A Change Of Clothes

They were kind enough to give me this computer in my jail cell and my PhD thesis is almost done now. That must be a first at UC Berkeley. Other prisoners watch me curiously. My beard, my pince-nez, my Indian-brown skin is probably new to them. Some are moved to making a pass at me, and I find that curiously touching.

But my six months will be over soon, and I digress. This is actually a story about how I met Daffy Duck and the strange event that followed after that.

I wanted to find out more about the white race. Back in India, the white race was always in your face: on the silver screen, on BBC, in this choppy form of communication called the English language. An entirely different world, a different human species. How lives the white man who says things like ‘Tranquility Base, the Eagle has landed’? I had to see for myself.

So I brought myself to America with much effort. A PhD in computer science is not required to practice in that field. It is required as a reason, as a subterfuge almost, to come to the US of A. I joined UC Berkeley as a student and three years later, with still a year left to finish, my scholarship money ran out, forcing me to seek work.

MacDonald’s was too boring, so I looked for other avenues and was rewarded with a phone call from the local Seniors’ Choice, a company offering “at home daycare” to seniors.

“This may interest you especially”, the man said. “Mr. McAllister was the director of the team that built the Hubble telescope. He is eighty now, and has a bad hip. Uses a wheelchair. You may have some interesting conversations.”

I took the job as caretaker for the nights, though the pay was bad. Still, it paid my bills, leaving me the day for writing my thesis.

Paul, the Seniors’ Choice manager, took me to the McAllister home the first day. The affluent suburb of Pleasanton in the East Bay exuded an aura of recessed privilege. The McAllister home was huge, imposing. Three cars, including a new Porsche stood in the doorway.

Mrs. McAllister, “Ruth”, opened the door. Seventy-ish, sharp and self-possessed, she seemed relieved to see us.

“Hi Paul,” she said to my manager who had come to introduce me. “And this must be Dr. Na-ra--yan...Am I saying it right?”

“Close, ma’am, very close” I said, taking her proffered hand. “Though I am not a “doctor” yet.”

“You will be soon” she said, turned and yelled cheerily “Daffy, they are here! Come out honey.” “The kids call him Daffy here. He has a Daffy Duck costume he wears to fairs and parades. He was famous for his dance...”

“Yep. And now can’t do a damned dance with this damned hip,” Daffy yelled from behind her, as he wheeled himself into full sight. “You must be Narayan. What made you take this filthy job?” he asked angrily.

“Nice to meet you, Sir,” I said taking his hand. “I thought we could talk about the Hubble telescope and things.”

Daffy’s face grew a little less angry. “Sure, what do you want to know? Do you know why the screw-up happened? They wouldn’t give me twenty-five thousand dollars for the last test, that’s why. They spend damned billions building it, and then cut corners in the testing. But anyway, do come in. Has Paul explained what you need to do? I mean, cleaning my balls and all? The last man left in a hurry.”

“I am aware that you need some assistance, Sir. I am sure I can manage.” I said, already dreading the thought.

“Well, let’s see. He will be all right, Paul, you can go. He won’t cut our damned throats in the night.” Daffy chuckled. As Paul left, Daffy was commanding already. “Now, bring me a cinnamon roll from the kitchen. And have one yourself. They are good.”

“Would you like me to wheel you somewhere, Sir? Near the TV?” I asked.

“No No No. No TV. All crap. Let us talk, if you don’t mind.” Daffy said.

“Don’t scare him away, Hun”, Ruth laughed as she left for her club meeting. “Don’t mind his language, Dr. Narayan, he is in acute pain. I will be back by eleven or so.”

“Yeah, yeah!” Daffy made a face. 

Alone at last, his expression said, as I locked the door after Ruth.

On the mantelpiece stood a large picture of Daffy shaking hands with Ronald Reagan. “The only one I really admired.” Daffy explained. “That picture was taken when he came to see the work on the Hubble at Hardcastle-Waud. I was chief technical officer then. Reagan was interested, very interested in our work. Made me explain the whole thing.”

