Accidental Gurus
In my academic writing, I cite in a disorganized way. Much to the irritation of co-authors and the disapproval of editors/reviewers. I find myself citing things that I have read for pleasure or by accident at an earlier point, to prop up what academics call an argument. I wouldn’t accept this kind of intellectual debauchery in a student paper ever. But a constellation of accidental gurus come together by destiny, prayer, and associated miracles, to make argumentative/authoritative writing possible for me. A constellation, the primary guru, Ustaad Benjamin might say, is a collection of broken things that come together being complete, each by themselves. Like stars form a galaxy.
The theory of accidental gurus stems from faith, and recklessness. A peculiar faith that something will emerge as I pass through corridors between intellectual graves, and the spectres/ spirits/gurus will jump out of their closed graves and instruct me into argumentation. It is reckless, it is like walking on the edge of a cliff. You can only do it if you are never looking at the sharp drop on your side - one that could easily pull you into the deathly abyss. You call out the name of god, and walk along without a care.
I don’t have such physical recklessness. I was once lost on the downhill trail back from the Tiger’s Nest monastery in Bhutan, I sat on the edge of a narrow path with a sharp, rocky drop by my side, watching the possibility of death take the shape of my breaths. I called out to god. Soon enough, a young, Bhutanese woman, with a baby in one arm, came along. She led me by my hand and took me down the narrow downhill path. An accidental goddess. I didn’t need courage which, in any case, I couldn’t muster at that moment. All I could do in the face of an imminent deathly situation was call out to god.
Intellectual accidents are a bit like that. They come when you least expect them. They come because they want to, not because you have an appointment with them. Meanwhile, I walk along the grave-corridors of thought, hoping to talk to some ghosts who would pop out of their grave and call for a quick chai and some company. I have been looking for an opening in an Introductory chapter I am writing in an edited anthology that I am curating. My friend sent me this short story Derrida in Lahore published in The Paris Review, at the precise moment where I was beginning to worry about the completion of the opening section of said Introductory chapter, and I went “voila”. Read it, folks, it’s gorgeous.
I thought at a tangent though: How do the gurus look and fare when dislocated from the environs of worship? How can we think of our gurus or anything we consider sacred in the unlikeliest of locations? What if those that were not sacralised as gurus were taken up the pedestal, and those that were sacralised, were taken down the steps for a change? I think I now have the hook for that wretched opening section, and it has nothing to do with a faithful literature review. Here too, I had called out to god, and he sent me a citation as an attachment.
