by M G Vassanji
His work at the printing press, located in the coach house at the back, gave a regularity to his life that he enjoyed. A group of devotees drove around college campuses in a van, distributing the Mission literature and explaining the message of “ONNE.…” When a place had been deemed suitable to receive him, Satguru would go there and hold a few devotional sessions. There were branches of the Mission in over twenty campuses.
In the new semester he arranged to take only self-study courses at the Tech. The ashram became an almost total retreat, a quiet hideout in whose spirituality he allowed himself to be suspended, wafting in an atmosphere pervaded by gentle sitar ragas and bhajans and Sanskrit recitals, without commitment to anything or anybody. There were days of forgetful bliss, yes, when he could have kissed the Master’s feet at morning darshana in gratitude for allowing him into this refuge, of place, of mind. There were times when he even thought he could feel a glowing sense of euphoria, when the Guru said to hold hands and “connect.” But could he lose himself entirely? Could this place completely claim him, cut him off and subsume him? No, he knew he would eventually emerge from it.
In the first week of March, a packet of correspondence arrived at the ashram, collected from his mailbox at Rutherford and forwarded. This is how your life catches up with you. There was a letter from John, dated approximately six weeks before, January 15.
“Dear Ramji, this is to inform you that Ginnie passed away peacefully on December 23 at Runymede General Hospital. According to her wishes she was cremated. I am sorry to be the bearer of such tidings and we all miss her very much as I am sure you do. We tried calling you a few times but there was no response. Ginnie was of a cheerful disposition and would have wished us to remember her at her best. I continue to look forward to your visits to us in Runymede …”
He read and reread the letter, I wish I had called her, at least once, heard that voice for one last time, that beautiful laughing voice … I could have gone to be with her in her last hours, I could have held her hand. Instead, where were you, Ramji? I knew she was dying and I hid myself away.
He took one Aspirin, then another. Do I have a headache yet? … But I want to cry, so much to cry.…Then cry, you nuthead, let the tears come out, you rockface, but they flow internally as in Indian film songs, you drink them in and they are no good. Damn you, Ramji, let go and simply grieve … grieve for all you’ve lost, Ginnie and your hopeless innocence and your simple faith and … and … There was a bottle of pills on Lyris’s desk, he poured them out, all gleaming in potency, little bombs or M&M’s depending on your point of view, all colours, red white blue, yellow, shit brown, orange, even black for God’s sake, you can play a marvellous game of Go with them, in Technicolor, or is it Eastman or Kodachrome … He took out a pad of square-ruled paper and arranged the pills on the intersections, you here, you go there, but it was much nicer to form a multicoloured design the way the Chinese did using schoolchildren holding coloured flags or boards and singing “The East Is Red.” … He swallowed a red pill, and another, and another and another and he went out as he’d so much wanted to.
“OD’d himself right outta this world. Holy nirvana, man.” It was Johnson, the black cook at the ashram, who had become Ramji’s friend recently and been plying him with a lot of questions about Africa.
“How long’s he been out?”
“Twenty-four hours, at least.” Lyris. “Moaning and groaning, Jesus, and in my bed. He took all the reds, who asked him to take the reds, they’re from Mexico and dangerous —”
“Holy karmic nirvana, musta’ been all those letters he received …”
He was cold, sweaty, smelling of piss. “Lemme go.” Ramji staggered away to the bathroom. His head was cracking open, his body shivering in great uncontrollable spasms. He slipped onto the floor, clutching the side of the bathtub.
Voices outside.
“I’m not touching him. You sort him out.” Lyris. So much for exotica, we are all vegetable underneath, and when we rot, we rot.
Johnson and Robin, the latter a full-time cop and part-time devotee, helped him clean, plied him with bread and sweet milk, and tucked him into a freshly made bed in his own room where he stayed two days.
Later that week in the middle of the night he was pushed over and she came in beside him; familiar smell, familiar flesh, she always wore a flannel nightie; Lyris. In the morning on his notepad, just “Goodbye!” with a flourish.
