Philosophy Made Simple (19 page)

Armed with the brochure from the hotel in Detroit and with
Weddings of Many Lands,
Rudy met the pandit at El Zarate, a cof
fee shop in downtown Mission. The pandit had three white stripes running across his forehead, and a red dot just over his nose — not one of the little
bindis
Rudy’d seen Indian women wearing, but a bright red spot the size of a silver dollar. A chain of large beads, wrapped twice around his head, kept his white hair out of his eyes but allowed it to hang down over his shoulders; his long beard covered his shirtfront and concealed his mouth. He was drinking tea. He was, he explained, a
baba
— a guru, a teacher — as well as a pandit. He approved of Rudy’s intention to ground his daughters wedding in ultimate reality,
in the
Ding an sich.

“Ceremonies are in place,” he said, pausing to blow on his tea, “with roots that reach down very deep, Mr. Harrington, all the way down into the
Sivaloka,
the causal plane, the quantum level of the universe where the gods guide the evolution of the worlds.”

“Did you say
worlds?”
Rudy asked.

The pandit nodded.

“My daughters fiance has just published an article about parallel universes in an important journal.”

“Yes,” the pandit said, “western science is beginning to catch up with what the great sages have known from the beginnings of time.”

Rudy offered to send him the articles in
Time
and
Newsweek,
but the pandit waved the offer away. He may have been pleased with Rudy’s intentions, but he was not at all pleased with Rudy’s answers to his questions about Molly and TJ.

“Kanyadan,”
he said, shaking his head. “
Kanyadan.
The greatest gift a man can bestow is the gift from which he will acquire the most
punya
— the gift of a virgin. The gift of your daughter in marriage …” He fixed Rudy with a glance as sharp as a needle. “’On this auspicious day,’ you must say, ‘I give away my daughter who is pure and in perfect health and beauty to this groom.’ “

“There’s nothing to be done now,” Rudy said. “They’ve been living together for six months.”

“You should be ashamed to say such a thing to me,” the pandit said.

“I’m sure that all Hindu brides are virgins,” Rudy said.

The pandit brushed this observation aside. “The key concept here is
prem,”
he said, “what you call love. But let me explain that while
prem
is an aspect of traditional Hindu marriages, it is not the mainspring, and it does not play any role in the marriage negotiations.
The aim of marriage, Mr. Harrington, is to unite two families, two lines.
Sangam,”
he said, “the auspicious confluence of two mighty rivers. It is not necessary that the individuals love each other at the beginning. It is not even necessary that they know each other. From what you’ve told me, however, your daughter is entering into a love match, a grand, individualistic passion based entirely upon
prem.
It has nothing else to support it. Such a union is cheap and immoral. It will fail because its very foundation is illusory and impermanent.”

“But how do you ever get to the foundation?” Rudy asked.

“Supreme Consciousness,” the pandit said, leaning forward. “All our spiritual practices have Supreme Consciousness as their ultimate goal. But it is not a parlor game; it is not for those who are mentally and emotionally unstable.”

“Like me?”

“I did not say that, Mr. Harrington.” He finished his tea and pushed the cup away from him. “I want you to sit comfortably.”

Rudy adjusted himself in the booth.

“Keep your back straight.”

Rudy straightened his back.

“Now close your eyes and relax. Breathe naturally, through your nose. Let the breath come in and out of your nostrils without fore
ing it. Breathe deeply. And stop fidgeting. This won’t hurt you. Don’t worry about other people looking at you, just do as I say.”

Rudy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then another.

“Now,” said the pandit, “I want you to focus your awareness on a point right between your eyebrows, do you understand?”

Rudy nodded.

“Now bring your awareness in, slowly, till it’s about three inches inside your head, inside your brain, and just let it rest in the silence. If images start to appear, don’t fight against them. Just let them recede into the shadows.”

Rudy waited. No images appeared, but the sounds of the coffee shop grew fainter and fainter.

“Now ask yourself,” the pandit said, “who is aware of your own awareness? What is there? What is not thinking, not doing,
just watching? And who is aware of your awareness of your own awareness?”

Rudy felt a hand on his shoulder. The pandit was shaking him. He took a sip of his tea, but it had grown cold. He felt alive,
clear-headed.

“If you connect regularly with your atman,” the pandit said, “even if only for an instant, your heart will be healed. You will be calmer and less fearful.”

“My heart,” Rudy said.

“Yes,” the pandit said. “I read about your heart attack in the
Monitor.
You were very fortunate that the elephant was there. Norma Jean. I believe her real name is Narmada-Jai. I have several of her paintings at the ashram. In any case, we shall begin, as I have explained, with an invocation to Lord Ganesh. The elephant-headed god.”

“Norma Jean’s staying at my place for a while this summer. The USDA inspector is after the Russian to make some changes
in her barn. I was thinking we could work her into the wedding. Maybe TJ could ride on her from the house down to the barn,
wherever we set up the
mandap.”

“A white horse would be more appropriate,” said the pandit, “unless you’re a king or a maharajah.”

“Well, I’m not a king or a maharajah,” Rudy said.

“An elephant is always an auspicious presence at a wedding,” said the pandit, softening his tone, “but her function should be not to carry the groom but to greet your guests.” He laughed. “It would probably be best,” he went on, “if I performed a short version of the traditional ceremony If you wish, you can let me know in a week or two and I will cast the horoscopes and determine an auspicious date and we can proceed from there.”

“What would an abridged ceremony be like?”

“It would be shorter. Not two or three days, but an hour. And it would be comprehensible to non-Hindus.”

