Before
the Package
I was late for Todd’s 66th
birthday party in Austin,
Texas. So many things popped into my head, but I was
seeing more vehicles than thoughts. Very, very confusing. While driving, I
told my wife Yani funny stories about Todd and his wife Julie.
I
remembered their son Rick boasting about his traffic ticket. He was driving
with his girlfriend, he said, when his jeep rolled over. They’d had no seat
belts on. He’d had one hand on the steering wheel, he said proudly (the
other hand feeling her body parts with gravity), and one foot on the brake
pedal (the other rubbing her leg). He leaned toward her often (too much
kissing). Next the rollover! Luckily the rollover didn’t cause any injury.
What kind of lovemaking is it when you endanger your lover’s life? Todd told
me that’s why the girl broke it off with his son. Her parents hated Rick.
They told Todd they did not want their grandchildren conceived in a jeep.
I wished I had not influenced Todd’s
decision. My love for the jeep stems from boyhood days when I watched
military and police officers driving their jeeps along the narrow dangerous
dirt roads of my native Himalayan region. Todd wrote me that he remembered
my love of jeeps and gave his son a jeep for a high school graduation gift.
I wondered what gift he gave his daughter, Tina. Julie, Todd’s wife, sounded
very happy with Tina’s Hindu husband Rom Harshan from
Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal. She said that the
greatest gift Rom could give Tina was a knowledge of Indian culture.
Todd had been my classmate at
Indiana. His father was a minister in a nearby
Indianapolis church. My father was a brahmin priest
in the Indian Himalayas. Since we were from priestly families, some
classmates thought that we would eventually be priests in
America.
(A classmate called us
SOPs, short for “sons of
priests,” but I was sure the intended phonetic value for P was B. We knew he
was at odds with us because we didn’t like the way he flirted; we called him
Mr W, short for “show-off and womanizer.”) Todd and I became close friends
because of our numerous common interests. Our Ph.D. dissertations in
sociolinguistics were not our common interests. We shared a major
intellectual interest: the meaningful connections of myths and rituals with
real things in life.
I was excited to be going to see Todd
and Julie. Todd had retired from his university job but held the title of
“Professor Emeritus of Sociolinguistics.” Julie still taught comparative
religion at the University of
Indianapolis. We’d stayed in contact throughout
the years and exchanged opinions on religion quite often. Julie’s interest
and interpretations of myths and rituals were very professional. She
understood the meaning of myths and rituals in a way that an average person
like me couldn’t even imagine.
“Everything has meaning,” I said to Julie when she asked me what my position
was as a sociolinguist. But she showed me meaning where I failed to see any.
And the meaning she explained was based on context, so it sounded simple and
interesting!
For
example, I told her how Himalayan bus drivers, always strongly-built men,
believe certain gods and goddesses protect them against road accidents. Near
the dashboard or tucked away high up in the bus, there is always a picture
or statue of Lord Ganesha, Mother Durga, or Lord Vishnu.
Lord Ganesha is our local god. He was
created in the Himalayas. He has an elephant head
over a human torso. Devout Hindus believe him to be the remover of all
obstacles. His vehicle is a mouse. A clumsy elephant-headed god-person
riding a little rodent up and down and around the highest mountains of the
world!
Goddess
Durga always has a beautiful sari wrapped around her enchanting young
body, but she rides a ferocious, roaring lion.
Lord
Vishnu, dressed in a dhoti, flies on the back of a giant eagle. Lord
Vishnu has four hands: in one he holds a bow; another a disc; one has a
conch; and upon one palm there sits a lotus.
“Julie,
we couldn’t find any connection between these deities and protecting a bus
from a rollover,” I told her when I was talking about my love for jeeps, and
my investigation into the matter.