“She’s moved on to the fourteen-year-old wonder from India,” Johnson said. “That’s the second of Satguru’s devotees who’s discovered Guru Maharaj-ji and his mother. They like it easy, these kids, instant nirvana: close your eyes, swallow the phlegm, see the red light back of your eyes, that’s it.”
9
An anguished, horrified look on a girl’s face, her right hand reaching out and upwards — for what? — beside her a fallen comrade; behind, in the distance, a column of guardsmen. It became an emblem of raging dissent, that shooting at Kent State University, Ohio; and that look of horror screamed out to a troubled nation: What have you done? Don’t shoot us, we are your children!
It seemed to Ramji he was beginning to wake from a long sleep. Nixon had announced the invasion of Cambodia and campus after campus erupted in riots during the early part of May. And it seemed as if the ashram itself was seeing an invasion from the world outside. A portable nine-inch TV had materialized from somewhere and at night some of the devotees gathered around it in secret to stare at a world apparently in flames …
Venerated, paternal news anchorman Walter Cronkite told it the way it was, with a colour map of the United States pinpointing riot spots throughout the country. Harvard Square saw mass demonstrations once more, tear gas and bloody encounters with police clubs; Central Square was trashed; a camera caught a rock-thrower in the act and the newsman asked: Why the destruction, if you say you’re for peace? For Kent State, the thrower panted, his missile lurking in his palm, and for My Lai, and six hundred thousand Laotian refugees, for South Africa and … and …
But in less than three weeks the strikes were over; the news of the day at the Tech, before it broke up for summer vacation, was a science colloquium.
And that was what finally brought Ramji back to reality. Somewhat paradoxically, perhaps, it was an event that also heralded his scientist-hero Peter Bowra’s departure into the cloudy world of mysticism.
“I was right,” Lyris said, sidling up to him as far as the auditorium seats would allow. “Satguru is all right, but too intellectual — all ego.” She prodded the side of her head with a forefinger. “But Guru Maharaj-ji is it, direct, the source.”
It was two months now since she’d left him and the ashram for the other guru.
Today Satguru was speaking at a Tech colloquium, the same weekly forum that had seen some of the world’s great scientists in the past. By all indications at the ashram, Satguru Edward Anandaswamy was excited.
The event had been billed as a Bowra-Satguru joint colloquium on the Tao, titled “The Cosmic Dance,” and the auditorium was packed, having drawn a diversity of people from near and far. Even the saffron-clad tambourine-clanging Hare Krishna mendicants were on the scene, on the green outside the Student Center.
About six weeks ago one morning the legendary Peter Bowra showed up at the Divine Anand ashram. He had been expected by the Master, though the devotees were taken by surprise. They had not failed to note that the air was clear of incense that morning and a rather enchanting recital of the Gita was playing over the loudspeaker. As soon as the scientist was wheeled into the great hall, the awaiting Satguru fell on one knee, saying with a flourish, “Ah, the great master, welcome!”
“Wait a minute,” Bowra said, coming to a stop, “I thought you were the great master.”
“Ah, but you have held death in your hands, the weapon of Shiva —” The reference was to Bowra’s work during the war on the atomic bomb project.
“Isn’t it Krishna — in the Bhagavad Gita, as Oppie said — who proclaime
d, ‘I have become death’?”
“But Shiva is the destroyer.…” Satguru smiled.
“But these are symbols anyway, aren’t they?”
“Exactly. Unfortunately, people quibble over symbols and lose sight of the great —”
“The great equation,” Bowra put in, “if that’s what you meant to say.”
The two were soon locked in a private discussion in the library, after which the scientist left, much as he’d arrived, with a great flourish. A few days later the colloquium was announced, and it promised to become a much-anticipated event in the Boston area.
