His pregnant girlfriend and Hasmukh went to a group together, where they taught breathing techniques during labor and dealing with pain in the course of childbirth. Chandra had set her mind on delivering her baby at home and found a solid, trust-inspiring, very experienced midwife who would be available when the time arrived. A routine ultrasound sonogram revealed that the couple would have a boy.
The child picked his arrival date in mid-September. Some residents spent the night at home and occasionally peeked into the room on the third floor. The queen-size bed had been cleared of everything except the sheet and a silicone cover underneath. After midnight, when the labor pains began, someone called the midwife, who appeared two hours later, after checking the intervals of the rising pain over the phone. Chandra had been laboring several hours without a single request for anything. Sporadically Hasmukh would lie down next to her, participate in the breathing action, and give some commands while she held on to his hand.
When the contractions became really intense, the midwife shouted, “Push, push!” Suddenly Chandra flipped from her back to her knees and hands, panting like a dog.
Hasmukh yelled, “Turn around, turn around, we can’t see anything,” because her head was pointing in the direction where he and the midwife stood. Only minutes after she turned her extended vagina to them, the head of the baby became visible, like a foreign object protruding from her core. Two more pushes and a loud scream accompanied the newborn’s soft drop from his safe environment onto the bed sheet, followed soon by a discreet complaint with a croaky voice.
A very happy couple united with the healthy baby boy, who only suffered a minor hematoma on the skull while traveling through the birth canal. The parents decided on Frieder for his name, to signify a peaceful life for him.
Presence of innocent new life filled the villa in Hoisbuettel with an astonishing energy, which was duplicated two months later, when Saroja gave birth to a girl.
Chandra tried to combine her university lecture schedule with a feeding roster for Frieder, while she gave him as much nourishment through her breasts as she could. Hasmukh watched over the baby whenever the mother had to be away.
A new resident moved into the garden building. It took a while until the completely assembled commune met Yogesh, an orthopedic surgeon who owned his own practice in town. He used his new home as retreat dwelling, to overcome the separation worries from his child and wife. Recently, he had admitted to her that he maintained a relationship with another man, whom he loved. He also suffered under tremendous pressures to fulfill his financial obligations in the highly indebted medical practice. Yogesh received a lot of support from the community in the house as he went through his personal issues.
His and Chandra’s common interest in medical subjects, and the fact the couple had a child, led to him also befriending Hasmukh, who was in the same age group as Yogesh. They all talked about what they were doing and planning. When Yogesh found out that Hasmukh had completed massage training, he offered that Hasmukh could work in his practice as a massage therapist. Suddenly Hasmukh had a part-time position in a busy orthopedic practice where he could arrange his own schedule with the doctor’s staff. Whenever sessions were booked for him and he arrived at the doctor’s office, he could be seen in a white lab coat disappearing into small consulting cubicles. One of the female assistants who booked appointments for him and administered the accounting part became very friendly with him. She wanted to know a lot about Sannyas, what it meant for Hasmukh, since she knew that her boss had joined a sect not too long ago.
All through the next long winter, the couple was involved in their strong small family bond within the larger community. For a while, Hasmukh enjoyed relief from the eternal fear of loss and jealousy because there were clearly no opportunities for infidelity. The young parents dropped off a Sannyas application form with Frieder’s picture on it in the Dharmadeep Center. They thought that if Frieder did not like his Sannyas name later, he could always fall back on his legal name. Some weeks later, the reply arrived from Rajneeshpuram with the baby’s new name, Parmesh, or Godliness.
Rudi in Frankfurt called to let him know that he would be able to take possession of the apartment and pay the amount Hasmukh requested. This turn of events enabled the practical execution of a plan the couple had been pondering for months: to leave Hamburg for a semester, take off and travel to warmer regions. In May, Hasmukh searched the newspapers for a used, customized truck with basic camping equipment. He found an old black Mercedes that had a built-in bed and stove. When the happy Sannyasin couple completed all their preparations, they left the city in the north.
The vehicle did not drive as fast as a Volkswagen bus, but with some patience and adaptation, they found themselves on the Autobahn heading south toward the destination of La Gomera, Canary Islands. First, they said hello to Frankfurt and then went to Mannheim and Cologne to visit all the parents and introduce the youngest family member to them. After an affectionate time with the relatives, the black bus made its way through Switzerland and France into Spain. Hasmukh and Chandra alternated at the steering wheel.
They knew that Anthony, who had moved to Barcelona, would be waiting for them in the city by the Mediterranean Sea. The reunion of the two friends, as well as the meeting of Chandra and Anthony, turned into delightful days. The weather in Barcelona, however, stayed behind what should have been normal for the time of the year, and the parents could not actually visit the nightspots Anthony went to professionally play the piano.
