“The years fell away. I didn’t miss my old life. Isn’t that something? Did not miss being a player. I did miss you, my Queen — well… a little, anyway! The Mogul Lane clan felt like family though I was careful never to make the mistake of being familial with ‘the American’… Slowly, I assumed the same tasks he’d performed for his guru — book publishing, distribution of audiotapes, all the sundry financial affairs. As you know, I was uniquely qualified to take the reins, by virtue of the profession I’d given up. It seemed the only activity I didn’t inherit was making book on the ponies! You see, dear Queenie, my challenge was to be thoroughly engaged, to take on as many responsibilities as I could handle without becoming self-important or feeling like the ‘linchpin.’ My guru would have picked up on that in an instant — then out on my ass I’d go! Not really… I doubt he’d have been so merciful as to send me packing. No, he’d rather see me twist at the end of my own rope. I avoided such a pitfall by keeping busy (a glorious way to quiet the mind), doing service, immersing myself in the river of my guru and the tributaries of all the workaday apparatuses that kept Mogul Lane afloat. No time to ruminate! That was my samasti sadhana.10
“I tell you, Madame Q, I became unrecognizable to myself in the best sense! I channeled my sexual energies into the yogas11 and yearning for God. There were no rules against sex—‘the American’ didn’t give a rat’s ass — but I wanted to see what might arise after subtracting — then transmuting — the predatory obsessions of the flesh. I hadn’t anything to lose; in a word, I’d already fucked myself to death. The game had gotten very old. Nothing to prove anymore on that particular front. It was difficult at first but in time became second nature.
“After four years, I disclosed to him the atrocities I’d committed in my long career… the wanton breaking of spirits, the taking of human life. Twas a high number of murders, my Queen, as you would have guessed. To this day my confession remains the most onerous and courageous of all my acts. I shall never forget the kindness, the elegance of my guru’s response, and that’s all I have to say about it. I’m committed to being honest about everything — at this stage, secrets would be pointless, even harmful — but in this one area, I’m afraid the books are forever closed. I know you’ll understand.
“As the years went by, I had a stunning revelation. My previous life — life before Bombay — suddenly made sense! It presented itself as nothing more than the preparation for a crime, the crime of all crimes: I was in the thick of planning my own murder. My guru said there are many vehicles to take us to where we’re going but human weakness is such that we imagine we’ll know what such a vehicle looks like. And yet more than not, one finds oneself in a car bearing no resemblance to that which was imagined — no power steering, too fast or too slow, uglier or prettier than we had dreamed. ‘The American’ said that if one is very fortunate, the vehicle is pointed in the direction of one’s destination. But that is the exception, not the rule. The Self makes terrible decisions! Its relentless drone of me, me, me can run a man right off the road or advise him to ditch the thing entirely when it doesn’t drive to his expectations. The hegira, he said, took guts of steel—‘All roads most assuredly do not lead to Mecca!’ O, he scared the hell out of us when he talked that way… twas my worst fear to reach the end of the road and realize I had taken a wrong turn in my youth or middle age, and now it was too late.
“And so, my dearest darling, I came to see that it was my destiny to jump ship — like Ben-Hur! — to leap from one chariot to another — from the Great Guru’s vehicle to that of ‘the American’—nothing short of an audacious cosmic stunt was required to keep me pointed toward the finish line. I was with him seven long years, seven years of such incomprehensible grace and mystery that even now, knowing all that I do, I wonder if I could ever be convinced to trade them away… But at the end of my sojourn, something happened that undid all the splendor, undid everything I’d learned or thought I had, plunging me into suicidal despair. I used to fear my guru would see through me, but such a fear was child’s play beside what happened.
Only the flutter of an eyelid betrayed his emotions. “I arrived at a dead-end. A wrong turn had been taken, and it was too late to go back.”
After a dramatic pause, Kura said:
“My guru vanished into thin air.”
I didn’t mind being left with a cliffhanger. I knew more would be revealed, and soon. (And I should probably add that I already knew a little about the American’s disappearance through gossip I’d heard over the dharma grapevine, and from the New Age rags too. But I never had the desire to do follow-up.) As we set upon our journey, I felt like a character in a story being written in real time. I could smell the pages we nestled in — tea-stained, dog-eared, bloody as his maiden copy of The Book of Satsang, and redolent of cigar smoke too. The passing landscape seemed like a dusty, petrified forest of Words. I was glad Kura had brought me up to speed before we left because now I was free to enter that delicious contemplative state evoked by Wanderjahre into unknown regions.
The convoy motored past the ecstatic, messy diorama of India while our knees jostled against each other; sometimes he took my hand in his. In close quarters, the tinted windows were defenseless against a world shot through by a midday cruelty of winter light. Kura looked frail, mortal. The sky was cloudless, its cupboards looted by katabatic winds… the profoundly unprofound thought occurred that even one day he would vanish, for good, as would the memory of all loves, old and new, as surely as “the American” had, never to be found nor perhaps meant to be. What’s that poem of Dickinson? “Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me. The Carriage held but just Ourselves”—while Kura looked out from our carriage, I studied him with involuntary vulture’s eye. The purple blossoms on the back of a hand that bespoke a recent hospital stay he’d chosen not to divulge… the contrived, carefree tom-tom of the carotid, a Trojan Horse that one day would betray him. It seemed to know I was watching and threw everything it had into its palpitations. There was something vulgar about the skin-deep show it put on—vein-glorious! — as if too eager to throw me off the scent that she was coming, Mother Death, gunning for this 62-year-old and whatever trombones he could offer. A few more floats and the parade would be over, the majorette could lay down her arterial drum… An overwhelming sadness fell upon me, far and away beyond the variety to which I was accustomed. I was used to being slowly pinned in the ring, a ragtag-team of tricyclic antidepressants and MAO inhibitors in my corner — but this sadness was out of reach of my tricked-out, penthouse-sized, suicidal splendor. When our backseat gaze met, Kura graced me with a sweet, plaintive smile. I had the queerest sensation he was reading my mind. I know it sounds corny but that was when I had a newsflash: I swore for the life of me the missing guru was him. I fought the urge to tell him to call off the dogs and turn the frickin’ car around. Everyone’s always saying, “Find the guru within”—well ain’t it the truth. But to each his own Easter hunt.