Read an Excerpt
Irrefutable
My Proof for the Law of Attraction
By Seema T. Chandarana Balboa Press
Copyright © 2013 Seema T. Chandarana
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-7279-6
CHAPTER 1
KCT 17
Daily Affirmation #1:
"My life is unfolding in perfect divine order."
My name is Seema Trivedi Chandarana. At least, now it is. And likely it will always be. You see, like many other middle-aged women who have left a marriage behind, I have had two last names, but what makes me unique is that I have also had three middle names. This is where my story begins.
At my birth, I was given the name Seema Kantilal Chandarana. When I was growing up in a mostly white neighborhood, the name Seema was a blessing since it was easy to pronounce and phonetic in spelling. My brother, Anand, converted his name to Andy, while my mother, Paragini, used the pseudonym Peggy, and my father, Kantilal, took on the identity of Ken, although he was the furthest thing from a male Barbie doll. My mom tried to call me Sam or Samantha on occasion, to make me "fit in" with my own family, but it never took, as the name Seema (or Seems or Seemers to those closest to me) took to me really well. It even turned out that when calling to order Chinese food for takeout, Dad would shorten our last name to Chan, as though we ought to have been cooking Chinese food at home. So much wrapped up in a name. It's no wonder I've changed it twice and have received at least six different permutations of it in my junk mail.
Now, if you've got an eye for details you'll notice that my middle name was the same as my father's first name. It's not because he adored me more than anything else in the world. You see, my brother's name is Anand Kantilal Chandarana, my mother's name is Paragini Kantilal Chandarana, and we even joked that if our dog had a birth certificate, it would have read Sparky Kantilal Chandarana. The Hindu tradition is very patriarchal by nature, and between each first and middle name, I can hear a little whisper of the word "of"—Seema "of" Kantilal Chandarana, Paragini "of" Kantilal Chandarana, Anand "of" Kantilal Chandarana, in case you ever forget to whom you belong, as though we were all property of my father. As a young girl, I simply hated having a boy's name as my middle name. Every girl I knew had some sweet, easy middle name like Beth, Lynn, or Grace. As a woman, I realize now that this name given to me at birth lit the first little flame under my inner feminist's pants.
So, when I got married, I could hardly wait to dump my middle name. Problem was, according to tradition, my middle name would be replaced from my father's first name to my husband's first name. When hell froze over! Now, my husband-to-be had a last name only one letter shy of the number of letters in Chandarana, and the thought of a hyphenated last name containing twenty characters was more than I could bear. It seemed that the right way to maintain my sense of identity when entering this joint merger was to replace my middle name with my last name. Finally, there would be no gap between the Seema and the Chandarana.
Fast-forward eight years to the dissolution of my marriage, and so much of the foundation of my life, and you'll see a young woman searching yet again for a name that fit all that she had become. Nearly a year had passed, and I still found myself signing my married name. On a long weekend in Madrid visiting a friend, I paid the credit card bill after tapas one evening, and on the walk home, my friend opened the discussion of my name. "I don't understand you Americans, changing your name when you get married. We are given a name at birth and we keep it until death. It's who you are, and who you are doesn't change, so why should your name?"
That conversation, and my romanticism for all things Spanish, led me to contemplate the perfect nature of the naming system in this culture. Your mother and father choose a beautiful first and middle name for you (only they're not so much like Beth, Lynn, or Grace but more like Isabel, Mercedes, or Graciela), and then you are awarded both your father's surname and your mother's surname. What a beautiful way to honor both parents equally (this pleases my inner feminist very much)! Another added benefit of this naming system is that it allows a person to trace back a family tree as far and as widely as possible, letting that person know each generation's paternal and maternal heritage. Even better, every form you fill out in your life time has a space for all four of your names! Our culture has not managed to be quite so accommodating yet.
Our conversation stayed with me all the way back to the States, and it stewed in my heart for a few more months until it finished cooking during a weekend I drove out to Iowa. I was on my way to the Raj for my first panchakarma cleanse. The Raj is an amazing Ayurveda retreat center in Fairfield, Iowa, where the Maharishi set up camp. You know, the one that The Beatles studied with, the one George flew to India to see and came back all enlightened and such. Yes, the Maharishi was quite a sage, a genius devoted to the science of being, and a master at the art of living. His legacy has left us with a completely sattvic community (in the middle of corn rows) where all the buildings face east to welcome the morning sun, and the entire community stops to meditate twice daily. This was the place for me to learn how to live my best life, and I felt at home surrounded by a community of yogis versed in both Sanskrit and the ancient teachings of India.
As it came to pass, the lady behind the reception desk commented on my last name, Chandarana, with wonder and delight. "Goddess of the Moon! What a great name." This might have been the first time in my life I had not translated my name for a fellow American—these people got it right away. Ha! I decided to have a little fun with that and told the gal that my mom's maiden name was "Trivedi." Then, I saw it happen, what my favorite masi, my mom's sister, had been telling me about for so long. A certain air of reverence and respect came over the receptionist, and as her demeanor changed, so did mine. You see, Trivedi stands for three (tri) Vedas, as in Ayur-Veda. My mother's, and hence my own heritage is Brahmin, a priestly caste of people who are well versed in the ancient sacred teachings. The name Trivedi was awarded after having mastered the first three Vedas, thus deeming the person with it liable for teaching the public these Vedas' contents. The way the people there looked at me and treated me was unlike anything I had known before. The respect that I saw reflected back in them awakened a dormant part of who I was at my core. And on my drive home, my name finally came to me as a mix of my wannabe Spanish roots and my actual Indian roots: Seema Trivedi Chandarana.