They decided to depart and continue on their route farther west along the Spanish coast, where they stopped in many beautiful little towns and cities such as Tarragona, Cartagena, and Malaga. The couple took the opportunity to visit the sovereign British Overseas Territory Gibraltar since the Spanish government had partially opened the border between the two regions. On to the nearby port city of Cadiz went the travelers, where they waited a few days until they could get a spot for their truck on the ferry to Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The boat trip lasted thirty hours during which Chandra, Hasmukh, and Parmesh were able to rest in a cabin when they were not too seasick.
The large boat berthed in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and the black customized truck made its way along the eastern coast of the island to Playa de las Américas. From there, the couple with baby, made sure that the next ferry from Los Cristianos to San Sebastián de la Gomera had space available for their home on wheels. It took another four hours before they landed on the destination island, which triggered memories in Hasmukh from some years ago, when he had arrived in town with Margaretha and Antje.
Their plan called for exploration of the northeastern part beyond the city and staying within driving distance for supplies. It could turn into a tricky undertaking, venturing onto unpaved side roads with tight turns and steep declines followed rapidly by climbs. Hasmukh at the steering wheel discovered a rocky road not far behind San Sebastián that turned right and down toward the coastline. It ended in an area at sea level where large rocks instead of sand created the beachfront. There were very few, tiny spots of sandy beach on Gomera. In the distance at one end of the rock beach stood an old, abandoned building with a wall around it and closed gates, which could have been a small factory. The couple considered the pros and cons of the site and decided to try it for a while. They were the only campers in the area, which is what they wanted.
Hasmukh had transferred the excellent audio equipment from his Opel to the bus, including the boom box under the seat. With truck doors open, the couple routinely did the Kundalini at night. The active segments of it had to be done staying in one spot because of the surface of the beach.
The weather on this side of the isle stayed continuously on the cooler side with a lot of wind, a reason for the campers to begin their discovery of the entire island by vehicle. They passed through the densely wooded region in the upper parts where almost-permanent clouds and mist had helped develop a laurel rain forest. They took a room in a small guesthouse on the high-plains area where the temperatures were very pleasant. After enjoying the luxury for the night, they continued their trip down the barrancos—deep ravines—into the Valle Gran Rey area. Here were budget tourists mostly from the European continent who took rooms primarily in private homes. On the stretch of town that covered the coastline, one could find a few select spots of sandy beach, restaurants, guesthouses, and other businesses.
The family investigated the narrow area for an appropriate place to park their mobile home for the duration of their stay. They decided to drop anchor on a piece of land that had been leveled and stripped of rocks. People told them that one part of it, where rocks were still piled high, had been previously used as garbage dump. They shared the rather large area with one other vehicle, a couple from Berlin. It took almost two weeks before their new neighbors became curious enough to find out what the people in red and a baby were doing every night behind their truck. Playing loud music and then sitting between the rocks with their eyes closed. The four began talking, sometimes invited each other for lunch or dinner at their vehicles, and after a while became good friends. The man cut Hasmukh’s hair with scissors and a comb in such a way that Hasmukh thought it the best haircut ever.
All through the next weeks and months, the visitors from Germany enjoyed their residence between the rocks on the site of a previous garbage dump right by the sea. Water could be accessed by carefully maneuvering beyond an opening in the large rock formation and then wading into the Mediterranean by avoiding smaller rocks sticking out of a modest sand beach. When the couple did not use the gas stove in the truck to prepare fresh vegetables from village shops, they went out for dinner to one of the local beachfront restaurants where they could eat seafood caught by local fishermen, including freshly grilled tuna steaks and the day’s catch, cazuela, an herb-heavy fish stew, and cress soup. At some point, the engaging couple from Berlin had to leave for the big city but left their addresses with Hasmukh and Chandra. Their camping spot between the rocks was filled within days by other travelers who arrived in mobile homes.
The departure of the friends became a reminder of how quickly time passed; their own return trip was coming up before long. The young parents made good use of the remaining agenda and traveled one more time around the island to see all points of interest: Garajonay National Park; Los Organos; slender cliffs that rose up out of the sea; Pillars, which looked very similar to organ pipes; the remains of vast lava masses of a once-powerful volcano. Since Chandra’s studies at the university would start soon, the Sannyas family booked the two ferries to the European mainland, enjoyed one more time the luxury of a long boat ride and a cabin, and then began the trip of almost three thousand kilometers to northern Germany.
