Chandra originally came from the Mannheim Ludwigshafen area, about one hour south of Frankfurt. She asked Walter if he wanted to meet her father, who she planned to visit the next weekend.
In their previous meetings at his place, she talked in detail about her youth, growing up in poverty with an abusive father, and her mother divorcing him to marry someone else. The first few years, she was raised together with one older brother; when the parents separated, she decided to stay with her father in his Catholic household, despite his aggressive and commanding attitude. Chandra explained that she did it because she loved him and wanted to help out in a difficult situation. Her father married a woman who came with five children. During the next fifteen years, the two had another thirteen children together. Chandra, being the oldest of the crowd, took responsibility and looked after the younger siblings as long as she could. Her father saw in his first daughter talent as an ice skater and pushed her for years through a rigorous training routine that almost gave her a German championship and a contract with an ice show. At the last moment, however, she had had enough of the domestic violence, alcohol, and abuse. Chandra enrolled in a technical college and obtained an engineer’s diploma, which did not suffice for her. Needing more challenges in her life and perhaps a status elevation, she managed, with some tricks and help, to enroll into the Hamburg University of Medicine.
While Walter listened to her stories, he began to understand a few issues about her behavior, the condition of her feet, and the size of her upper thighs. What affected him most was the situation she became an adult in and her depth of feelings for the family. He fell in love. He felt so strongly that he even asked her to marry him, but because their relationship was in such an early stage, neither took it too seriously.
Chandra had not been in Poona; she had taken Sannyas in the Hamburg Center. Like many others, the eternal suffering in her life and the lives of people she knew had motivated her to do so. Walter noticed a strong male energy in her personality, as if she had not yet discovered the female side within her. She had had many male friends and lovers but only one girlfriend. Once during a semester break, she had traveled alone in a Mercedes truck all the way to Afghanistan and financed the trip by exporting another diesel engine for sale, which had been attached beneath the truck.
Walter experienced a sensation of total support for her and looked forward to meeting the people she grew up with, including her father, who boxed as a hobby and at that time might have spawned about twenty-five children, including the ones born out of wedlock with different women. Walter thought Chandra felt embarrassed; certainly, she had never before introduced a boyfriend to the environment she came from. When the couple arrived in the suburb of Ludwigshafen on a cold, rainy November evening, Walter’s expectation disappeared, and he only felt the strong bond to his girlfriend.
The large family, with eight children of different ages present, the mother, and her father were all extremely happy to see the daughter back home and welcomed her boyfriend with equal warmth. They sat at a long table, which had been extended through two of the small rooms in the government-subsidized building. Affection and regard were tangible in the air, and other than an occasional loud admonition by the parents to one of the smaller kids, Walter felt at home. The visitors spent the night upstairs in a cold bedroom but cuddled up to make it through the chilly night. The family asked some questions about the guru, mala, and red cloth. Their general respect for Chandra, however, outweighed any concerns.
Except for a few reports from celebrities who visited India and the Ashram and the magazine-reporter-turned-Sannyasin, the media as a whole treated Bhagwan’s movement with suspicion, creating fear in the public. Walter had not talked to his mother about his latest involvements; he saved it for a later date. Without doubt, he did not see a way to relay any of it to her that she would approve of, a fact that most of the Sannyasins faced with their own families.
Margaretha called Walter excitedly to let him know that her mala and new name, Ma Prem Nirvesha, had arrived. Walter was happy for her but disappointed that his own letter had not yet come. She told him they had had a Sannyas celebration in the center on the previous weekend when Walter was away.