I gave her some idea of the “jeepable”
road that the British government constructed in my Himalayan district to
link India
with the Tibetan border during the Second World War. That road was also used
for civilian traffic. A lot of buses every year would meet with terrible
accidents, usually involving rolling down the hill. The narrow, winding
dirt roads were often blocked by fallen rocks or trees. Almost every bus was
overloaded, not only with passengers but luggage inside and on the roof. All
this surely killed any joy the passengers might have, looking out at the
extraordinary beauty of the mountains, rivers and forests. Sometimes the
road itself would disappear because of a slip during the monsoon. In any
case, most accidents were caused by speeding. Gods had no control over the
behavior of the bus drivers.
Julie,
however, begged to differ. “Very interesting that these gods all use some
sort of vehicle, Mohan. Your Himalayan drivers get intelligent messages from
their divine protectors: if the road winds, drive like a mouse dragging a
heavy load; if the road is straight, speed like an eagle, to make up for
lost time. And a lion’s roar in a bus engine must sound pretty good when
you’re driving up a hill. Which just goes to show that whatever gods do,
humans can imagine better.”
So many memories to share with Julie and Todd...And maybe news of his son,
who’d finally met another girl and got happily married.
I, too, was lucky to enough to be
happily married. I agree with Yani most of the time, as I had vowed to do
for the male-chauvinist priest who performed our wedding. He supported the
ancient Indian mythical sage Manu, quoting a line from the Manusm®ti
or Manu’s Laws: “A woman must be under the control of her father when child,
under the control of her husband when adult, and under the control of her
son when old.” I didn’t want to tell him that other men have controlled them
by religion and rape. A brahmin priest could not be questioned if you had
him for your ceremony, although he would
have forgiven me as I was young and
brash then. And the woman I was marrying was very beautiful, besides
being superlatively educated.
Julie and Todd knew that I was not
supposed to be married to Yani. A DSP (deputy superintendent of police) in
India had asked my father for me to marry
his daughter. I was not yet finished with my PhD work, but when I went back
home I had a faint suspicion that my parents must have arranged a girl for
me. Then a friend showed me a newspaper clip about a drowning in
New Delhi.
The daughter of the DSP was in love
with a boy in her college. The DSP wanted her to marry someone else (I guess
it must have been me, but the newspaper had no mention of me except that
“the choice of her father was a boy who was studying in the
USA”). There was nothing wrong with that
boy; like us, he also was from a Himalayan brahmin family. But a
U.S.-educated son-in-law would have been a dream come true for the DSP. He
grounded his daughter for days and abused her verbally and physically.
One
night, when everybody in the house was fast asleep, she ran away with her
boyfriend. The DSP had his officers looking around for her. One day, an
officer saw her with her boyfriend on a motorcycle. The officer, who was
riding a police motorbike, chased them, and after a long pursuit, their
motorcycle fell in the Yamuna river. Was it a suicide attempt or an
accident? The girl was dead by the time she was brought to a nearby
hospital. The boy swam back to shore and he was charged with murder. After
spending three years in jail, he was released on the grounds that it had
been an “accident.”
But it
was not an accident. My in-laws told me. They met the boy in a wedding
party, and since then, he visited them occasionally. He was interested in my
sister-in-law. He told them that it was a suicide attempt but he changed his
mind after he swallowed some dirty water. But my in-laws doubted his version
and my sister-in-law had not the slightest interest in him. The visits were
tolerated because he was from our Himalayan brahmin community.
The whole story was like a Hindi movie
from Bollywood, quite unbelievable. But what was not unbelievable was that
the girl was stunningly beautiful, like a film star. My in-laws and my
parents had her pictures. Two years later the boy committed suicide. He rode
his motorbike and went all the way to his village in the Garhwal Himalayas.
He climbed his village mountain peak
of Chandrabadni and jumped off.
Chandrabadni (CandravadanŸ
“the moon-faced” goddess) lives on that peak and protects her devotees!
Two
beautiful lives were lost – with me partly the cause. The law of karma or
“cause and effect” holds that each person is the reaction to his or her own
actions. But I can see that there are causes that are not personal. Somehow,
awareness of me, my identity, has entered others’ awareness, and the entry
can be helpful or harmful.