Coincidentally, their former room in the Hoisbuettel villa community was available when the tourists knocked on the front door of Parmesh’s birthplace. The child had reveled in the attention and availability of both parents for a long time and had grown into a healthy one-year-old during the trip. To keep it that way, the couple searched for an apartment in the city that would accommodate the mother’s studies with her continuous breastfeeding and presence at home. Hasmukh wanted to take care of the child when Chandra had to leave and work as a taxi driver when he could. He began to study for the license, which included memorizing many street names and routes.
They stumbled onto a brand-new two-bedroom apartment behind the university hospital, which they could not afford but wanted to try and to see. It was conveniently located for many of Chandra’s lectures; she simply had to cross the small side street, and she would be on the university grounds. Along with the location and being the first tenants in the apartment, the place included floor heating, large windows from floor to ceiling, and a raised patio overlooking the street. After the lease was signed and the couple moved in with their few belongings, Hasmukh and Chandra’s first undertaking in the truck was to obtain a number of young, fast-growing pine trees. Hasmukh planted the small trees in the soil of the patio hill so that with time, they might grow into a hedge. The living room had a lot of space, and since the new tenants had no intentions of purchasing additional furniture, it created a perfect dance and meditation floor. While one of them did the Kundalini, the other took care of Parmesh in the other room. In the new kitchen with dishwasher, the couple cooked their daily meals with whatever they knew to prepare. As it happened before in Frankfurt, Hasmukh flunked his first attempt for the Hamburg taxi-driver license and had to repeat the test a second time. He passed and then looked for a contractor and owner of taxis. Meanwhile the first cold spell hit the north during which the couple used their floor heater system for the first time and were delighted to have it. They also made contact with other Sannyasins in the neighborhood who had small children. Soon a babysitter network was established, which turned into an arrangement of friends who visited each other and took care of their kids upon request.
One night, during the last, quiet phase of the Kundalini, Chandra heard noises in the apartment above. Footsteps, opening and closing of doors, voices talking—all of which indicated someone was looking at the residence or preparing to move in. The moving truck appeared a few days later, and on a subsequent evening, the doorbell rang. The man in blue suit and tie introduced himself as the new and second tenant of the building. His serious demeanor immediately made his neighbors in red realize that they had to be careful. Their only point of contact with him would be the shared laundry machine in the basement.
Hasmukh found a taxi owner of six cabs nearby and began to work his first shifts on weekend days. The take-home pay was modest, but an occasional tip added to the total. The first weekends were exciting for him, getting to know the city and meeting all the different people. Hamburg, as the second-largest city in Germany, had about one million more residents than Frankfurt and was the third-largest port city in Europe. To pick up or take people to the extensive red-light district became an additional thrill because he never knew who would get into the cab and in what condition. Generally, the passengers from the Reeperbahn were never miserly with their tips.
The empty apartment next to theirs became suddenly occupied. Hasmukh experienced a surprise one day when he came home from a shopping trip. The most beautiful customized Mercedes convertible was parked next to his spot behind the building where he parked his Opel Kadett. The neighbor, he learned quickly, was a working girl, and the fantastic vehicle belonged to her boyfriend and pimp. Over a period of months, a variety of the classiest, sporty Mercedes models took the spot next to the Opel.
During the week when Chandra went to study, Hasmukh took care of Parmesh and played the role of homemaker. Since he took care of grocery and food shopping mostly and paid the bills, he realized that the household’s modest income would not cover money for nutritious food and basic treats of cheese or meats. One day, Hasmukh took a clear plastic bag full of different cheeses from the deli department and shoved it into his shirt under his jacket before him and Parmesh, who sat in the shopping cart in front of him, reached the cash register.
This was the moment he began his career as a thief. It turned into a habit to supplement the family’s needs for food and other small items by pocketing them—especially the endless demand for expensive diapers, which he met by squeezing the bulky packets beneath the hollow under his arm. Near the checkout, he made sure to position himself in such a way that the cashier would not notice the bulge under his jacket. During the coming days, weeks, and months, with Parmesh in the stroller, he occasionally visited the downtown department stores to search for missing items in the household. It could be winter clothing for the growing child, a warm, long coat for Chandra, or a jacket for himself. He became skilled at browsing through the racks, locating specific items in the proper size without a security tag, and scouting the camera positions on a floor. He preferred to go on his procurement trips at the beginning of the week and before noon, when very few customers roamed the shops. After questioning a salesperson, nobody would care to look any further at the man with a child in the stroller. When Chandra found out how all the treats and useful objects were obtained, she smiled and hugged her man, calling him “my hero.”