Hanging Out With the Zen Crowd

I stood waiting for my turn at the front desk, and around the chairs and couches I saw a group of people, most of whom were white and in Western clothes, so I suspected they were the travelers with whom I was to meet. I attempted to listen in on conversation and came to the conclusion I was probably correct. I fidgeted enough that the guy behind the counter must have thought that I was impatient rather than worried about being abandoned, because twice he politely said, “Ma’am, I’ll be with you in a moment.”

I considered introducing myself to the group by saying, “Hi! My name is Jet Lag!” I have a theory that I shouldn’t talk to anybody for the first twenty-four or so hours of each trip, because I turn being scatterbrained into an extreme sport and make a complete ass of myself, not the first impression I care to make. I anxiously sidled over to the group, and an Indian woman in a beautiful batik blue and purple salwar-kamiz and scarf said, “Bina.”

I smiled and said, “You’re Bina? With ‘In the Footsteps of the Buddha’?” She smilingly replied in the affirmative and said I must be Susan.

“Wow! How’d you know?” I asked, amazed that she figured that out and wondering if she used telepathic powers. Maybe she practiced some form of Indian mysticism.

“I’m going by age,” she said with a smile. That made more sense than telepathic powers or mysticism. It also suggested to me that I am one of the younger people on the trip. My e-mails, coming to think of it, are pretty youthful, and most people think I’m younger than I am. I figure artists are supposed to be a bit childlike, anyway. On the other hand, I probably gave my age on the application for the trip, but I could already tell some of the people in the group were approximately retirement age.

I said, “I still have to finish up at the front desk, but I was anxious about being left behind.”
She reassured me, “You won’t be left behind.” What a relief!

I returned to the front counter and eventually paid for my indulgences from the bar. I returned to the group, this time pulling my wheeled suitcase behind me, and I spotted an Indian guy in a blue kurta and white scarf who was about my age and had a contagious kindly smile, and I smiled back. I later learned that his name is Mukesh.

I am getting the hang of this smiling stuff: I don’t think I’ve smiled or laughed much since moving to Kansas. Sometimes I was even afraid I forgot how to laugh, but it seems I was simply saving my laughs and smiles for India. It’s very easy to do here.

I didn’t stand like a wallflower for long before another Indian guy, who was close to my height, turned to me and gave me a really charming smile. By Western standards he would definitely have looked eccentric, and I suspected even by Indian standards. He wore a light blue cotton kurta, white trousers, a white scarf, a dark brown Zen-looking jacket with big patch pockets, a pair of black-rimmed glasses on a cord, a diamond stud in one ear, and an ecru Afghani hat that reminded me of the Italian Renaissance because it was shaped like a beret but with a padded roll for a brim. He looked something like the guy on the brochure, so I decided he must be Shantum Seth, and I was correct.

Like Bina, Shantum knew I was Susan before I even said so, and this seemed kind of uncanny. Maybe it was telepathy or mysticism after all. In his crisp tenor voice with a high-class British accent, he explained in the most flattering way possible, and with another charming smile, that my e-mails showed that I have a great deal of energy and enthusiasm. I was struck speechless and realized I must have been showing a great deal of “energy and enthusiasm” right there in the lobby. But he said it like it was a great compliment. At most two minutes after meeting him, I thought, “Wow, what a guy.”

Normally when people comment about my energy and enthusiasm, they’re contemptuous, critical, and in some cases even bite my head off. But likewise, if I act deadpan and try not to show any emotion, which I’m likely to do in order to avoid criticism, people chastise me for behaving that way, for not smiling or laughing. It’s reminiscent of the Buddhist story about the grumpy guy who approached different monks, and he complained because one of them said too much, but he also complained because another hardly said anything. There’s no pleasing everybody, and for me it usually seems like there’s no pleasing anybody.

“Aren’t you the girl who asked your father to pay for the pilgrimage?” Shantum asked, and I nodded and laughed.

“I hemmed and hawed a lot before I resorted to that,” I explained hastily. At some point in our conversation, I mentioned that my alarm clock is broken and I overslept, and I asked, “Do Indians do wake-up calls?”

Shantum smilingly said, “Yes.” So it was yet another thing about which I need not have worried.

2
Now our suitcases are in the back compartment of the tour bus and we’re riding it for the first time. It stopped and a guy stood on the meridian to our left and yelled at the driver. A crowd gathered, and a boy brought a large basket of fruit. Ann, one of the New Yorkers in our group, observed with a laugh that the fruit seller must have figured that with this many people gathering, he may as well set up shop. Eventually someone explained to the rest of us that the agitated noisy guy thought we hit his motorcycle. Or perhaps he wanted to convince the driver that we hit his motorcycle so that he could make a few extra rupees.

A reddish-blonde woman sitting across from me, whom I would later know as Valerie, said, “Do you feel like you’re on a pilgrimage yet?”

I said, “When I think of a pilgrimage, I picture Tibetan nomads trekking across a barren landscape and spinning prayer wheels.”