Daffy face had lit up. He wanted to talk. When I complimented him on the great success of the Hubble telescope, he was delighted.

“Do you know that they define the size of the Universe by it now? The radius of our universe is as far as the Hubble can see, in any direction.”

“And beyond that?”

“Who knows? Another universe, probably. A para-universe, if you will.”

In his excitement Daffy made an illegal move of his lower body, and was immediately convulsed with intense pain. With my antipathy to biology, I had never wanted to be a doctor, but at that moment, how I wished I was one. With the slightest movement of his bad hip, his face contorted with pain.

“They are still debating whether to replace it completely, can you beat it?” he said, his exuberance gone. “I am going to sue the bastards for the delay.”

I moved him to his plush bedroom. Then came the hard part of moving him to his bed. As I partly lifted his emaciated frame from the wheelchair, his pain seemed to shoot up a hundredfold and the air was blue with his curses. It took my inexpert hands some time to find the exact lying position in which the pain was the least, and later on Daffy apologized profusely for his swearing. “Happens every day, with every man,” He said. “No wonder nobody wants to stay.”

“When are they planning the surgery?” I asked.

Daffy made a face. “The other day they took my blood and urine for tests. That will tell them whether I am operable at all. But I said to heck with diabetes and all that. This pain must stop, do what you want.”

I carefully counted out his pain tablets. “Don’t work for shit,” he said, as he dutifully gulped them down. “The only thing that works is sleeping tablets. Don’t stop the pain but put you to sleep. When you wake up, the pain is worse.”

Daffy stared at the TV in acute pain. I hovered around, not knowing what to do.

When his pain subsided somewhat, Daffy wanted to talk.

“Na-ra-yan, that is a Hindu name. Does it mean anything?”

“Yes, I am a Hindu. Narayan is one of the common names of Vishnu.”

“Vishnu, yeah, I know Vishnu - he maintains the world order or something, right? And then there is a creator God and a Destroyer, right?”

“Yes. Brahma creates, Vishnu maintains and Shiva destroys. And then the dance starts again.” I explained.

“So Brahma is only one of the Gods? I thought it meant the unmanifested force creating the Universe or something.”

Daffy was getting into difficult waters. I had never mastered the intricate details of Hindu theology - not enough to explain them with any degree of lucidity, anyway.

“Well you know what, I will bring a book about this tomorrow. Then we both will know more”, I said sheepishly.

Daffy had this “GOTCHA!” expression on his face, which I found somewhat irritating. I thought of catching him in the same trap.

“So you are a Christian, I presume,” I said.

“No Sir, I was brought up Catholic. Got tired of all the guilting and their morose services. Became a Baptist.”

“That’s a Protestant, right?”

“Yep. They don’t like the Pope.”

“But they believe in Jesus.”

“Yes Sir. The Baptists believe in the resurrected Jesus. It’s a Jesus who walks with them in the garden of life today. That’s why there is no Jesus figure on their cross. He is already risen from the dead.”

“And he is the Son of God?”

“Yes Sir, that’s what they believe.”

“What about you? You don’t seem to believe in all this.”

“No Sir-ree. Not any more.” Daffy said with a wistful expression.

“Why?” I dared, knowing I was on dangerous ground.

“Well, you can’t force faith. You have it, you have it. You lose it, you lose it. Tough luck!”

“Did something happen that made you lose your faith, Sir?”

“Well, with the kind of shit that happens in this world, how can you believe in a benign God?”

“So who, according to you, made the Universe?” I asked.

But Daffy was sleepy and all this talk had made him weak. “Don’t know, don’t care”, he said peevishly, as he turned his head and closed his eyes.

This went on for a few days. My Hindu philosophy was rusty due to lack of use and I had to read up hard when facing Daffy. When not groggy with his medications, Daffy was always prodding, always cajoling.

“You guys don’t even believe the world is real, right? It’s all an illusion?”

“No Sir”, I explained. “That’s a misunderstanding of the word Maya. Maya is not illusion, but phenomenon, an appearance created partly by our thought. We always have this film of space and time over our eyes, so the error is bound up with our mode of perception itself.”