But that's not where the story ends. Shortly after my name change was legal and officially on my driver's license, I was driving with a friend who innocently asked, "Seema, what's your middle name?" She then heard the whole crazy story straight from my own lips. I was laughing as I told it, amused that anyone could go through so many derivations on the same few words. Still, I didn't piece it all together until it all came together one night in a dream. I dreamed of my license plate, which reads KCT 17. Friends had asked me for years what it meant, as though it were a vanity plate I had requested when buying my minivan. It seemed as though it could be. After all, the numbers and letters look like initials followed by a favorite number. But they weren't my initials, at least not at the time, nor are they now. What they are, however, are each of my middle initials, in the order in which I received them. That license plate was issued to me, and in so many ways I believe as well that my stories were too.
What then is the meaning of the 17, you wonder? I wondered for years too, until I realized that all I had to do was ask. So I put the question out there and settled on the idea that when the answer came, this collection of stories would be complete. The book you hold in your hands is the evidence that we are always answered, so keep reading ... everything is unfolding perfectly for you!
CHAPTER 2
When in Doubt, Take a Taxi
Daily Affirmation #2:
"I am always in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing."
The title of this chapter appears on a long list of "Things I Learned" while spending a semester studying abroad. It's a story that takes place in Florence, Italy, but starts back in Champaign, Illinois. A sorority sister of mine had applied to study art in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It made sense; she was an art major. To me, studying abroad sounded exotic, exciting, exuberant! I wanted a little piece of that, but I was enrolled as a mathematics major then. In fact, I graduated as a mathematics major. So it didn't seem I had much business in the study abroad office, except I've already mentioned my love of all things Spanish, haven't I?
My friend, Sandy, had left sometime in late August, to go abroad for the entire school year. Mind you, this was back before the days of cell phones and reliable and readily accessible internet. E-mail was just emerging, and after registering at the university, I shamefully trashed the notice regarding my e-mail account with other seemingly useless papers. It required some investigation to activate my idle account, but I had a great desire to keep connected to my friend. Once my account was established, I voraciously read about her escapades, living vicariously through her novel adventures, and she drew upon the familiarity of my tales of barhopping to stave off any homesickness that might have crept in. As the days grew colder and darker, I grew more and more ready to hop on a plane to the "Florida of Europe," and when I finally landed, I seemed so close to where my friend was that I immediately set into motion plans to meet up with her.
At that time, the Universidad de Granada had three computers for all of the students to use, and I remember waiting in line for up to an hour sometimes just for a few moments to check my account. Despite the technological obstructions, Sandy and I finally made plans to see each other. It just so happened that the week I would have a break from classes was the same week her class would be on a field trip to study art in Florence, Italy. The timing was perfect! And although we didn't have many (or any) of the details worked out, she did send the address of the hostel her school had booked and the date they planned to arrive. I guess we figured we'd just take it from there.
As I emerged from the airport in Florence, I sat down on my suitcase to get my bearings. I noticed a bright orange bus (it was kind of hard not to notice it, actually) and drew upon old memories of having visited Italy with my parents back in grade school. Dad was a fan of learning the public transport systems when we traveled. It saved money and helped us blend in with the locals, or whatever. My Spanish was improving after six weeks immersed in the culture, and Italian is also a romantic language. Perhaps I could figure out where the bus was headed, where the hostel was in town, and how close I could get to there, I thought. I nearly had it all put together, and in the same moment, that bus pulled away. Of course, I was still sitting on my suitcase, and when I came out of my head long enough to notice the bus had left, I decided to take a taxi instead.
I handed the taxi driver a printout of the email Sandy had sent me, and he nodded, zipping away through the traffic. Were we headed north? South? Into the city? In circles? At this point, all my faith, and my fare, were in his hands. He delivered me to a nine-foot solid wood door, and when no one answered the ring of the bell, I made my way inside. A portly old Italian woman greeted me, and that's when I figured out all the Spanish I learned in textbooks at home and during my weeks in Granada wasn't going to get me very far in Italy. So I thanked her kindly as she motioned me over to the couch in the waiting room. Although she too had seen the e-mail I had printed out, I still searched for a business card or letterhead or something to confirm that I was truly in the right place, on the right day, at the right time ... and that's when two men, speaking very broken Italian, came in to check in with the signora. I hesitantly approached them asking, "Do you speak English?" I was delighted by their response of, "Are you looking for Sandy?"