We went to Shantum Seth’s house and garden for an orientation meeting, or perhaps I should call it a house party. First we entered the living room through a sliding glass door, and a servant with a tray offered us bright orange mango juice in little glasses. Shantum introduced his aunt, his dad, his wife Gitu who wore a gorgeous green silk sari, and a friend of the family and member of Shantum’s sangha, while we sipped the yummy juice. The décor is lovely, with old Buddhist and Hindu artwork all over the house and big bookcases full of books. In one tall cabinet with glass doors, I noticed numerous books by Vikram Seth, recognized the novelist’s name, and suspected he might be related.

Shantum called us out into the garden, where along with his dad and Bina we formed a circle by sitting in a variety of chairs and benches and a swing, and we took turns introducing ourselves. The temperature was in the seventies and weather was lovely, with a very slight breeze and a bright blue sky, and for a few seconds I remembered the snow and ice I’d driven through in the past week and was glad it was all behind me. We were a larger number of people than I had expected, because the brochure claimed the groups are ten to fourteen, and yet we are a total of twenty-one. We include numerous Americans, three Canadians, several Brits, and one pilgrim from the Netherlands.

We ate a scrumptious and entirely vegetarian lunch that was cooked by a professional cook. I could hear people in the kitchen attached to the dining room; the Seth family actually has servants, a rarity in America but apparently it’s normal in India. The food was set up on the circular dining room table and included several curries, basmati rice, and pappadums; I took a small sample of each dish, even the one that Gitu warned was really spicy. I took my plate out to the garden by trees and a black metal fence.

We would travel on a plane in the evening, and the Indian airline is picky about how much carry-on luggage passengers bring, so after I selected my gifts and got everything except the mat and the cushion into my new bag, I handed them all over to a guy just in the hallway with numerous gigantic duffle bags, and he put my stuff in there. I went back downstairs and wandered around.

I wore new black sandals I had ordered online for the trip, from a vegetarian shoe company that doesn’t use sweatshops. Shantum’s dad, Premo Seth, liked my shoes. Bina explained that he is retired from the shoe industry, so he really knows shoes. I’m no fashion queen and mostly set my own styles, but I was delighted to get the Shoe Aficionado Seal of Approval.


On a door in the living room, I saw a framed New York Times article about Vikram Seth and his novel A Suitable Boy and, brimming with curiosity, walked up to it. I discovered that Vikram Seth is Shantum’s brother. In the center is a big picture that shows the family, including Shantum, and the article dates back to the early nineties. Premo saw me reading it and pointed out Shantum in the center and said, “He had a lot more hair then.” This conjured a giggle out of me.

I said, “I’ve heard of Vikram Seth. He’s a famous novelist!” Premo Seth agreed. Six months before, I made a list of Indian authors, and Vikram Seth was on the list, but he was one of the authors I hadn’t read yet, unlike Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, and a few others. If I had known that Vikram Seth is Shantum’s brother, I certainly would have read something by him before the pilgrimage rather than waiting till afterward.

We climbed aboard the bus, by which time I was in a euphoric mood and smiled while I looked out the bus window. Some kids were trying to fix a bicycle down below, at the side of the road, and one teenager looked up at me with such big and pathetically pleading eyes that I stopped smiling and felt ashamed for feeling blissed out when someone nearby suffered.

Soon everyone settled onto the bus, and Shantum picked up the microphone. The first time he used it, while standing at the front of the bus, he smiled and said into the microphone, “Breathing in… breathing out.” My smile returned. During the drive from the house, we crossed the mostly dry Yamuna River plain, and Shantum explained that it’s only flooded in monsoon season. I saw rice paddies, bright green crops partially under water. The river smelled like a sewer as we crossed it.

We passed the Old Fort, an enormous red stone building that the emperor Sher Shah Suri built in the 1500s. He replaced the Mughal emperor Humayun and scared off Mughals with this imposing chunk of architecture, but Humayun came back after Suri kicked the bucket. He moved into the Old Fort and died after falling down a flight of stairs. Watch your step. According to rumor, the Old Fort is at the location where the Mahabharata takes place.


We drove past a huge elaborate building that I thought must be a palace, and several people asked Shantum what it was. He explained it was a temple built by followers of an extremely popular guru, and if you look closely at a particular tower you can see a statue of the guru that looks a lot like a Buddha statue. Someone asked Shantum what he thinks of this building, and he animatedly replied, “I think it’s an ecological disaster, because nothing should be built on this flood plain.” I was glad he had such an ecological consciousness and spoke frankly about it. I visualized the enormous building sinking into the ground.

Another landmark Shantum pointed out to us was a group of one-story white buildings called Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. The buildings are large and impressive and look something like stucco, yet Shantum said they are all built from mud. Sophisticated buildings in India can be made of mud without looking like pioneer’s sod houses. I suspect that many walls and buildings in India are made of mud, including many I’ve seen in Delhi. They look mighty impressive and are generally painted white, peach, or yellow.