Anyways,
just after that girl’s accident, my father found Yani for me. (My father
religiously hated procrastination. For example, he had my mother and seven
children with her – all before he was 39. The only issue he delayed was his
own death. He was 91 when his heart failed him, just after enjoying his last
dinner).
Yani
corrected my driving on the trip, while I went back and forth with memories
about Todd and Julie.
Now I
found myself between two giant ugly trucks.
I
couldn’t clearly hear what Yani was saying. She raised her voice, “What the
hell are you thinking?” She raised her voice higher and pointed at the
trucks, “Get away from these two beauties!”
Those
beasts farted smoke. I could hardly breathe and my sinuses were stuffed up.
The noise of the tires, engine and other shaky parts beat at my ear drums.
“You are
out of your mind. This isn’t a military jeep,” Yani said as I overtook an
18-wheeler by swerving too far and too quickly on the shoulder.
Finally
we saw our destination – the parking lot of the building where Todd’s
birthday party was arranged. The lot was almost full. I got a space in a far
corner.
We
quietly walked up to the double-door entrance where a couple of men stood.
One of them went inside as we began to climb the steps. The other threw his
cigarette down. He crushed the butt with his shoe and inquired if we were
invited. We showed him our invitation card. He took his glasses from a
pocket and looked at it. He seemed to have very poor sight as he tried to
read the card from various angles…Then he opened a small guest-book. He
tried to match our names, flipping pages back and forth.
He said
finally, “Pardon me. Let me go inside and check with the organizing
committee chairman. Can I take your driver’s license for confirmation? They
might have forgotten to list your name here.”
Though
embarrassed, I reluctantly gave him my driver’s license.
A couple
of minutes later he marched out, waving what looked like my licence, and
said, “The chairman says you are a little bit late. The program is already
on. But he would like to talk to you inside – ”
“Give me
my driver’s license,” I said, grabbing for it, as I felt we should leave
immediately. Yani remained expressionless.
“The
chairman has your license. This is your invitation card for entry,” the man
said. With a raised eyebrow, he handed it over and opened the door.
Once
inside, I heard everyone shout “Surprise!” I saw them stand and applaud –
spread all around, over one thousand hands and feet. When they stopped
clapping and stomping, I saw Hemal in front of me with his wife Shailaja,
each with a garland of multicolored flowers. As they put a garland round my
neck and another round my wife’s, several cameras flashed. I still had no
idea why they were honoring us, though it looked as if the occasion wasn’t
for Todd. But neither was it our marriage anniversary, or a birthday.
Neither of us had won any honors or awards. Not even any interviews or news
in the local newspapers, radio or TV. We hadn’t committed a crime. So there
couldn’t be any news to cause a celebration in a huge hall like this!
I
jokingly asked Hemal, “Hey, did we do something interesting?”
“Ask
your wife!” A hearty round of laughter followed.
So my
wife knew. I asked her, “What is it, honey?”
“You’ll find out over there.” She
pointed toward the stage. Yes, the hall had a big stage, too. They escorted
us there…
My wife
and I sat down on the chairs, and Hemal stood in front of the podium.
“Ladies
and gentlemen!” he said loudly…And slowly the room fell silent.
“Ladies
and gentlemen! Good news and bad news!” he continued. “Our omniscient priest
has no idea why we are assembled, but thanks
to his beautiful and learned wife, he
has been delivered here as planned. The bad news is his retirement from
teaching and priestly duties. The university already gave him a farewell.
Tonight it’s our turn to say ‘thanks’ for his community service – the
priestly service, which, I know very well, he never took seriously. I was
the one who brought him into this business. He did it because I wanted to
pay my final respects to my father. My father was his relative, too. so he
couldn’t say ‘no.’ I knew that. All those who attended my dad’s memorial
found out that Professor Chaube was a Himalayan priest’s son. ”
Now I
understood the occasion.
Hemal
wiped at tears. “He told me that there was no reason for me to brood over
the loss of my father. I couldn’t even attend his cremation. ‘Cremation is
construction again,’ this priest said, when my wife and I were crying. Then
he recited the Vedic hymn where cosmic Purusha or Person is sacrificed
ritually in a cosmic fire altar. The burned Person is born again and
pervades everywhere.”