“So our mode of perception itself is wrong, huh?” Daffy asked, unbelieving. “So what do we see?”

 “We keep seeing a multiplicity of things, a flux of change.”

“So what lies underneath?” Daffy asked in a mocking tone.

“In truth, there is only one Being. It is undivided and omnipresent. We all come from this incredibly radiant and joyous reality called Brahman. And that’s where we return.”

Daffy made a face. “C’mon, this is too damned cute. How do you know?’ He asked.

“You cannot approach it through reason, Sir! But when your mind is sufficiently still, you know, you just know.”

Daffy rolled his eyes. Even I was tired. But slowly, I was finding the words to hold up my own against the very agile mind of Daffy.

Painkilling drugs had apparently stopped working and Daffy’s pain was often excruciating. The lab results came in and the doctors said that surgery was extremely risky due to his diabetes and they would not take the chance.

This sent Daffy into severe depression.

“This pain is very real to me, SIR! Not a damned illusion.” He shouted.

That brutal fact was beyond all metaphysical subtleties. I did not know what to say.

I would try to read to him, but he would stare in the distance, and I was never sure if he was listening.

---

On that fateful night I was reading to him from the Geeta, the Hindu holy book:

“Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never;

Never was the time it was not, End and beginning are dreams!

Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit forever;

Death has not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems....”

Daffy was slowly coming back to life.

"And, like a man who casts away his worn clothes to don new ones,

The soul casts away the old body to take on a new one."

Daffy was wide-awake by now. “Read that last line again, please,” he ordered.

"And, like a man who casts away his worn clothes to don new ones,

The soul casts away the old body to take on a new one."

“So the soul never dies.” he said in a hushed tone. “It just acquires new garments.”

“That’s what the book says”, I said, worried by his sudden interest. “And when it has acquired enough merit through the ages, it will finally merge and become one with the Brahman. That’s what we call Nirvana.”

“And so, over the ages, I will return again and again...”

“Yes Sir. And build bigger and bigger Hubbles, till you go past the Hubble volume and penetrate the para-universe next to ours” I joked.

Daffy’s eyes narrowed. “I might, I might at that,” he said. I could not make out if he was serious.

“This is brilliant stuff. I take it that you have it on good authority?” He asked.

“Yes Sir,” I said. “The Geeta has been the supreme holy book for ages now. Millions have lived by it. All the great religious leaders admire it, including Christians.” I embellished a little.

“Okay,” Daffy said, his face strangely settled. “Thanks a lot and I will need that book.”

That night, I wheeled Daffy to his plush bathroom. Usually, he could not care less if I was around when he used the toilet. This time he insisted   that I close the door and wait outside. Concerned that he would hurt himself while maneuvering, I made a mild protest.

Daffy was suddenly very irritable.

“Can’t a guy get some damned privacy here?,” he exploded.

I hurried out and locked the door behind me.

Half an hour passed. “I will holler when I am done,” Daffy had said. There was no word from him.

I decided to risk his wrath and go in. Daffy was still on the toilet, half asleep. He smiled at me gently.

“Time for bed, I guess,” he said.

I put him back on the wheelchair and took him to his bed. He had a hand firmly in his pajama pocket and was refusing to pull it out. His body felt strangely cold and his skin was gradually acquiring a bluish tinge.

Very concerned, I pulled his hand out of his pocket. An empty medicine bottle fell out.

Daffy grabbed my hand in a vice-like grip. He was suddenly very awake and his eyes had this strange brightness.

“It’s Phenobarbital - my sleeping tablets. More than fifty of them. Promise me you will do nothing; call nobody, till I am gone. It’s only a change of clothes.” He hissed.

When I opened my mouth to protest, his grip tightened. “C’mon, Dr. Narayan, listen to your own religion for once, I beg you.”

In all this movement, another intense spasm of pain passed through him.

I sat down, looked in his eyes and nodded.

(Levittown, PA, 06/01/2003)