“That’s good,” Rudy said.

“It must take place outside. You’ll need a
mandap,
as you already know, and some carpets to sit on, or even folding chairs. At the front and in the center we’ll position the sacred fire, which can be in a brazier, or even a charcoal grill. But you need not trouble yourself with these details now.
The Taj Mahal can provide the
mandap,
and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Rudy nodded again.

“And I’ll need their natal charts.”

“Natal charts?”

“Their birth dates and the precise times of their births, so I can cast the horoscopes.”

“I’ll see what I can do.

“One last thing, though, Mr. Harrington. A
mangalashtak,
or poem, must be presented on this occasion. You could perhaps
compose the
mangalashtak
yourself, if you’re inclined that way Or you could choose something suitable.”

‘I’ll see what I can do,” Rudy said again.

“Mr. Harrington,” the pandit said, standing up, “you know, I suppose, that Lord Ganesh — the elephant god — in his aspect as Ganesh Mahodara, the big-bellied one, is the dispeller of
moha,
which is infatuation or delusion. He is the remover of obstacles.”

“Well,” Rudy said, “I read a little about Lord Ganesh in
Weddings of Many Lands,
but we’ve put some obstacles in his path.”

“No obstacle is too great for Lord Ganesh,” the pandit said.

“I’ll remember that,” Rudy said, picking up the check. “By the way. When you asked me to focus on that spot in the brain
… atman. Was that Supreme Consciousness?”

The pandit almost choked on his tea. “Mr. Harrington,” he said when he’d recovered himself, “you are full of surprises. You are not a king or a maharajah, but you want your son-in-law to ride on an elephant at your daughter’s wedding. And now, having taken one small step on a journey that will occupy a sage for many lifetimes, you ask me if you have achieved Supreme Consciousness!”
He extracted a napkin from the napkin holder and wiped his eyes. “Excuse me,” he said. “I sometimes forget where I am.”

“In Texas, you mean?”

The pandit nodded.

“One last question,” Rudy said. “How did you get rid of the crows?”

The pandit took hold of his wrist, like Norma Jean. “Mr. Harrington, Mr. Harrington. We all have our secrets. This is mine.”

That night Rudy got out Helen’s correspondence folder and went through her letters — the ones she’d sent him before they were
married, and then from Italy — till he found the poem he was looking for, a
mangalashtak
for his daughters wedding. The letter was dated June 12, 1931, six weeks before they were married. Helen was working as a secretary at DePaul, her alma mater, taking one course a term toward a masters degree in art history, reading poetry, studying French and Italian. It was the second year of the Depression. No one had any money, but people still needed to eat. Rudy was working sixty to eighty hours a week on the South Water Market, living up on the second floor of Becker’s warehouse on Fourteenth Street. His job was to round up a crew of dockwallopers — winos from the St. James Hotel on Twelfth Street — and pay them a buck apiece to unload the boats, loaded with produce from the big farmers’ market in Benton Harbor, that docked at the piers just south of Congress Street.

The summer days were long. The last boat would usually dock just before midnight, and he had to have his orders filled by four o’clock in the morning and, at five, start his rounds in the city. But he was young and strong, and at least once a week he’d take the El up north to Fullerton to see Helen and they’d walk in the little park at the end of Shakespeare Street and she’d smoke a cigarette and blow smoke rings and tell him about her classes. Or he’d meet her at the Art Institute, and when it closed at five o’clock they’d have a soda at the big Walgreen’s across the street. One night she stayed downtown and they went dancing at the Oriental Dance Emporium on State Street. She rolled her stockings down to her knees and fastened them with elastic bands that nearly cut off her circulation. The next day her uncle, the referee who’d introduced them and who was anxious to marry her off, came over to Becker’s, where Rudy was stacking flats of avocados onto a pallet, and hinted that it was about time for Rudy to clarify his intentions.

She’d been writing to him at Becker’s, and the secretaries and the bookkeepers had never stopped kidding him. She told him
how much she loved him, and she sent sketches she’d done of the buildings at DePaul or the animals in the Lincoln Park Zoo,
and she copied out poems that she especially liked. The poem Rudy was looking for was by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Helen had heard Edna read at the Arts Club a couple years earlier and now, she’d written to Rudy, Edna was having an affair with the University of Chicago student who’d introduced her at that reading. The poem had been written to him, the student, George Dillon. Rudy hadn’t really understood it till Helen explained it to him, but he’d folded it up carefully and carried it in his billfold for years, till the creases had worn down to nothing and the paper itself was smooth and shiny, and he was afraid it was going to fall apart. He took it out of the folder and smoothed it out carefully on Helen’s desk:

Not in a silver casket cool with pearls

Or rich with red corundum or with blue,

Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls

Have given their loves, I give my love to you;

Not in a lovers’-knot, not in a ring

Worked in such fashion, and the legend plain —

Semper fidelis,
where a secret spring

Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain:

Love in the open hand, no thing but that,

Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt,

As one should bring you cowslips in a hat

Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt,

I bring you, calling out as children do:

“Look what I have!
—
And these are all for you.”

Sitting at Helen’s desk, he read the poem, saying the words out loud, as if he’d just opened her letter and were reading it for
the first time, as if their life together still lay ahead of them, as if all he had to do was take the Howard Street El north to Fullerton and she’d be there in the station, standing at the bottom of the stairs, or sitting on a bench at the trolley stop, her head in a book, waiting for him.

He folded the sheet of paper carefully and put it in his billfold.