One day after they had returned, the boyfriend of their neighbor in the downstairs apartment next door approached Hasmukh when he parked his Opel next to one of the pretty Mercedes vehicles. “Hey listen, I wanted to ask you something. You belong to this sect, right, the Bhagwan cult?”
“I am a Sannyasin, yes.”
“Would you give me your necklace for good money? I could use it.”
“And why is that?”
“I have some issues with the IRS; they might take away all my cars if I don’t tell them what I did with the money I owe them. My lawyer had an idea. I would state that I donated everything to the cult and appear as one of you. I would give you enough to buy yourself a new, nice car.”
Hasmukh did not say anything for a while, and then replied, “I do not think that I would do it.”
“OK, let me know if you change your mind,” the neighbor said.
A few days later, the couple in red once again heard their neighbor’s screams and noises, which sounded as if her pimp were smacking her around. When they met her on the staircase, she wore large sunglasses to hide her black-and-blue eyes and did not want to talk to them as she usually did.
Life behind the university hospital continued without financial pressures for a good while, with Nimisha and Sarango and their baby in the household. For Chandra, the end of her academic studies became a reality as she faced the final year of intense cramming and many tests. She had had a girlfriend from the beginning of her time in Hamburg who also studied medicine and then became a Sannyasin with the name Udgata, or Exalted. The two turned into a work team, a cramming unit, and sat either at Udgata’s place or in the basement of their apartment building many hours almost every day.
An issue came up one day when the upstairs neighbor, the serious man in suits, used the laundry machine in the basement and heard voices coming from the storage units around the corner. These units were cubicles separated by wooden slats, and when he saw the two women in red sitting on the floor in one of the cubicles, surrounded by a large number of thick books, it must have looked quite peculiar. Occasionally, Chandra or both of the women did the Kundalini with a little tape player in front of the laundry machine and perhaps prevented the man from using it for half an hour, or he might have heard the music from downstairs in the cellar.
Simultaneously with her extreme exam-preparation schedule, Chandra befriended a female research physician at the hospital. The doctor, who also lived on the same street behind the hospital, suggested to Chandra that a professor she knew might have a research position available for three months the next summer, after her finals. This project had the potential to merit a desired doctor’s degree; the research location would be in Chicago. This development sparked, once again, feverish activity in the family, prompting Hasmukh to increase the number of his taxi-driving days and Parmesh’s time with various sitters at home or even in the Dharmadeep Center.
After a merciless quarter and the probability that Chandra had passed all required tests, two events occurred. The owner of the apartment building gave notice to the couple to vacate the apartment, and at the same time, the small family needed to fly to Chicago for the liver-research program. The reason for the notice was overfilling the apartment without permission. It all became a perfect match of circumstances, the acceptance in Chicago, Chandra’s relationship with Edelgard, her colleague and sponsor.
Dr. Kroell from Germany, in Chicago on a guest professorship at the University of Chicago, picked the couple up from O’Hare International Airport in his Mercedes station wagon. He and his family welcomed the folks from Hamburg with a Chicago-style pizza dinner, then dropped Chandra, Hasmukh, and Parmesh off at their new domicile, a brick building near campus where guest lecturers and other research staff lived. The doctor’s program covered the rent for three months. Edelgard was unable to join the welcome party but stayed in an apartment on the campus as well. They all met the next day to be familiarized with the new environment and research lab.
The primary reason Dr. Kroell had gone to Chicago for his liver project was that in the United States, researchers could use larger animals than rats only. Any positive outcome of the research would be translated for the human environment it effected. When the group visited the laboratories of this particular program, the guests from Hamburg saw that it contained many pigs of all sizes, available for experiments.
The building in which Chandra, Hasmukh, and Parmesh made their new home faced the east side of Midway Plaisance, an impressive park area 220 yards wide and a mile long. It offered an excellent opportunity for the morning jog, which Hasmukh took advantage of on a daily basis. The family’s small one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of six contained everything they needed for housekeeping. All they needed to do was go to the grocery store and fill up the fridge. As big surprise, when they met with Edelgard the next morning, she had prepared an initial basket of edibles for the new arrivals. The Kroell family told Hasmukh that whenever he wanted, they could use him as a handyman around the house for odd jobs. The circumstances appeared to be perfect, and the late spring weather played along as well.
