First Steps

It was February 1968 and I was going to see Guru for the first time. Guru still lived in Manhattan then, in a brownstone apartment on the upper east side, where the Centre meetings were also held. My mother had already been going to see Guru for a few months, and Guru had spoken to me a few times on the phone, but I had never seen him. The meetings were held on Thursday evenings and Sunday afternoons, and it was a bright Sunday afternoon when I made my way uptown by subway and bus from west Greenwich Village to East 84th Street. I was travelling alone as my mother was rehearsing and could not go that day. I had previously scribbled down the address and remembered it was on 84th Street between First and York Avenues, but as I walked onto 84th Street, I realised I had left the paper home. I stood staring at an entire block of brownstones lining both sides of the street, not knowing the number. My heart sank—how was I going to find which building Guru lived in? I remember literally standing in the middle of the street looking up and down, left and right at all the brownstones. I only knew Guru as "Guru"—I did not know his last name. Even if I had gone into each brownstone and tried to check each narrow mailbox for a name, I would not have recognised "Ghose". I was about to give up and go back home (and possibly would not have seen Guru for months, as I was on break from college and had to return), when I felt a sudden pull towards the right. It was like a thread to my heart pulling me—right into one of the brownstones on the right side of the street. I felt like my mind was not working. If it had, I would have thought it completely bizarre that I was walking into one particular building ignoring all the others. I went inside and started climbing the stairs. I did not know which floor he lived on; I did not know where I was going. I reached the top of one flight of stairs and turned to walk down the hallway. There at the end of the hallway, framed in an open door, stood Guru in his Indian dhoti, smiling at me. He said, "So, you are Cindy." He had never seen me—how did he know who I was? He had been standing there, pulling me in from the middle of the street with his golden thread of love, and that was the beginning.

Tanima (New York)