who helped me plan my two pilgrimages to the U.S., and my two mentors Charles Johnson and Anushka Fernandopulle. To all the companions who helped me on my way with beds, rides, hugs, laughter, dinner, advice, and that most essential of all things, spiritual companionship: Mauricio and Maria, Thomas, Jamie, Fannie-Lee, Jay, Carmen, Swamiji, Ramesh, Yuval, Diego, Sita, Rudy and Denise, Linda, Praveen, Stan, Ryan and Carmen, Athmeya, Arun, Ngugi, Kevin, Simon and Pia, Tom and Bird. I could write pages about your kindness and humor and love and generosity.

  My thanks and metta to all the meditation teachers I have learned from—before, during, and after my travels: S. N. Goenka, who gave me a new life so many years ago; Thich Nhat Hanh, who became the guiding spirit for my American pilgrimages; all the nuns and monks at Deer Park Monastery, as well as the other teachers I met there who moved me so deeply; Sister Jewel, Larry Ward, Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams, and Rev. Earthlyn Manuel; all the assistant teachers on the Vipassana courses I sat and served on while writing this novel; the nuns and monks at the Vajrapani Institute, the Crestone Mountain Zen Center and the Zen Center of New York (Reynold, Christian, Nick, and Ven. Drolma in particular); Mark Matousek, my wonderful teacher at Esalen; and lastly, to two spiritual companions and teachers who died while I was writing this novel, Leonard Cohen and Prince Rogers Nelson—may you both rest in bliss.

  A big thank you to my earliest readers: Stephan, my companion in the adjoining room while I wrote the first draft; Prashant, my much-loved friend and confidante for a glorious twenty-five years now; my wonderful agent Margaret for her patience, insight, and persistence; everyone at Vermont Studio Center for such enthusiastic feedback after my first ever reading from the novel (Sam Lipstye and Larissa Svirsky in particular); Steve Potter, who read more than one draft and who has been a loving, therapeutic presence in my life for almost a decade now; and to our friend and now neighbor Carrie for her constant support and companionship. My thanks to everyone at my Berlin café and home away from home, Factory Girl, where I wrote much of this book and am sitting now; to Evelyn Somers at the Missouri Review for giving Professor Chandra his first home; and to Jacob and Anna at the Pigeonhole, and to Ingo and Martin for the same.

  With deep gratitude to everyone at Chatto & Windus and Random House USA: Monique, Whitney, Sam, Jane, Fran, and my brilliant editors Clio, Susan, and Becky. The three of you plus Margaret were and continue to be my dream team. My thanks to the porters at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, and to the organ scholar, Luke, who overheard us talking and explained where in Cambridge a person would be most likely to get hit by a bicycle. A final thank-you to my old, deeply loved friends who kept me sane while I was at my most frazzled: Mark, Max, Marie, Sofia, and Mutlu, and my long-term guardian angel, Nick. Finally, all the love, hugs, thank-yous, and kisses I have to Divya, the only one with me on all of my journeys, the keeper of my bliss.

  BY RAJEEV BALASUBRAMANYAM

  Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

  Starstruck

  The Dreamer

  In Beautiful Disguises

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  RAJEEV BALASUBRAMANYAM was born in Lancashire and studied at Oxford, Cambridge, and Lancaster universities. He is the prize-winning author of In Beautiful Disguises. He has lived in London, Manchester, Suffolk, Kathmandu, and Hong Kong, where he was a Research Scholar in the Society of Scholars at Hong Kong University. He was a fellow of the Hemera Foundation, for writers with a meditation practice, and has been writer-in-residence at Crestone Zen Mountain Center and the Zen Center of New York City. His journalism and short fiction have appeared in The Washington Post, The Economist, New Statesman, London Review of Books, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, and many others. He currently lives and works in Berlin.

  rajeevbalasubramanyam.com

  Facebook.com/​rajeev.balasubramanyam

  Twitter: @Rajeevbalasu

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