“In every scientist’s life,” Peter Bowra began his introduction at the colloquium, from his wheelchair behind a small table on the stage, “there comes a time when individual phenomena — such and such an equation, such and such an effect, the brick and mortar of the scientific endeavour — cease to hold the mind.” Perhaps this restlessness was due simply to an awareness of one’s own mortality. But what began to hold the fascination for the mature scientist was the greater picture — the Holy Grail of all the great minds of the past. One could call this Holy Grail the equation of state of the universe, one could call it a unified field …
Bowra’s own research for a single overarching pattern in the behaviour of the universe had brought him, after useless detours in the arid world of Western philosophy, to Eastern mysticism. He had begun to entertain what only a few weeks before had been unthinkable for him: the notion of a supermind, or soul. He was struck by those mystical systems of contemplation that from the beginnings of civilization insisted on a unified view of everything. And so he found himself in the halls of the marvellous colonial-style mansion in Newton — what a happy coincidence, that name! — the ashram of the Divine Anand Mission, whose teachings were partly inspired by Einstein’s search for the Holy Grail.
Satguru went to the podium, which was beside the professor’s table, and greeted the audience with a namasté — a joining of the palms, and a brief bow. Then he recited a verse in Sanskrit, after which, in a British accent somewhat loosened by his stay in America, he gave a brief introduction to Indian mysticism and mythology. When he finished, he nodded to Peter Bowra, and for the rest of the session the two men conducted the proceedings together.
“And so where does the connection come in, between science and mysticism?” the scientist asked. “In the past few weeks we have exchanged notes on our respective disciplines. While our approaches to the secrets of the universe are diametrically opposite, we were struck by some remarkable coincidences. We would like to share them with you.”
Lights were dimmed, a slide image came on the screen: a bubble-chamber photo of particle trajectories; beside it a projection of the god Shiva dancing. The lines and curves of the bubble-chamber image could be interpreted, without too much assistance, as forming an outline profile of the dancer. Many such parallels were shown; between icons and diagrams, equations and musical scores, ideas and ideas.
“We are not saying these different-looking phenomena, the subjective and objective if you will, are precisely the same,” said Bowra. “That would be too simple. What we have shown are just a few data — some patterns, symbols, and images — worth contemplating. This is just the beginning.”
The colloquium was a resounding success. The mere fact of such a bold presumption as that of combining modern science with Eastern mysticism in order to understand human existence was itself remarkable and exciting, a sign of the free spirit of the times.
Ramji and Lyris parted with a brief hug. She left through a side entrance, and he headed for the lobby at the back. There he ran straight into Sona, who held a Styrofoam cup of coffee in each hand, one of which he proffered to Ramji, and an Oreo cookie in his mouth.
Sona said: “Or don’t you take coffee anymore. What’s happened to you, Ramji? You could be mistaken for a guru yourself,” he added, looking Ramji up and down — Ramji with a kurta over his pants, long hair curling at the back of the neck, and a beard.
Sona was in a blue Tech windbreaker and beige Levi’s bell-bottoms. There was a certain acquired confidence, a composure in his bearing which made him seem very much a part of his milieu now, and no longer the wide-eyed genial foreigner. He too sported a beard, but his was trimmed, a neat goatee ending in a point. Could the American girlfriend Amy have done so much for him?
And now here he was, come to bring the apostate back into the fold …
“Actually, I do have what you might call a disciple of sorts,” Ramji said, “so you could call me a guru I suppose.…” Let him stew for a bit. (He was referring to a young man who had recently gravitated towards him to learn the ropes at the ashram.)
“Playing the Indian card now, are we?” Sona asked.
“Why not? What did you think of the lecture?”
“Why you or anybody else can’t see through this charade — the guy’s a divinity school dropout, for God’s sake! Then proclaims himself a guru —”
“He must have been some good to get in. And divinity school is just theory. Who needs that? People seek the real thing. He’s the son of the famous Anandaswamy —”
“Yeah, conceived while the great teacher himself was demonstrating a yogic position to a beautiful, gullible young woman, I’ll bet. What do you learn there — Kama Sutra?”
They crossed Mass Ave to go to the Student Center. The Hare Krishna mendicants were still vigorously at it, twirling about and singing, jangling their tambourines, watched by a small crowd as the late afternoon sunlight streaked in brightly from the west. Ramji felt an old familiarity, a closeness returning between himself and Sona beside him. We’ve known each other forever, he reminded himself, and we pick up where we left off almost without a thought. His concern for me is touching.
