Cartwheels in a Sari by Jayanti Tamm Page A

session of meditation, in an instant, Guru lifted the sorrowful air, and magically transformed himself into a storyteller.
    With a gleam in his eye, Guru coyly teased, “Now, I have barked at you all. Is anyone interested in hearing some rubbish tales? Absolute rubbish tales?”
    “Yes, Guru,” we shouted back, with my voice the loudest.
    Of course we were interested, how could we not be? These were stories about Guru's childhood—the fact that he even had a childhood gave me hope. His past seemed remote and vague, except for the rare occasions when he re-created it for us.
    Instantly, Guru's posture changed. Slouching his shoulders, he tucked one leg upon his throne, and rested his arm on his knee. His voice cleared of the low and often raspy tone that accompanied his first words after a prolonged period of silence. He now spoke quickly as his sentences finished with exclamation marks.
    Guru's childhood was a realm of adventure and innocence. In Guru's remembrances, he was usually involved in some type of trouble or mischief, and then, just as easily, slipped out of it without a scratch. From stealing sweets meant for the family shrine to climbing the mango tree to gorge himself on its fruit, Guru was intent on exploring options and testing limits. Guru's status as a young troublemakerwas lovingly accepted and sanctioned. Though his birth name was Chinmoy, his nickname was Madal, which meant “noisemaker,” and that was the name that he carried until he arrived in America. Then he took the special honorarium reserved for holy men and women and renamed himself Sri Chinmoy. It was Sri Chinmoy whom I had known my whole life, but it was Madal whom I was most curious about. The idea that Guru had a prior life—involving siblings, parents, scoldings, and trouble—was fascinating.
    Tonight, as always when Guru recounted his tales, time evaporated. In the middle of one story, he veered off toward another anecdote and then another until an hour later, as though finally noticing that he somehow had taken an alternate route, he stopped, asking how he had gotten there. I did not mind, sitting enraptured, as his stories blurred from one episode into the next. Guru often repeated stories, and I recognized his favorites, which quickly became my favorites, too: Guru's survival from the overcrowded commuter ferry that sank; Guru's face-to-face encounter with a tiger in the dark forests of Bengal; Guru's near rescue by his family servant, after standing too close behind an imam's machete poised to sacrifice a goat. As Guru spun his childhood reminiscences, he was relaxed and happy, as if he wished to be back in a time before he was responsible for the salvation of souls and his only responsibility was keeping monkeys from snatching away the fruit he would carry home to his mother.
    What we knew about Guru's family we learned from his stories. Guru's father worked as a train inspector for a railway line that ran from Chittagong to Assam and later founded a bank. Guru's mother stayed home to raise their seven children. Even though he was an orphan when he was only twelveyears old—his father passed away when Guru was only eleven, and his mother died the following year—their loss seemed raw, as if their absence still left a hollow space inside a holy man filled with God.
    “Oi,” Guru finally said, as if waking from his own sweet spell. “Oi. I have talked too much. Let us go, dear ones,” and with that the meditation was over. The book of his childhood was tightly closed, and, as always, I greedily wished he had shared more.
    After the meditation, a select group of disciples was usually invited to Guru's house. Although the official meditations were relocated to the church, Guru continued his practice of hosting unofficial gatherings that spilled from his living room onto his porch. These invitations to Guru's house became a prized honor, evoking jealousy and envy for those who were regulars on the special list. My family was