He had to wait another week until a call came in from the Mada Center leader, who told him that an envelope arrived, addressed to his name, from the United States. He raced to Bockenheim and ran into the center to catch the man before he left for the weekend. Walter opened the envelope. Inside was a document that had been signed by Bhagwan in his unusual handwriting and giving Walter his new Sannyas name, Swami Prem Hasmukh, or Joyful Love. Walter had become a proud, excited, new Sannyasin of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
The center leader tried to delay the ceremonial bestowal of the mala; he wanted to do it during the customary general celebration, together with other fresh Sannyasins, but Hasmukh begged him to do it right then. He did not want to wait any longer. Together with a few additional center workers, an impromptu festivity was quickly created. The center leader put the long, wooden-bead chain with the locket, which included Bhagwan’s picture, slowly around Hasmukh’s neck and then touched the middle of his forehead with a finger. That way, people of authority worked for the master by proxy. Tears of joy and bliss rolled down Hasmukh’s cheeks; he had made it.
That night, Chandra and he went into the disco where Hasmukh had boogied already a decade ago. The two whirling, flying bodies in red on the dance floor were the center of attention. Afterward, the couple, in love with each other and with life, continued to celebrate in Hasmukh’s bed. Two days later, when Chandra visited him again, they returned to the disco to repeat their celebrative ways of dancing, and as soon as they entered the basement location, the couple dominated the dance floor. The two Sannyasins danced nonstop for two hours and then rested to have a couple of beers.
Chandra told her boyfriend that she felt tired and wanted to go to sleep in his place. Hasmukh gave her the keys, and she left to walk the short distance while he stayed a little while longer to have another beer and dance. After half an hour of resting, he moved back onto the dance floor and let it all out: his joy at being a Sannyasin, his ability to move and rock to the beat and the effect of the beers he had consumed. When he felt satisfied, Hasmukh walked back to the seat where he had stowed away his brand-new, dark-red leather jacket, put it on, and then slowly made his way through the crowd toward the exit stairs.
As he almost reached the stairs, two men stood in his way, and he turned to step around them. One of them motioned to him, so he approached. The person yelled through the loud sound into his ear, “Who are you? What is this?” and pointed at him from head to toe.
Hasmukh shrugged his shoulders and shouted back, “I am a Sannyasin,” and tried to pass through the two men.
At that moment the other man, who had not said anything yet, grabbed his mala and pulled strongly at it several times in a jerking motion. In reflex mode, Hasmukh punched the bloke as powerfully as he could in the face, hitting the side of the chin. Then he turned around, sped up the steep staircase, opened the exit door, and began to run quickly across the parking lot to the icy sidewalk full of snow.
Soon he heard voices and running steps behind him some distance away, but closing in. At one point, he had to cross Bockenheimer Landstrasse to get to his apartment. On the other side of the street, he heard the running steps behind him very close, but he did not dare look around and lose time.
Suddenly he slipped, or his pursuer kicked a foot underneath him, and he fell down on the icy, snowy sidewalk. The initial collision was partially absorbed by the leather jacket, but when the first kicks struck, some of them went into his face and cheeks before he could protect his head. The strikes kept coming; Hasmukh began to scream as loud as he could, “Help, help me!” That fended off the attackers, who left him lying on the ground.
After a few moments, he hobbled around the corner to his home, dazed. Since he had no keys, Hasmukh rang the doorbell. The buzzer sounded. Chandra stood at his second-floor entrance naked and said, “Oh my god, what happened to you?”
Two blows had left their bloody marks, one on his right cheekbone and the other a cut on the base of his left nostril. He also had less serious lacerations on his elbows and hips. Hasmukh filed the incident away as another example of the prevalent intolerance in the country against anything and anybody who looked or seemed different.
Chandra’s next semester was approaching. She completed the internship with the herbal doctor and thought about returning to her home and university in Hamburg. Hasmukh offered happily to chauffeur her to the northern city; he did not want to let her go yet. His interest in who she was, what she did, and where she lived, increased by the day. He wanted to know how she spent her days. According to her descriptions, she lived with a group of people, most of them Sannyasins, outside the city in a northern suburb.
On a cold and cloudy day, Hasmukh arrived at the physician’s home and practice to pick up Chandra and her luggage for the long ride north. He loved the fact that he could be with her, do something for her, and be generous. On 500 kilometers of Autobahn, the couple took rest, food, drink, and talk stops every other hour, which doubled the regular driving time to almost ten hours. Hasmukh felt in no hurry, and Chandra hoped that a roommate had turned on the radiator in her room, as promised.