“I wanted to get away,” Ramji found himself explaining, “and the ashram has a peaceful atmosphere, conducive to meditation and reflection … even spirituality.…” (If we don’t mention Lyris for now.)
“Escape,” Sona said scornfully.
“Perhaps.”
“Who was the girl with you, back there?”
“I met her on the bus from New York once.”
“She with you at the ashram?” That searching look, it was more than academic now, there was gossip behind the curiosity.
“She introduced me to it.”
“Stinks. Look —”
Sona, the designated mukhi of their little student community of Boston, picked by popular acclaim. He would have made the perfect village headman in some distant past: learned, protective, keeping the fold together — or at least trying to.
“Look,” Sona said, “all this mysticism and devotion this guru teaches, you know we have it in our tradition, we grew up with it — what’s wrong with what we have? You don’t have to run off to find it anew —”
“I just want some space … to be. To be left alone from the past, not worry about what I’m called, and what I’m supposed to be.…I am what I am.”
“So said Popeye. It’s not so simple, is it. You can’t run away altogether.”
“Perhaps not.”
Sona brooded for a while. They had arrived at the Student Center coffee house and ordered coffee. The place showed evidence of a recent modernist onslaught by an architecture student project; the tables and most of the chairs had been removed and replaced instead by a tall and coarse-looking multilevel screwed-on structure of wood, red pipes and translucent plastic, provided with seats inside nooks and corners for people to sit in. For those unwilling to undertake the climb to search for a suitable place, there was a large cartwheel that served as a table, surrounded by a few chairs, which is where Ramji and Sona sat. The place was quite deserted.
“Look. We are a community, with a history, language, identity. Would you that it all evaporate into nothingness?”
Surely not into nothingness, but into something else perhaps. But Ramji didn’t quibble. He felt curiously unmoved by Sona’s plea for communal integrity.
“What ab
out your courses — how long do you plan to stay at the ashram?”
It would be nice to tell him: Forever. Or, better: I have renounced life, I’ve become a seeker of truth, a mystic, and I’ll wander from place to place and have a few disciples of my own …
But what he said was, “I’m leaving it. Actually, that lecture confirmed something I’ve known all along. For me, it’s the mind, not the soul; mine is the world of science and mathematics, reason. I don’t want beatitude, infinite wisdom, permanent enlightenment. Donnez-moi la confusion et un peu de lumière.”
“Who said that?”
“I did. And further — listen, for you are the mukhi — if there is a traditional God out there, I don’t think He has the time or the inclination to hunt me down because I don’t bow and praise him and humiliate myself. If He is there, I give him a nod of respect — which I would give even to Nixon — and go my own way. Vive le Ramji libre!”
“What’s with this French stuff — a new phase?”
“I’m reading Camus.”
“Welcome to the world, anyway,” said Sona with feeling.
Little could he know then what a surprise the world was preparing for him. The politics of dissent he had become engaged in, before he abandoned them for the quietude of the ashram, were soon to catch him in their trajectory, in a manner that he neither could have foretold nor would have chosen for himself. Indeed, over the long term they would never let him go.
10
In early September amidst the excitement of Rush Week, a bomb exploded near Kendall Street Station, destroying a good portion of the ancient building that housed the Institute for Strategic Studies, or ISS.
It was a Friday night, a little past sunset, and Kendall as usual at this hour was deserted and forbidding. There was no witness to the explosion when it occurred, save one homeless soul. Out at the front end of campus, though, Mass Ave was festive, a rock band had just wound up its performance on the green outside the Student Center. It was here on Mass Ave that, in typical overkill, five fire engines and six police cars appeared in a jangle of sirens, drawn by a garbled warning phone call and the presence of student crowds. The mistake was realized and the fire engines began a hasty departure, when one of them backed into a police car. Flashing blue and red lights and the heavy breathing of automobile engines as from overgrown beasts added to the bizarreness of the scene. Overjoyed students surrounded the crashed car, and for a moment there looked to be the makings of a riot, with shouts of “Pigs! Off the Pigs!” and the possibility that the car might be overturned, whether in jest or as an act calculated to inspire a cop into a bullish deed and the crowds into a frenzied retaliation.
