“Consciousness of love,” says muumuu girl.
“Ananda.”
“Pure love, bliss and joy,” says Oliver’s father, smiling at Joan.
“Parabrahma.”
“The supreme creator,” says Camille Nagy, her eyes focused on Ela.
“Purashothama.”
The man of the identical couple pats Joan’s knee and says, “Who has incarnated in human form to help guide mankind.” She is relieved when his hand leaves her knee.
“Paramatma.”
“Who comes to me in my heart, and becomes my inner voice whenever I ask,” says the woman of the identical couple. There is something Joan hears in her voice that sounds just the littlest bit dirty.
“Sri Bhagavati.”
“The divine mother, the power aspect of creation,” says Young Man with Beard #1.
“Sametha.”
“Together within,” says Young Man with Beard #2.
“Sri Bhagavate.”
“The father of creation which is unchangeable and permanent,” says Young Man with Beard #3.
“Namaha,” says Ela. “I thank you and acknowledge this presence in my life. I ask for your guidance at all times.” She pauses, looks from face to face, then says, “Namaste.”
“Namaste,” everyone calls back.
“Does anyone want to discuss their meditation practice? The peaks and potholes you may be finding?”
Young Man with Beard #2 says, “I can’t seem to get past fifteen minutes when I’m meditating on my own.”
Ela says, “Be grateful for those fifteen minutes. This is not a challenge of endurance. Be kind to yourself.”
Young Man with Beard #2 nods and nods, wraps his arms around his skinny frame.
“See you all tomorrow,” Ela says, and then everyone is standing, taking their pillows to a corner, stacking them up.
“Did you enjoy it?” Camille asks Joan.
“I think so,” Joan lies. “I couldn’t catch on to the mantra.”
“If you keep coming, you will. You’ll learn this one, and all the others.”
“How many others?”
“I know two dozen now. Some teachers give handouts with the chants, but Ela doesn’t. She believes the words must come to you from the air, not from a page.”
Joan has believed the same thing, only her words, in the past, made it onto the page.
“You must come again. I am here every summer, from June through early September, and I’ve been practicing with Ela for years. It takes time, but this hour is specifically devoted to giving yourself that time. Come, Ela will join us, and we’ll go for tea.”
Joan would prefer not to spend the next hour discussing mantras, but Vita Brodkey would tell her that this is an experience she is meant to have.
“That would be lovely,” Joan says, and when she slides her feet into her golden sandals, the crystals splashing in the sun, she is acutely aware of telling her second lie so immediately after what is meant to be a purifying act.
“Nice shoes,” Camille Nagy says, stepping into her practical ones.
*
Ela, Camille Nagy, and Joan are at the Mcleodganj Teahouse, a canted house high up in the hill station, at a small table with three teapots, drinking Kashmir Kahwa tea from pretty white cups. When the server poured, he said, “This exquisite green tea has been used for generations to make the royal version of the Kashmiri Kahwa tea.”
Joan wanted to ask if that meant they were not drinking the royal version, and if not, why not, and how the two differed, but she didn’t.
“This is Ashby’s first time in Dharamshala,” Camille Nagy tells Ela.
“Welcome. What problem are you attempting to solve here?”
For a meditative woman, a teacher no less, Ela is very direct. And Camille, under the guise of refilling her teacup, pulls her chair closer to the table, closer to Joan, her head tilted slightly, to catch every one of Joan’s words.
Joan is not certain what she wants to say. And suddenly she is wondering whether Daniel’s theft of Words was a perverted way of turning his childhood dream real, and if so, hasn’t she been proven right, that Martin was wrong, and she should have listened to her instincts—pushed Daniel to find out why he stopped writing about his squirrel. And she remembers her worry, so deep and real, that throwing Henry away would mark Daniel for life, had perhaps already marked him, that there was an enormity to his actions only Joan seemed able to see.
“A tough time with one of my children,” Joan says to Ela and Camille.
“I am sorry,” Ela says. “But you are lucky to have them no matter the issues. Camille knows this about me, but I will share it with you. I was once happily married, a love marriage, which was much rarer in those days than it is now, but I endured three miscarriages, in the first, second, and third trimesters, in that order, and then a still birth in the ninth month, and my husband left me for a woman who could hang on to what he planted in her belly. I was desperate for quite some time, and I came here from Bombay to seek answers and I never left. Two pilgrimage weeks turned into forty-five years. And it has been a far more fulfilling life than I ever expected to live. Please no condolences. It’s all in the past.”
The information Ela has just provided sends Joan spinning. Ela’s been here in Dharamshala for forty-five years, after four tries at creating a baby? How old can Ela possibly be? She looks no older than Joan. Joan thought she and Ela were contemporaries and Camille was the older woman, but it might be Ela and Camille who are of the same generation. And Joan is simultaneously thinking, awfully, horribly, how she would have welcomed a miscarriage with the first one, how that would have obviated the second, but would Martin have turned sneaky, would she have had to become eagle-eyed, to ensure he didn’t deliberately mess with their birth control that had failed just that once.
And she is thinking how she has long subscribed to the truth that many people can be parents, but most can never be writers.
And she’s also thinking, given that she birthed two children whose existences she had acceded to, growing used to the idea, to them tucked up inside of her, that she can’t imagine Ela’s pain, the loss of so many potential wanted children, of losing a husband because her body refused to cooperate.
“And Ela knows this about me,” Camille says. “Never married. Never wanted a husband. No children of my own, but I spend the school year teaching painting to severely handicapped children who belong to others, so I have my fill.”
That Camille Nagy has never been married and has no children does not come as a surprise to Joan.
“What sort of children do you teach?” she asks.
“Children with developmental disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, fetal alcohol syndrome, Tourette’s syndrome, any child with a cognitive or physical disability, and the easy ones, those who are merely blind or mute.”