After emigrating to Canada forty-three years ago and being away from my Muslim community ever since, I received a call from them.
”We are trying to bridge the gap between our business community and that of Calgary’s. Would you be interested in joining our committee?”
I hesitantly accepted.
The aim was to offer a monthly suit-and-tie sit-down supper, inviting guest speakers. A hotel banquet room was donated by a congregation member, tickets were sold for the food. My job was to seek out Calgarians to join the Muslims at supper.
“We have a distinguished Muslim professor from Harvard in town, willing to speak on the threat of nuclear war.”
I demurred. “Don’t you think the subject too heavy for our first event? Can I find a Calgarian to speak on something lighter to accompany the professor?” They reluctantly agreed.
My choice was a Canadian yogi master.
On the evening, I was given the role of host and, because of my British accent, Master of Ceremonies. Half-an-hour before the start, I arrived at a somewhat dingy reception room and in my opinion, too small to hold a function. The room was filled with all male Muslims in brown suits and ties earnestly inspecting me in a pin-striped navy-blue suit, spotless white shirt, and a bright red Hermès tie. A few walked in ten minutes before the start. All were seated on time, waiting in anticipation.
“Gentlemen, tonight, we have two distinguished speakers. Our first has dedicated his life to yoga.” I presented John and left him to the crowd.
John was even more earnest than the Muslims. I was to give him twenty minutes to speak, then turn to the professor.
The man couldn’t stop talking. Forty minutes later, the audience became restless. They were sweating in the fuggy atmosphere of the closed room. The head waiter came to me wondering when they could serve the food. I held him off.
Another forty minutes on, I put up a hand. “John, I’ve never met anyone so enthusiastic about his work. Your descriptions of various Hatha positions are intriguing. You couldn’t perhaps demonstrate an exercise or two?”
The man beamed as though he had won a lottery ticket. Before I could stop him, he disappeared.
Meanwhile, I ushered the food in.
Within minutes, a tall, thin, white-skinned man entered, wearing nothing but a startling fuchsia pink loincloth. He cleared the front table he had been sitting at and began performing a tangled web of distorting body stances. The audience was barely eating, their eye transfixed on this spectacle. Some misshot the forkfuls of food they were trying to eat, the food bouncing off their cheeks. My committee members were desperately poking me in the ribs to do something.
It was now more than an hour and a half later. The yogi had willed himself into a transcendental meditation. Sitting cross-legged on the bare table, shorn even of its cloth, his arms stretched open, his palms face-up, he was on a remote path, far, far away.
I rose. “Let’s all give a hand to John here for his outstanding performance.” The clapping jolted our speaker out of his world.
To avoid giving him an opportunity to continue, or display himself further, I concluded with “John’s business cards are on the table at the back of the room, if you are interested in contacting him. Remember they are the purple ones.”
With that, I retreated to my table. My fellow members sat dazed and aghast.
The function had ended. There was no time left for the Harvard professor. No one spoke to me, save a dribble of the audience a few minutes later. “We can’t find any purple business cards. Are you sure they were there? What is John’s last name? How can we contact him?”
“I don’t know,” I answered glumly, my arms folded.
A few days later, I received an embarrassing call from the head of my committee to consider resigning.
For years afterwards, whenever I met someone in the street who had attended, I was asked “When are you going to hold another function?”
