Why am I reading this old guy’s guff? I flicked here and there through the notebook. What was the cry I had heard from Mi Nu’s room? The growl? Does she keep a dog?
What if Dasgupta were dead and we were listening to the voice of a dead man?
That was a funny idea.
Every night, every session, he speaks to us on the video. When in fact he’s dead. Decades ago. Would it matter? Is the message any different because the person isn’t physically there? Because the person isn’t alive? What if they had recorded Christ, Muhammad, the Buddha? The Sermon on the Mount. On DVD. Listen to your Saviour’s voice in the original Hebrew with English subtitles (choice of King James Version or the Revised Standard).
Imagine Dasgupta’s recorded voice going on for centuries. It’s possible. Maybe he is dead.
The Fire Sermon, on CD. Ideal when driving in heavy traffic.
St Paul Preaches to the Athenians, available as an MP3 download. Take it on your trip to Greece.
Would everyone be Christian?
Would everyone be cured of their Christianity?
Some of the handwriting was tricky. The man was scribbling fast. It was getting more and more slanted, more and more windblown. For a moment I thought I could hear him. It was Jonathan’s voice when he got on a roll. Gravelly. Jonathan hated religion. How we made fun of my mum for doing the flower arrangements in church. Of his wife for teaching in Sunday School. ‘For Christ’s sake, Jonnie, how did you marry someone who teaches Sunday School?’
I turned a page. It was strange being here on this man’s bed, like I wasn’t in the Dasgupta Institute at all. I’d hopped over the fence and walked two miles to the Barley Mow and now I was sinking gin and tonics, listening to Jonathan. It was a different world.
Mi Nu’s room was a different world too. But that would be like when faces appear in the darkness, eyes calmly finding yours, drawing you down the tunnel to bliss. Instead I came to the pub. This diary is at least a fifty-fifty gin and tonic. I should check to see if he keeps a flask in his overcoat.
Perhaps that’s how I could have saved the company. A box-set of the great religious speeches of all time.
If we had the Buddha in person pronouncing his Fire Sermon, what room would there be for Dasgupta and his unctuous smile? Imagine a man with huge charisma, a huge ego — Christ, Buddha, Muhammad — he fears that ego, he knows it’s trouble. He preaches against egotism, he erects a religious system against egotism, satisfying his ego as he pulls in the disciples and demands total surrender.
The ringed fingers, the white cushions, the big belly wrapped in clean cotton. My friends this. My friends that. I CAN’T BELIEVE WE ALL SIT THERE EVERY EVENING LISTENING TO THIS JERK.
If we had Jesus videoed on the cross (adults only), the Resurrection on streaming, the Ascension captured on St Peter’s mobile, where would that leave the popes, the heresies?
Revelation on record. Where would that leave history? Or science?
How can the idiot preach anicca anicca anicca all is flux, feel the flux in your fingers, in your toes, and then fix his words for ever on a DVD, for ever the same, every Dasgupta Institute all over the world, retreat after retreat, the same recordings and video discourses day one day two day three day four five six seven, with translations in this language, translations in that, and the course leader actually present reduced to slotting a disk into a machine. How humiliating.
Dasgupta arises but he won’t pass away.
I should go forward tonight at question time and ask the bloke, Harper, How do you feel about all the preaching being done on DVD? Wouldn’t you like to preach a bit yourself? Since you’re here.
Plot. A secret society of frustrated priests schemes to destroy the videos of their deceased religious leader so as to make space to preach themselves. But the religion’s followers believe the dead man is God and tear the priests to pieces.
The blockbuster that could have saved Wordsmith.
Why oh why did my writers never write a blockbuster?
Just one Harry Potter. One!
Because you chose crap writers.
L.
Because you were scared of success.
L.
You published books because you didn’t have the courage to write them yourself.
L.
Writers write because they don’t have the courage to live. Everybody knows that.
L.
And you didn’t even have the courage to write.
L
The publishing company goes bankrupt and the publisher runs off with his tail between his legs. To get religion. Pathetic. Right when his family needs him most. His daughter needs him desperately.
L.
If you knew how much you’ve disappointed me.
L.
Why not stick naked babes on the covers, since you never think of anything else?
L.
You don’t even have the courage to sell the filth you’re always thinking.
L.
Turn Muslim and marry a child bride.
L.
You won’t even have to divorce me.
L.
The next Mrs H has her first period.
L.
The next Mrs H has her first driving lesson.
L.
The next Mrs H enjoys her first drink in the Crown.
L.
Sorry, I forgot, you’re Muslim now. No booze.
L.
Is everybody here plagued like this? Does everyone come here because their mind has become unbearable? A litany of self-accusation.
Plausible.
The reason you’re listening to a nerd like Dasgupta, of course, is because you need to. Because he is not half as much a nerd as you are.
Be humble at least. Even if his ego is absurd, his system may be helpful.
Idea: so as to suffer it no longer, summarize everything in one hundred words. Your life in a blurb. THEN FORGET IT FOR EVER.
Exorcize your life in a blurb and spare yourself the book.
It’s weird. Sometimes this guy sounds like Jonathan, mostly when he’s being witty, sarky. But when he’s really unhappy he sounds like me.
Question: If there is no self, why do we fall in love with one person rather than another, and why always the wrong person?
Stop reading, Beth, get out of this bed and go to Mi Nu. Now. Ask her: how can I become like you, Mi Nu? How can I finally change, really change?
From 4.30 to 6.30 this a.m. sitting, eyes closed, on burning ankles writing and rewriting the hundred-word summary in my head. Exorcism turned obsession. The exorcist is the ghost. The blurb the book.
Talented mother’s boy, GH, youngest of four, unwisely marries at twenty-three a woman fifteen years older than himself.
Cut ‘unwisely’. Redundant.