He parked at the final point of the long journey, the clock showed nearly 2:00 a.m. The last mile they had been driving quietly through small streets lined with snow-covered trees on both sides. As the couple quickly fetched some necessary luggage from the back of the station wagon, he expressed his surprise about the neighborhood.
“Here are many villas and estates on park like spreads,” Chandra explained through her teeth, shivering in the ice-cold temperature.
They opened a little gate and trudged over a narrow walkway covered in snow to a dark building. Hasmukh saw trees all over in the very still winter night. The couple reached the white wooden entrance door with a few small oval windows in the upper part, but door would not open. Chandra could not find her keys. She rang the bell a few times until a light went on inside and over the door. There was movement in the house. An almost naked young man opened the door and said, “Oh, here you are. We thought you would not show up any more. Welcome back home.”
In the house, the duo walked up a few stairs to a room, situated on the first floor, right next to the staircase. As Chandra opened the door, she said, “Shit, the heater is off, and a cat did its business in there.”
It must have been close to freezing, The two did not linger much longer, but put on warm underwear and laid down on the foam mattress embedded in the loft-like construction of the room’s interior; the floor had been raised with a platform about four feet high.
It took another fifteen minutes, an electric heater, and intense hugging until the first warmth crept into their extremities. Hasmukh inserted one of his music cassettes into the player, and they listened to Black Uhuru while slowly stripping off their long johns and thermal shirts. Chandra and Hasmukh were wired from the trip and many cups of coffee they had consumed at rest stops.
When both felt comfortable again with the room temperature, Hasmukh rolled on top of her. Black Uhuru with its aggressive reggae beat generated the character for this session.
Soon, both of them were bathed in sweat, a blanket loosely hanging over Hasmukh’s back. He moved and pushed to the rhythm from the player but sometimes followed another beat arising from the bodies on the foam mattress. She came again, shouting out, “Yes, yes, I love you.” He had never ever experienced anything like it.
At the end of the night, when they recognized the lighter grayness of dawn through the windows, both climaxed with a loud, exhaling, deep-throat outcry.
He opened his eyes again and viewed the room they were in by daylight and noticed it contained nothing but a rubber tree and the mattress. The lovers separated themselves slowly from underneath the bedcover, dressed quickly, and walked down the two steps from the loft level to open the door. They walked down a corridor into the kitchen, where a group of people sat at a large table, enjoying the last of the breakfast. Some talked, and others looked at a newspaper.
When the lovers entered the room, a noisy “Hello, Chandra, there you are, welcome home” began. Some of them got up to hug her and acknowledged Hasmukh as well with a brief hug or “Hello, and who are you?” One of them said, “We could hear you already last night,” and everybody started laughing aloud.
One of the people lived outside in the garden building and shared the kitchen of the main building with the others; he was not a Sannyasin. Chandra introduced Hasmukh to everybody and them to him. At that time, two couples and four singles lived in the eight-room villa, which had three stories and a basement. The basement contained an insulated room where meditations or sessions with a lot of noise could be held. The very large living room on the first floor served as a common room, also perfect for meditations or quieter group activities.
After their breakfast, Chandra took Hasmukh outside into the snow and showed him the estate, which was the size of a small park and had a pond. Next to it was a custom-made hardwood mini-pigsty inhabited by a pot-bellied pig. Very impressed, Hasmukh could only imagine how it would be to live there during the summertime.
After they cleaned up the mess the cat had left in Chandra’s room, the couple took the car and drove into the city of Hamburg. It was Hasmukh’s first time seeing the River Elbe, the large harbor area, and the beautiful downtown with Binnenalster, Aussenalster, where most of the water was frozen solid. Chandra needed to visit the university administration office, and Hasmukh spent some time in the local Dharmadeep Sannyas Center restaurant. He stayed another night in the villa with his lover and then returned to Frankfurt alone. The couple separated from each other, leaving doors and options open without making any plans for the future.