Brotherhood Dharma, Destiny and the American Dream by Deepak Chopra & Sanjiv Chopra

Author:Deepak Chopra & Sanjiv Chopra [Chopra, Deepak & Chopra, Sanjiv]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General
ISBN: 9780544032101
Google: -XAYAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0544032101
Publisher: Westland
Published: 2013-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

15

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An Obscure Light

Deepak

Deepak enjoying time with his grandchildren Tara, Leela, and Krishan, 2011.

WE HAVE WORDS IN ENGLISH for illumination and parables about the road to Damascus. The sudden stroke of awakening is very dramatic. But it would be helpful to have a separate word for a slow-motion epiphany. The reason it doesn’t exist, I suppose, is that slow epiphanies often aren’t recognized until years later, with a backward glance.

After storming out of my residency and severing all ties with the Tufts-affiliated hospital, the way forward seemed hopelessly blocked. Endocrinology didn’t seem to be in my future anymore. I felt stymied. On the positive side, my replacement job at the ER in Everett paid a living wage, much more than my fellowship had. When I showed up there, expecting to moonlight for hourly wages, I was met by the only full-time ER doctor, who was overwhelmed, and he offered me a full-time position on the spot. I protested that I wasn’t really qualified in emergency medicine, but he waved away my objections, saying that he would train me. Rita was pregnant with our second child at the time, but my work was so demanding that we barely saw each other in passing.

One night while I was on duty, Rita called me in the emergency room. “Congratulations, you have a son.” At first I didn’t understand what had happened.

When she had started having contractions, Rita gathered her maternity things and drove herself to the hospital (her mother, who had come from India to stay with us, was the nervous passenger), and hours after giving birth she phoned me. It’s an accomplishment to make it safely downtown through the tangle of Boston traffic in the first place. It was strange to hear all of this in between trauma cases at work and I was sad that I couldn’t break away when I got the news. But that was our life.

We decided to name the baby Kabir, in tribute to one of India’s most revered poets. My mother used to have friends come in for kirtan, ceremonial singing and chanting. Someone would play the harmonium while the ladies sang songs that were often by Kabir.

The poet Kabir has a lovely story attached to him as well. He was an orphan in Benares, and no one knows what religion his parents followed. As a baby he was adopted by a poor Muslim couple who taught their child the weaving trade that he pursued his whole life. Kabir looked beyond Islam, however, and tricked a guru named Ramananda into giving him a Sanskrit mantra to meditate on. But this didn’t signify that he thought of himself as Hindu, either. When Kabir died in 1518, the Muslims wanted his body in order to bury it, while the Hindus wanted the body to cremate it. A heated argument arose. Someone drew aside the cloth that was draped over the corpse. Miraculously the body had turned into a bouquet of flowers. This was divided, and the Muslims buried their half while the Hindus burned the other.

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