When Chandra disappeared into the medical building, Hasmukh faced the homemaking situation and shopped for a used car. The best deal he could get was a huge beat-up Chevrolet station wagon, which carried them where they needed to go. Sometimes on beautiful weekends, they drove into Indiana to the Dunes National Lakeshore, and Edelgard came along.
Hasmukh fixed some windows in the Kroell residence, and after the couple located a proper kindergarten for Parmesh, he found a job in a church office as the priest’s administrative assistant. The job did not last very long because the man of god had issues, and Hasmukh was just one of many who tried their luck working for him.
As time progressed, the couple realized they needed more money to be able to stay for at least six months and fly to Oregon again for the fall festival. They met a small group of Sannyasins on the north side of Chicago who were extremely friendly and colorful. A gay couple and a large Ma became their friends in the foreign country.
Experiments in the lab progressed satisfactorily, with the research group trying to find an effective method of re-growing destroyed liver cells. Any outcome for Chandra meant a record in her resume. The family, however, encountered a level of poverty they had not experienced together before. They were able to eat and drink sufficiently, but purchases of any other item needed to be reassessed at least once or twice. Both parents loved clothes, and their red outfits had begun to show their age. For summer and beyond, it would have been so wonderful to obtain some new things.
Occasionally, they visited a particular shopping center in Gary, Indiana, on their way to the lakeside dunes park. One day, they went again to explore and look at nice clothing. With Parmesh on her arm, Chandra and Hasmukh went first into the men’s store and then had a good look in the women’s department. That day and in both departments, they found amazing articles: shirts, a belt, shorts, and long pants, something for the child in red, and a nice thin jacket for Chandra. When they were done and heading toward the exit, almost at the automatic sliding door, they heard a voice next to them, “Would you please come with me?”
A female security officer pointed the way, and the stunned parents found themselves standing in an ice-cold back office while several staff members produced the items they had been carefully selected from underneath the outfits they wore.
The handcuffed duo, with a child on their laps, were driven to a Gary police station, placed together in an ice-cold cell, and later fingerprinted and processed. Luckily, Edelgard picked up the phone for their one free call, and two hours later, a friend of hers posted bail and picked them up in Gary. After this horrible and embarrassing incident, they had to pay the bail amount and hired a lawyer, to whom they gave all the money they had saved. When their day in court arrived, they were glad to have a good defense. The judge handed out a probation sentence; their record would be erased after a few years.
Only a few weeks of free rental were left in the staff building at Midway Plaisance after the research assignment concluded. The family on their own and broke, desired to stay on for a while and make it to Rajneeshpuram again. Hasmukh happened to be lucky. He found a job as a microfilm operator for a company that produced greeting cards out of recycled paper. Chandra learned from the other Sannyasins that a lucrative way to make money was to offer massages from home. Many of Bhagwan’s disciples made their income that way. She came up with the idea to start her own operation and talked it over with Hasmukh, who did not want to hear about it, her enlisting in the ranks of the developing adult industry. After many intense discussions, he agreed to give it a shot during a trial weekend.
They borrowed a massage table from their friend in North Chicago and set it up in the small living room, then placed an ad in the weekend issue of the proper newspaper. Very hot weather lingered in the city during this period; people went to the lake to cool off, and the phone did not ring a lot, although, intermittently a call came in. Chandra set up the appointment, and then father and son took the stroller and Chevy to be out of the apartment. Without any incident and slow call volume, Chandra was proud to present a respectable amount for that first working Saturday. The next day the same happened, and from then on, the parents became a focused team.
Sometimes, Parmesh spent a day in kindergarten when Hasmukh had time off work. He would stay at home and hide in the bedroom when a customer arrived or leave before he came up the elevator. On one occasion, the masseuse faced a critical situation. Her boyfriend had been outside for the hour and thought that everything was over, but when he returned and approached the apartment door, he could hear that the session continued in overtime. A male voice said, “Oh yes, baby, come on, that feels good, yes, yes.” And so on.
