On just such a day, in the midst of a lot of Hindi hoopla, did Kura and I make our famous entrance — duly orchestrated by the Source. May the trickster gods rejoice!
Graduation Day for us all…
I can’t recall a word of the American’s first Q&A. (Though squawk boxes strung on the outside of the shop gave broadcast.) I think I already told you that, didn’t I? You know, I might be getting a little punchy — let’s stop soon and have supper?
O… there’s something I do remember that’s important not to forget.
When any satsang ends, not just the Great Guru’s, one “presses” the teacher’s feet in respect. An ancient gesture. Devotees jockey to get there first. You know, “If I touch the feet before all others, that makes me special.” The human being is stark raving mad, don’t you think? Absolutely wired for hierarchy, we do hierarchy in our sleep. Kura was in the catbird’s seat, or in front of it anyway. So he was the first. I had a perfect view from my pole… He prostrated himself then pressed his forehead to the floor. Remaining thus, he extended his arms for their short, deferential journey, that gentle, timeless laying on of hands. What happened next was as horrifying as it was baffling. The moment contact was made between Kura’s hands and the American’s feet, well, the man in the chair went rigid. I swear, his eyes shone with something that looked like apocalyptic dread. His mouth hung slack like an idiot’s and the rest of him — I’m not sure I can properly convey! He looked so startled and confused, like he’d jumped from his skin… then came that weird silence again, remember how I was saying that in the moments before he sat down there was this eerie silence? Well there it came, no one breathed, not a soul, that behind-the-snow-globe silence I thought I’d never hear again in my life. The collective breath hung in suspension as I went about my lightning lucubrations to explain the reaction: Had Kura pressed too hard? Was there something wrong with the man in the chair’s feet? (I say “man in the chair” and not “the American” because at this time you see we really had no idea who this simulacrum was or what was the meaning of it.) Was he about to have some sort of fit? A flurry of colorful thoughts followed: What the fuck am I doing in India? Kura doesn’t love me anymore, he never did… I want to go home now, how can I get home? But where is home?
Just then, a coquettishly simian grin bloomed on the fellow’s face as he sat bolt upright. He looked gemütlich and hyper-alert. This time though, the effect was radiantly comedic, his countenance Chaplinesque. He began to mime a convict sizzling in an electric chair, not scary but delightful, his ticcing, twitching face pelted by the most wonderful hailstorm of expressions that morphed from an obsequious smile to the rictus of a silent scream (and everything in-between) as if to deftly convey a mission statement to the tribe: “I am not the Great Guru! He cannot be replaced… Yet I ask you to fear nothing, you are still in his hands! Have patience, I beseech you! I beseech you to trust! It is impossible for energy to err, of that you can be certain! Mysterious forces have brought me to this chair! All is predetermined…”
Thus, at the tail end of his inauguration, as a fillip to the substantive, wittily learned, deeply satisfying nature of his responses to the audience’s questions, did the vaudevillian Vedic scrum swing from the sublime to the ridiculous then back again, celebrated by a communal roar of approbation. The American had gambled with antic play, the same his teacher had usually confined to the kitchen table. It was a brilliant stroke. The maneuver forced skeptical seekers to challenge their reactionary resistance to change. He was their saint now (at least in this moment, for mobs are notoriously fickle) and had gained more than a toehold on their ardor and respect, perhaps even on their fear… Many pairs of hands followed Kura’s. The American’s face became inscrutable while he received further benedictions, which seemed befitting. For he was the American no more.
He was the Great Guru.
As I said — this I know I did tell you — Kura remained on Mogul Lane and environs for seven years. During satsang he could always be found in the exact spot he alit upon that first morning. He became fluent in the same duties the American had been entrusted by his own teacher.
Me? I lasted about four months, four very long months — I was young, and bored with the company. The ashram diehards and devotees were either putzes or major dicks and that last category included women. I did some fooling around (I was an equal gender employer) but Kura didn’t seem to give a shit. He’d lost the urge. I tried not to take it personally. After the head-rush of Bombay wore off, I grew restive. He had enough sense to give me a long leash. He was too caught up in the annihilation of the Self to be bothered.
I went through a manic month of buying rare fabrics. I became addicted to the markets that sold them, whole cities unto themselves where transactions were conducted over dreamily aromatic tea in hidden rooms looking out on acres of silk, linen, cotton, muslin. I made day trips in search of obscure ayurvedic treatments, though what I really wanted was a massage that would never end — I wanted to massage my way to nirvana. The longer I stayed, the stranger my pursuits. I uncovered an infamous cult of sacred prostitutes who taught me their bittersweet songs. (That’s another story.) Day trips became overnights, overnights turned into weekends, weekends into extended stays. I actually loved India but discovered I didn’t enjoy traveling by myself, which was a new one because I so cherished and protected my autonomy. Now I see what I couldn’t see then: I was furious at the American for stealing my man. I could handle the abstinence part but not having him in bed with me was a bear. He insisted on sleeping alone, something having to do with his “subtle body.” I think I was probably going through withdrawal because sex with us was definitely a drug. I kept our suite at the Taj and Kura rented a disgusting little room much closer to Mogul Lane. Each time I returned from one of my forays, I fantasized he’d appear at the hotel to apologize for his behavior, and come to his senses by announcing we were leaving for Paris at once—or Morocco, Ibiza, Timbuktu—if I’d have him. (At this point in the fantasy, he was still down on his knees.) In reality, he was sullen and displeased. Which was immensely disconcerting to a wild child like myself who was accustomed to a man’s affections compounding in ratio to the amount of time I’d blown him off. I’d always heard that gurus were notorious for taking their students to bed, but my efforts to seduce the American were a dismal failure. Finally, I worked up the courage to tell Kura I wanted to go home. Wherever that was… the Marais I suppose. I didn’t get the reaction I’d hoped.