I remember when Hemal called me on
September 11, 2001. I thought he was calling me from his home in
Boston. His brief call was from
New Delhi. For us, it was about
7.30 a.m. in Phoenix,
Arizona. He said, “Bhai ji, watch your TV right now.
America’s World
Trade Center is
burning. Those who burned it must know that it will be born again and
pervade everywhere. Nobody can destroy
America’s Purusha.”
I had no idea what he was talking
about until I turned on my TV. After that I believed him. Hemal has never
been on the famous Fortune 500 list, but he has been a very successful
industrialist. As a Wharton Business School MBA, he understood his
potential. Hemal Pande’s expertise has been sought from Wharton to the White
House. For me, his success is a matter of pride. We are both from the
Garhwal Himalayas. Our wives are also from there. But otherwise we are
American citizens, and our future is here in
America.
Anyway, as a youth I would never ever
have thought of my future as a priest if it were not for Hemal. I came here
to be a social-behavioral scientist and
got my doctorate in sociolinguistics – the study of how people interact
“verbally” (and by contrast “non-verbally”). So human interaction or
contact became the bridge to my two opposing careers – behaviorist and
priest. Then came Dr. Sharma’s philosophy of “contactism” – the only
hope for creative human “contact.” This philosophy’s practice in
foreign policy could have averted, for example, the destruction that I
watched on TV on September 11, 2001.
A friendly and egalitarian contact, mutually advantageous to both parties,
would have been the best way to resolve the conflict.
Hemal
continued praising me.
“Dr. Chaube’s Sanskrit name is
Chaturvedi or the ‘knower of the four ancient Vedas.’ Actually he
knows only the three Vedas: Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, and
Atharva Veda. The other Veda, the Sama Veda, being musical, was
too difficult for him. He didn’t have the voice of the late Indian singer Ba®e
Ghulam Ali! But we have someone here whose father knows Dr. Chaube and Ba®e
Ghulam Ali...Ladies and Gentlemen, I introduce to you the Honorable Judge
Ashiq Ali.”
What! Ashiq here? Yes, he came toward
me out of nowhere and then touched my feet the Indian way to show the
highest respect. We embraced each other. Tears came to my eyes. The young
kid I saw had become a judge in the United
States of America. His father, Farooq, was
my classmate in India
and here. Yes, his father told me so many jokes about Ustad Ba®e
Ghulam Ali…
Ashiq picked up the mike. “It would be
fair to say that Dr. Chaube is a priest indeed, even though he doesn’t
believe in religion. He believes in religions. But there was a time when I
knew very little about my own parents’ religion. So I asked him once when I
was about eight years old, ‘Uncle! Are you a muscleman like my father?’ My
father was so skinny that anybody would know that there had been food
shortages in India
when he was growing up. So Uncle said, ‘Your father isn’t a muscleman. But I
am.’ And then he showed me his arm and produced a big bump on it to say,
‘See, your father doesn’t have muscles like I have.’ Of course he was making
fun of my American pronunciation of Musalman, which means Muslim – ”
His
speech was interrupted by laughter from the audience.
He
continued. “We also laughed…But then Uncle became serious and said, ‘Ashiq,
I am. I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t eat pork, I believe in charity. Now
what more proof of my being Muslim do you want? Oh one more, Dehradun’s
Mulla Ayub put a talisman on my arm when I was very sick. The talisman had
the holy writings from the Quran’ …But then, Uncle doesn’t believe in God.”
Ashiq
paused and looked at me, “Uncle, I know you don’t believe in God. Are you
really a Swami or a Buddhist?”
I tried
to speak, but laughed instead.