Hasmukh made another round outside the building. When he returned this time, the customer had left and Chandra looked concerned. “This black man could not come. He had a long, thick prick, and he wanted to touch me all over. I became afraid at some point. When he was done, he left and did not pay.”
The Germans located a one-bedroom apartment on the north side between Montrose Avenue and Irving Park Road, close to their Sannyasin friends. The flat was located on the first floor of a two-story building and had large windows facing in to a small courtyard. From there Chandra began her full-time enterprise as a masseuse, and Hasmukh commuted every day twenty minutes south to his job at the microfiche scanner. He developed friendships with some of his coworkers and invited them for a party at the massage parlor/apartment. The massage table hidden away, the couple and Parmesh enjoyed the company of ordinary people who became their friends for a while.
As summer slowly turned and the long, hot days became shorter and cooler, the Sannyasins sent their application forms to Oregon and booked a flight to Portland. With sufficient money coming in and no reason to worry about the immediate future, they enjoyed the time near Lake Michigan. Hasmukh relished Reuben or pastrami sandwiches for lunch and an occasional beef hot dog in their neighborhood. He also liked the time on weekends when he and Parmesh had to leave the apartment because of Chandra’s occupation and they could run around the lakefront beach park while playing with a ball.
Departure day for Portland arrived. They made sure to carry warm clothing in their luggage. The previous time they had arrived at the airport for the summer festival, Sannyasins dominated the scene. This time in the terminal, they saw almost no red-clad individuals, and their only option for getting to the ranch was to take the Rajneesh bus. Certainly, the couple kept track and were informed of anything in the public news and through the gossip channels of the followers. They recalled reports of buses full of homeless people that arrived day and night in Rajneeshpuram. These collection vehicles were perhaps not really sent to take care of people in need for charitable reasons. They may have been an effort to inflate the number of voters for the group’s candidates. After a year of peace, natives in the Oregon County had begun an intense legal and physical fight against any expansion of the Rajneesh enterprise. The reception hotel in Portland had been bombed by a radical Islamic group.
When Hasmukh, Chandra, and Parmesh flew to Oregon for the fall festival to see the master, Bhagwan had entered a silent phase and only spoke occasionally during press conferences. It was cold in Rajneeshpuram, and the mood had changed dramatically. New arrivals faced two pieces of breaking news: Ma Anand Sheela and fifteen to twenty other top officials had abruptly left Rajneeshpuram, and do not eat the salad provided with the lunch and dinner boxes. By way of the gossip channels, the visiting Sannyasins found out what later was confirmed in the public media.
There were no more drive-by sightings of the master; the highlights of their stay were the up-close encounters with Bhagwan when he exited the press conference room, walking past toward the waiting Rolls-Royce. Twice the couple got tickets for this event during their trip. When the master passed by Hasmukh, on both occasions Hasmukh’s impression of Bhagwan was that of having met with an alien being. The Bhagwan’s body, about one foot shorter than his, very slowly and fluidly moved along the line of his disciples, his hands in Namaste greeting position in front of his face, Him flowing by like a cobra swaying, and his eyes glittering below the embroidered headpiece. It was the closest Hasmukh would ever be to Bhagwan.
Public opinion buttons were pushed by the number of Rolls-Royces in the garage and the wonderful, ever-changing decorated robes and jewelry Bhagwan owned and wore. Nobody understood but his followers. With serious faces, the worshipping fellow disciples dressed for the cold temperatures and did not talk to anyone from the outside.
Back in Chicago one evening, Chandra and Hasmukh could not believe what they witnessed on their small color TV: Bhagwan, in one of his robes and handcuffs, walking on what appeared to be an airport tarmac, accompanied by two law-enforcement officials. He was indicted on thirty-five counts in Multnomah County, Oregon. Charges included immigration violations and making false statements on his visa application. Bhagwan agreed to pay $400,000 in fines. He was deported from the United States.