They led me down to the street where a great big charter bus was waiting, and out rushed my friend with open arms and a little squeal of joy. Oh to see a familiar face of a good friend in a foreign land! She then began to tell her tales of woe: an alarm clock that failed, a missed bus, a phone call to America in panic, and her determined mother who said, and I quote, "Sandy, you do what you have to. Seema will be there waiting for you." (Th ank you, Mrs. J!) She had taken a train to race the bus to the English Channel to catch up with her group and pulled into the ferry dock just moments before it sailed away.
Our reunion played out like a scene in a movie, and if there were ever a moment in my life to define the word "glee," this was it. It was as though all of the forces in this time-space reality had conspired to bring the perfect alignment of details together so I could be standing on that sidewalk in Florence hugging my dear friend at just the moment we both needed it most. I really didn't think it could get any better than that, until it did.
When we decided to meet there on that day, we still hadn't ironed out where I would stay. You see, Sandy was there on an excursion with her school group. The charter bus and accommodations were all part of the package deal. Me, I was more like a stowaway, happy to tag along and take up as little floor space as possible for the night, or on the more luxurious side of things, hoping to rent an extra room at the same hostel for the duration. As it turned out, the day before the group set off, one of the girls had come down with mononucleosis. Of course, she was unable to travel, and as it turned out, she was also slotted to bunk in Sandy's room. So there it was, an open, prepaid bed waiting just for me.
I think this was the first time I noticed the forces greater than me at work. It wasn't our e-mails or our intentions to meet up that made every detail of our coming together happen so seamlessly. It was a conspiring for the greatest good of everyone involved that orchestrated a perfect unfolding of events, and it seemed that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Thank you, Universe!
CHAPTER 3
Three is the Magic Number
Daily Affirmation #3:
"Every hand that touches me is a healing hand." —Louise Hay, Heart Thoughts
My belly had finally "popped," and using a rubber band to hold my jeans together gave way to maternity jeans. In the sixteenth week of my first pregnancy, I could no longer hide the evident bulge of my expanding bump. It seemed that as quickly as the excitement over showcasing my condition in cutely tailored fashions designed just for that purpose had come over me, it rapidly washed away. The rubber band on the jeans was replaced by the tight sensation of a rubber band stretching behind my navel—my abdominal muscles, to be specific. And it itched! Only no amount of scratching on the outside would relieve the discomfort inside. Weekly updates on my baby's growth comparing it to the size of a fruit each time—an olive by week eight, a lemon by week twelve, a mango by week sixteen—left me 1) hungry and 2) with a heavy feeling, as though my pelvic bowl were more like a fruit bowl. But the final straw was the tightness in my chest as my ribs held tight to their mission of protecting such soft and vulnerable organs, failing to release enough to accommodate our new resident.
That's when I decided that massage no longer fit the category of luxury; rather, it became a necessity. I asked for a reference from the one person I trusted to know about the body, my yoga teacher, and she gave me two. The first of the referrals offered what I interpreted as standard body massage, and the other promoted craniosacral therapy, which I knew nothing about at the time. So I phoned a friend who had recently graduated from massage school for her opinion. Her response still fills me with laughter today: "I hate those people! I can never figure out how they do what they do, and it's so amazing!" The envy in my studied and trusted friend was enough for me to consider the option, but truly, I'm not certain why I deliberated for so long. I could hardly ignore the divine pushes toward this work as the gal who offered the craniosacral therapy lived on the next block from me!
That winter I donned my warm woolies and walked through the snow down the street for six weekly, consecutive sessions. Birds chirped, squirrels scurried about, and the quiet of Sunday afternoons prepared me for what would come next. I remember being in tears when I told her why I had sought her out, that with five more months of pregnancy remaining, I could barely imagine making any more room in my body for my baby to grow. She set the intention to allow more space and focused her mind and energy on accomplishing this goal as we set off to do the work on her table. I also remember remaining fully clothed while her hands simply hovered over my body. I understood my friend's strong reaction to this type of work and could hear skeptical thoughts pass through my mind, but it was easy to dismiss them, focusing instead on the beautiful blue of her massage room, staying open to possibilities. The perfect conditions for sprouting a miracle were set, and that's exactly what happened.
Exhaling slowly, I felt each vertebrae in my spine extend. It seemed that I had grown an inch taller! I didn't have a moment to marvel in the sensation before she said aloud, "Good, just like that," and I thought, "Just like what? How does she know what I'm feeling when her hands aren't even touching me?" It didn't matter though. The shift had already happened, and her work for that session was complete. When I expressed my concern that coming off the table and standing vertically might compress my vertebrae back to their original form, she lovingly assured me that it would not happen, today or ever. And she was right.
In subsequent sessions, I experienced the same synchronicity of feeling relief coordinated with her verbal expression of praise. Once, she laid her hands over me and helped to open up my pelvic cavity. The next day I felt lighter, and all day long people commented on how round my belly seemed, as I could feel that the baby now lay cradled lower in my pelvis, which now felt more like a snuggly bassinet than a fruit bowl! In another session we worked on my rib cage, and I kid you not—I could not fasten my bra in the morning! Luckily, I discovered I could purchase a little bra extender to add two more inches around, and I still marvel at how quickly the work took effect.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Irrefutable by Seema T. Chandarana. Copyright © 2013 Seema T. Chandarana. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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