“You
don’t need to answer, Uncle. You appreciate the good behavior recommended by
all religions. But as I understand it, you don’t think God is necessarily a
metaphor for good behavior…Don’t worry, Uncle. Terrorists have proven that
there couldn’t be a thing like God, otherwise He would have shown His
impartial compassion by some sort of control over their Satanic
behavior…Pardon me for using the pronoun ‘He’ – though to you, gender
wouldn’t matter for a non-existent entity, anyway…”
After
Ashiq’s speech came another surprise. Vipra and her husband suddenly
appeared from behind me after Hemal said, “Now Vipra and Raj will present a
plaque to Professor Chaube.”
Raj
originally was not named Raj. But Vipra’s parents compelled me to change his
name “Rex” to a Sanskrit name. That’s a long, ethnocentric story…
With the
plaque, they handed me a gift, beautifully wrapped. “This contains exciting
videos. They are for you to enjoy in your privacy. We will send you more
stuff later, but of a different kind.”
How fortunate I was. I got the
opportunity to work with thousands of students and hundreds of colleagues
from all over the world, not to mention scores of friends, and their
friends, for whom I was a priest in America.
They colored my life with so many shades I had a hard time knowing what I
looked like. I was aware of the undeserving vicissitudes of life that some
went through. They used me as their religious counselor. Religion or no
religion, I often told them that life was like the phases of the moon,
bright half to dark half, and dark half to bright half. Why some had too
much dark, some too much bright, I didn’t know. I knew they were educated,
mostly college-educated. So I used karma as the religious reasoning for
their lot, but they knew that I didn’t mean that. For example, it would be a
most unreasonable explanation that their relatives were killed in the
World Trade
Center because of their karma! Or to moronically
claim that it was an all-merciful God’s punishment, as some did!
Tears
rolled from my eyes when I held the package and the plaque in my hands. The
package felt quite heavy. I wished I could meet the video-owners again.
Impossible, I knew. All I could do was try to remember them. Thanks to
Mother Nature, our creator, that she evolved brains in our bodies and
language in our brains.
Yani
took the package and plaque from me and gave me a napkin.
After returning to
Phoenix, I kept the package on my writing desk to
remind me of the videos. I called Todd and told him how his birthday had
been used to honor me at Austin,
Texas. Julie and Todd had been invited to attend the
occasion, but they couldn’t make it since Julie’s mother had been
hospitalized for a minor operation.
“Hey,
just send me those videos. Julie and I would like to know what the hell is
in them!” Todd said.
The next
week Yani had most of them copied and mailed to him.
But for
months, I didn’t watch a single video, until Yani received a call from
Julie. Yani guessed the videos must contain ceremonies that I’d performed.
What she couldn’t guess was that some contained very dirty stuff. One day
she quoted Julie: “Those youngsters really wanted to roast your husband. He
may not really want to watch those videos with you.”
So next
day, when Yani was not at home, I opened the package…Wow, a lot of videos!
There was a “Thank You” card on the top, with a note. It said, “Since you
never charged priestly fees, we decided to give you video copies of the
ceremonies that you so kindly performed for us. With these ceremonies you
shared our pains, fears, and pleasures, and we shared your academic
understanding. We asked you a lot of questions with or without any relevance
to the ceremonies. We made you jump from one thing to another because we
were eager to know from you as much as possible. You have entered our lives,
and we hope that you feel the same way about us…”
The note
was signed by each of them.
Yes,
once people know that the priest is a professor, they want to know the
“this” or “that” about Indian religions and mythology, philosophy and
literature, even politics and history. Each person has his or her different
cultural queries, and I try to answer them to the best of my knowledge. But
too many queries get mixed up, and sometimes the whole discussion has
disconnected parts. Not everyone is happy with what I say. They don’t want
to disbelieve the beliefs they cherish so dearly. Therefore I cut off short,
leaving the matter for later discussion. No one can ever stick to one and
the same topic, in any case. I know, too well, how discussion turns rambling
in everyday life.
But in
the process of trying to cut discussion off short, I became acquainted with
everyone’s rambling stories – some farcical, some unmentionable, and a few,
it seemed to me, on the point of tipping into the deep, dark unknown. Some
of those stories must be in these videos, I hoped.
