Chapter Twenty-Two

My name is Vinod Chatterjee. I died in a violent way when I was forty-seven years old. I have lived in the in-between realm for nearly ten years. I have waited long enough. It is now my time to flourish. It is now my time to decide.

When I was thirteen, my brother Ajay was fifteen. Our father Vicrum sat us down on the couch in our living room and told us we had two choices in life.

“I am a doctor, but it has taken me twice as long to arrive at my destination,” he explained. He had trained for his profession in India only to retrain once he arrived in Canada, setting himself and our family back ten years. “I am tired. And since I have done this twice, it means I only have enough saved away for only one of you to go to medical school. One of you can be a doctor and follow in my footsteps. The other one of you can go into the army, and they will provide an education.”

I did not understand that my father was presenting us with cards that would hold our future. I did not understand that we were being asked to make a choice. I thought my father was telling us a story, like he always did.

Ajay spoke first. “I will be a doctor like you.”

“Very well,” our father said. “Vinod, you shall go into the army. How does that sound?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t understand why we can’t both be doctors, but share the burden of cost?”

“The world does not work that way,” he said. “You cannot look forward and backward at the same time. So you must make a choice and stick with it. Or wait too long and have the world decide for you.”

Ajay stared at me with his large brown eyes. Then I understood. I had waited too long to choose, and now I must learn to accept the world. I could not look forward and backward at the same time.

“Well,” I said, “at least I am happy.”

From then, I made my goal to be happy. I am always the happy one. My brother Ajay’s name meant invincible in Sanskrit, and his character always followed suit. He was an open-heart surgeon in Toronto and was soon scouted by the US marketplace. Invincible, indelible, unconquerable. My name meant happiness. Our names were given to us by the world, so we learned to live by them.

When I was eighteen, I enlisted in the army and was shipped overseas. I used to write my father letters when I was gone, nearly every night. I begged him for stories about our family in India whom I had never met. I wanted to know about his brother who had also enlisted in the army. Tell me about the planes he flew over the water. Was it like the Avatarana in Ganges River, pure and sacred? I wanted to see the Ganges for myself; make the quest in the month of June and wash my body in the river so I could be washed away of the sins I had let pile up. My uncle, my father’s brother who also flew planes in the army, had made the quest many times. When he died on one of his missions, it was over water. Not the Ganges, but all water is life and runs back to the source. His life had become a perfect circle, an ouroboros I wanted to know about so I could feel some sense of purpose, of progress. I soon realized that it was me trying to look forward and backward at the same time. My father never wrote me in return, never answered my questions about a quest or about our family line. So I accepted the things I could not change.

I finished my tour in the army. I received a decent education. And I moved back to Canada. The world had changed around me, but I refused to look too far into the past. Only forward, only the future. I opened a store with my money, and I met my wife. Life was easy, life was the same over and over.

Ajay died first. He didn’t look while crossing the road, and before the car hit him and crushed his skull, I am sure he accepted what happened to him. Like my father before him, like our uncle. Like all men who lose their way in this family. I know who I am, and I know the choices I have been given.

When I died and watched as my body was torn apart and tossed into a river, I pretended it was the Ganges. I pretended I was like my uncle flying above the river, into oblivion, and accepting the final fall. I had lived my life as dictated. I expected release.

But there was only so much I could take in the in-between place. I attached to my hair and wandered and wandered until I found the Crown. They gave me life again. Listened to my stories about my uncle, the Ganges, and our father’s proverbial choice. I told them about the chakras and came up with more stories about the marks on the vessel.

It was all a lie.

I merely wanted someone to listen to me. I merely wanted a body to host.

I was sick of accepting the things which have happened to me.

Now I understand that there are always more than two choices. I can continue to search for Eisha, my sister-in-law and the only person who understood the pressure of free choice, but I know she’s gone. The women in this family always run. My grandmother lived until she was one hundred and two. I picture her, up until the day she died, watching the Ganges River and waiting for the right moment to return. When it did, she ran and she did not look back.

This person I am inside—Ethan—has a phrase inside his head that I like: All families are unhappy in their own way. This is like what my father told me, what my brother lived out, and what my grandmother waited for until it finally came.

But I am so suck of accepting things I cannot change. I am not a part of that family anymore, like Eisha. I will run like her, but not to her. I do not want to be reunited. I do not think my heart desires reconciliation. I do not even think I desire, until I feel the heat of revenge at the back of my neck, and I think of my murder.

I am dispersed. Scattered. I am looking forward and I am looking back. Next to the phrase about family Ethan carries in his mind is a myth about a two-headed figure: a Janus. He does not want to be the Janus, but I like it. I feel like I belong in that mythology. I get to have it both ways.

I would like to savour this feeling of being in-between but having a body for a while longer, before I become death inside the shell. Before I become something else I cannot live with but must accept. I will stay here as long as I possibly can, because now I get to choose.

He is the source of light in all luminous objects. He is beyond the darkness of matter and is unmanifested. He is knowledge, He is the object of knowledge, and He is the goal of knowledge. He is situated in everyone's heart.

Today that he is me.

Today that he is my choice.

My name is Vinod Chatterjee. I have lived in the in-between realm for nearly ten years. I have waited long enough. It is now my time to flourish. It is now my time to decide. I’ve made a home here.

I will not be going back.