I am currently in a hotel room whose security latch doesn’t do anything. I tested it. I turned the deadbolt and there was no whatsitcalled that slid into place. And when I tried the handle, the door opened with contemptuous ease.

So I contend with the idea that I just have to trust that no one would wish to ignore the “Do Not Disturb” sign I have hung ineffectually outside. All that stands between me and anyone with a master key card is their self restraint. Cool, cool.

I took a shower with a darkly humorous mindset of “At least let me get clean and relaxed before someone makes it weird.” And then I put some Sol de Janeiro body cream on (a great luxury, and one I reserve for travel), thinking “Well, at least I smell good even if I have to be embarrassed!”

To be fair, I have been to this hotel many times before. From experience I know how nice the hotelier and staff are, and that they would not violate my privacy.

But consider: the bathroom door has one of those vintage brass doorknobs. No lock on that at all. So I’m just living in a high end dorm room, I suppose.

Does it matter? The world is aflame, and women are giving birth, and sleeping and dying on the streets.

But this doesn’t mean that I can’t wish a better reality for them, and that they would not also wish for me a sense of true seclusion.

Where am I going with this, you ask? Not thinking in such extremes, that’s where. And not in the “be nice to fascists while they actively come for us” way.

What I mean is: can people refrain from helping themselves to something or someone just because they can? This applies to so much going on, doesn’t it? But I want to focus on one particular person.

That person is Deepak Chopra. As we know, he comes up more than once in the Epstein files. And, since we tend to clock him as kinda asexual, our first instinct as Desis was most likely to assume he was probably mostly seeking proximity to power.

But, even factoring in that a lot of our gurus have been accused of sexual improprieties, DC is NOT one of our gurus. Sorry, but he’s not. He’s some Swami Vivekananda/Paramahansa Yogananda wannabe, and I say this because even Desis have seen the highest accomplishments of all three as being their ability to yoke Hinduism to western acceptance. Not my thing.

But DC, unlike the two Swamijis, is not a trained and appointed guru. He had a whole other path as a doctor, and then he became a self appointed ambassador of Hindu adjacent ideas to English educated Indians and people in the west.

I remember someone asking me in grad school (mid 90s) what I thought of him, and I groaned. She was a little surprised and said she found his “teachings” very helpful. I smiled weakly and said “He’s not saying anything wrong, but he’s not talking to people like me.” And I stand by that. His Englishy pontificating is not directed at someone who could see right through him.

People always look for wisdom about all manner of topics in educated types, when they could and should just ask them to represent their chosen professions with ethics and rigor. But rarely do they seek out people highly trained in liberal arts thinking, nor do they trust our read on propaganda that passes for trusted discourse and news, even when this is our actual training, what we spent our college years doing while you were learning software and medicine and engineering!

Anyway, I’m sure a lot of you have seen the video of a guy politely badgering DC as he arrived from a flight and walked with his wife to their car. They had a chauffeur or PA or whatever even! DC refused to answer anything, and kept muttering that the truth would come out. Okay, Kuberananda!

But the most intriguing part was when his wife said to the guy “Talk about something nice!” And then she mentioned something about who might win the sports ball game IDoNotCareAboutSportsAndYouCannotMakeMe.

People have talked about her behavior already. How she seems scared, and how she seemed not to want her husband’s anger roused. But I think one rather obvious aspect from a Desi perspective is: She didn’t like seeing her husband losing status. And, since she isn’t in India, and can’t scold the guy openly, she has to wheedle and fawn.

And this is where the bad people are co-opting the idea of all of us being scared of a rapidly destabilizing world order, but their version is “can we just have wealth and access without you riff raff demanding accountability from us.”

No. You cannot. And I do not care how badly we want representation in a country that doesn’t feel the barest bit of shame at this utter horror show. Desis who are complicit do not deserve our protective instinct. It is actually okay to watch them flounder in the face of public scrutiny. We should, in fact, strengthen our ability to watch them wither in the spotlight.

Think about this: nothing bad was being done to DC or his wife. And yet they retreated, and still she fluttered like a panicky damsel.

WHAT ARE RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY FOR IF WE ARE NOT USING THEM TO LIVE HARMONIOUSLY, PROTECT THE OPPRESSED, AND RESTRAIN OUR WORST IMPULSES.

None of the people named in those files seemed to wonder if they should stop their filthy behavior. They took and they gorged, and babies, children, and women suffered and died for their bottomless appetites.

So, back to the question: why didn’t DC, with all his gawdly aspirations, refrain from being part of the plunder even though he knew better? I cannot answer that with any accuracy. I don’t care about him, nor do I wish to know him. Even if he didn’t personally violate anyone, he knew it was happening.

But I do know that a great many guru types have doors opened to them, and they grasp at vulnerable people because spirituality is not some iron dome that prevents evil.

Spirituality devoid of a politics of consent and communal care is just self absorption. And there are no iterations of religion that you can strip of context that would make it okay to place onto the teachings whatever meaning you feel like to justify nonsense. This includes westerners who creepily lay claim to our practices and wear our skins in a spiritually appropriating sense, but default to monotheistic and imperialist bs without even realizing it.

Maybe it really is that hard to stay clean in the upper echelons. Maybe everyone does have to reveal a little dirt to be accepted.

And still, people struggle to trust or respect women, the disabled, queer folks etc as spiritual visionaries. Sri GuruBro Namaha, amirite?

All the ways common people have the book thrown at us, and these rich turds just eat babies and genocide entire peoples and attend movie launches and burn the planet while claiming to be seers through shrooms. Meanwhile, we feel bad if we have one impatient thought while we were saying our prayers. We are not the same.

There are not enough deadbolts to keep someone with bad intentions out. But I pray you will never hear me excusing and defending someone who abuses access. That would be a clear sign it’s time for me to stop using any spiritual yardstick to measure my soul’s worth.

Radha.