Page 91 of And Still Her Voice
***
At last the moment arrived. We were all in Bonaris and had just plunged into the sacred river to be purified. As I lay on a giant rock drying myself out in the sun, trying to meditate, Grandma wouldn’t shut up about the whole experience. “Isn’t it all so exhilarating?”
“Indeed, it is, Anna,” a man’s voice said.
I opened my eyes and turned my head to see Swami on the rock next to me. Legs crossed, face up, he had his eyes closed.
“Meditating?”
“Trying.” I rolled onto my side and cut to the chase while I had the chance. “Back in New York, I heard you speak about how it was possible to live in harmony with your dual consciousness.”
He smiled, lifting his chin to the sun, as if he were proud of me, his Young Grasshopper.
“I share a consciousness with my grandmother.”
“Ah, yes. What a gift.”
Maybe he hadn’t heard me right. Maybe he didn’t understand my being literal. “My grandmother lives in my head.”
He nodded slightly. “You can learn to live in harmony with your dual consciousness, but you must first learn to let go of the anger.”
He’d said that before, but I hadn’t understood what anger had to do with it?
“Perhaps, he was talking to me,” Grandma said. Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. Even if she’d done a decent job trying to control her anger, she had a lot to be pissed about and she’d for sure passed it on to me, traumatizing me with anger from who knows how many generations.
“Indeed,” he said. “We have the ability to control our thoughts, instead of being controlled by them. We want to avoid the pain and grief that comes with accepting a relationship is over, and so we hold on and continue to keep getting hurt forever. However, once we let go, the pain will ease over time.”
“She’s the one not willing to let me go. I just want her gone so I can finally be happy.”
“It’s not that easy,” Grandma added. “I’ve been trying for quite some time.”
The Swami didn’t seem to notice the low tinted voice. “Run toward the light and your shadow will stay behind you,” Swami said. “Some people want to be happy quickly, so they take shortcuts and get temporary happiness. But borrowed joy comes and goes.” He looked as if he were speaking to the heavens. “We keep trying to find that happiness and we keep missing it. When we finally tire of searching for happiness, we sit quietly and wonder, “What is this? Why am I unhappy? Happiness simply is. Our true nature is peace and joy, a duality, if only we don’t disturb it.”
With that, he became silent and I didn’t want to disturb his peace.
Later, I wished I’d had my recorder with me so I could go back and listen between the lines. I was sure I’d missed something again.
But the funny thing, as time went on, was that Grandma seemed to be at peace and more importantly, I seemed to be at peace with her. My mind seemed focused, not flying all around. Could it be Grandma and I were now truly one, no longer just parallel beings, but united? Not discordant, no cacophony? A beautiful duet? I wondered whether it would be possible for Grandma and me to live in harmony as “peace” and “joy.” I’d make it my mission to gather the tools for this to happen. She was a part of me; it would be like cutting off my head to spite my thinking (believe me, the thought had crossed my mind before). I soared with elation. Ebullient, I was on my way to a spiritual awakening I’d never experienced before. It felt as if I’d arrived, seated on the edge of a peaceful lake—but this couldn’t be the end of my journey.
And it wasn’t. Grandma wasn’t quite ready to let me go, but for the first time in my life, I wasn’t motivated to let her go. I just needed to learn how to harmonize a little better.
A few of the devotees had planned to follow Swami on to Ceylon, but as we neared Madras (Chennai), I felt Grandma’s excitement growing. “We’re so close to Adyar. We must visit.” She was right. I hadn’t come this far not to.
CHAPTER 32
Just Breathe and Lessons Learned
Madras proved a more difficult city to drive through than LA during rush hour.
“It has certainly changed since I was here last,” Grandma said as our bus rolled in, horn blaring, through the suffocating city.
Drivers and pedestrians seemed to ignore the traffic policemen in khaki and white baggy kurtas. Vans full of passengers whizzed by, including half a dozen men and boys sitting lotus-style on the rooftops. Buses stuffed with passengers hanging out the open windows bumped along. Festively decorated tiny rickshaws with two rows of seating tuk-tuked up and down the sooty streets. People, laden with packs on their backs, peddled bikes back and forth. Women dressed in bright saris clutched their children’s hands along the dusty sidewalks as they made purchases from the fruit stands and shops with colorful signs in English. Brahma bulls pulled carts full of feed or grain.
Makeshift billboards hung on poles and lattices made of timber from the mahogany trees. The city, sitting on what used to be a marshy forest, still maintained some green that had not been totally choked out by development. Lined with curtains of palm trees, the streets gave one the hospitable feeling of a Hawaiian tropical vacation. But as I stood on the top step of the hot, humid bus, there was no relief, no welcoming smell from anyleis of plumeria. Instead, auto exhaust and the stench of dung and sewage from the open sewers stung my eyes. The air looked smoggier than any day back home and sultrier than a steam room.
I deboarded into a balmy day across from the mouth of the Adyar River, where its brackish currents swirled into the Bay of Bengal. As I made my way from the bus stop to the headquarters of the Theosophical Society, there was no mistaking the contrast in the midst of all the urban chaos.
An older sentry stood guard at the entrance to what looked like an enchanted forest. “Do you have an appointment?”
