Bruce Wagner - The Empty Chair

Sorry to interrupt myself but I probably haven’t said enough to set the scene. I know I’m all over the place… maybe you can clean it up when you — I really do think I should get a little into how things worked. Not that it was all that mysterious, it’s just that people really have no idea about what goes on in the life of an ashram. Mogul Lane wasn’t really an ashram , strictly speaking… I promise this won’t take too long.

You see, the Great Guru had been a householder and family man. Two of his five children died; his wife and him had 12 grandchildren and a ton of great-grandkids between them. She was a piece of work. Her three sisters — the “aunties”—did all the cooking (hence, the “Kitchen Cabinet”) and had final say over any controversies that arose among the extended family, which occupied the two floors above the shop. All the tenants had been with “Baba” in excess of 40 years, loosely comprising what I’ve been calling the inner circle. Mrs. Great Guru kept a firm hand on the finances, which were robust on account of the steady stream of rupees donated each satsang day from attendees and local merchants; sent through the post, and so forth. A second ring of the inner circle looked after Baba’s daily needs — laundry, grooming, medicines, that sort of thing. Last but not least was the outer ring of enthusiasts living in rooms scattered across the city, the typical patchwork of loners, zealots and malcontents who wash up on any rishi ’s shore. Each ring was needy in its own way, the wife and aunties being the scrappiest, most demanding of the lot. The Great Guru took pleasure in every skirmish he secretly set in motion—

Hold on a second!

It just occurred to me you might be wondering how the fuck I know so much about the Great Guru— a man I never met .

Okay: it’s an informed pastiche. Isn’t that what life is anyway? And I’m really not being cute. Everything I’m telling you or am about to tell you was taken from notes of my conversations with the American himself. Because remember, I spent four rock’em sock’em months on Mogul Lane before I fled; the Great Guru had been dead only a short while and the American talked about him non-stop. Talked to me. The rest I’m filling in from things Kura said when we hooked up in Delhi — we are getting to Delhi, Bruce, I swear, don’t you worry! — you know, things Kura told me as we headed to our momentous destination. Just trust. That everything I’m telling you— everything —has been drawn from my diaries and Kura’s memory, and the so-called qualia too — remember “qualia,” from school? (Maybe you weren’t a philosophy freak) — sifted through contemporary consciousness with what I perceive to be minor embellishments, which in my opinion is a totally valid approach to telling a hopefully seamless tale, particularly one in which the narrator brings so much of her own life experience to bear. A story, by the way , that I’m uniquely qualified to share, taking into consideration not only my intimate knowledge of a key player but the quantity and quality of a lifetime of “meetings with remarkable men”… Liken me, if you will, to a gifted translator who couldn’t possibly give you the literal text (no one could) but can approximate the rhythm and flavor, the moods of the original, and the true or truest sense of what the poetry evoked. The mother tongue. I’m the mother tongue motherfuckah.

In other words, have faith. I have no doubt you will. I can’t imagine you’ve got a different strategy, doing this as long as you have.

Scheherazade sings for her supper.

Bathroom break, please?

We resumed three hours later.

Well, all rightie then.

Those satsang tapes were a brilliant success. The American had an entrepreneurial streak that was, well, very American. And the Great Guru loved American energy! The rookie was on a roll: from the tapes sprung the collected transcripts that comprised the golden calf of Mogul Lane Press, The Book of Satsang . (Up till then, I think there’d only been a few pamphlets and chapbooks.) An entire library rose, elucidating what the sadhu preferred to call his “concepts.” The compilations benefited enormously from the American’s elegant edits and translations. His fine ear was matched by a finer eye; he designed the book covers and even the typeface that was to become an MLP trademark. The ingeniously simple logic of it — satsang-to-tape (or cassette or whatever it was back then)-to-book — vaulted the Great Guru onto the world stage. The American was very shrewd when cutting distribution deals for his teacher’s catalogue of essays, Advaitic homilies, and whatnot. His prescience was uncanny when it came to discerning who would work with him, and who would work against. He knew that if he was to succeed he had to imagine business dealings as a game, albeit one with serious consequences. He was sagacious enough to know that if ever he acted out of greed, the jig would be up.

Naturally, the books found their way to the States, where they piqued the interest of artists, singers and poets. Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder made a pilgrimage and stayed a few months, maybe in ’63 or ’64… which actually might have been before the Book was published. (Peter Orlovsky was with them too.) Toward the end of my Bombay tour of duty, I remember being shown a photograph of the four of them — Ginsberg, Snyder, the American and the Great Guru — staring into the lens with “fierce grace.” By then I was already beginning to resent Mogul Lane and the dominion it held over Kura. Still, I looked at that group shot and felt a pang of envy that I hadn’t been there too… that funky old un-“be here now” feeling! And, oh: I can still see the framed page that hung on one of the grimier walls of the kitchen, torn from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe : “There’s nothing that spoils the taste of good ordinary food so much as the memory of bad magic food.” No idea how it got there.

Now, back to that first day in Bombay.

1970. The Great Guru’s dead, but Kura and I don’t know it. Kura’s sitting on the floor in front of the Master’s chair, in excitation. Me? I’m halfway up a pole on my lookout, smugly surveying the scene, too green and/or discombobulated to ascribe any meaning to the fact that satsang was coming up on an hour-and-a-half late, a delay that would have been off the charts for a legendarily punctilious guru. And heedless of other signs too — the superabundance of flowers, the images of Baba glued to the paddles of hundreds of gyrating sticks held high in the air like bidders at an auction, the menagerie of musical instruments, their disparate songs in discordant competition amidst the general insanity. Nor did I take note of the ululating voices that rose and fell in an entangled, sometimes annoying ecstasy of mourning. Schooled in Western culture, it all seemed very rock star to me — weren’t gurus the rock stars of India? Besides, what for-real rock star was ever on time?

A sudden implosion of quiet engulfed the shop, its shock waves spreading to the street and beyond like a silent alarm. The aggressive stillness stopped the urchins in their tracks, which said a lot. I shiver just remembering. It was unearthly…

— then he appeared. Not from the upstairs rooms, as would have been the tradition of the pandit, but from a side door… stepping gingerly through the multitudes as they parted like the Red Sea — I never thought I’d use that horrible platitude but nothing else can describe it, Bruce! (And incidentally, making his way along the same path my intrepid Kura had blazed.) He was white, with blond, thinning hair and an aquiline nose. Tortoiseshell glasses. Early 50s? (He was actually 55.) I’m horrible with descriptions. Fairly bland though not unattractive. Very composed, very cool. Lithe. Had one of those lithe walks, a “supple gait,” like a jaguar. A slight smile. Simple white kurta. I remember thinking he must be some sort of staffer who “ran” satsang. Probably’d make a few announcements before introducing the Main Event. But when he turned to face everyone, he didn’t say a word. And oh! That otherworldly silence kept falling, the sound it made was deafening! Why was everyone so quiet? That sound… like flurries in a snow globe.