The events up to this point in what he thought of as his life allowed Hasmukh to gather knowledge of the contents he identified with. As the greater part of him: age, gender, name, education, good or bad events, situations, and so forth. Glimpses of what allowed these contents to exist, however, affected him more than the contents itself. When he took Sannyas, he did not comprehend that at all.
Walking into the Mada Center in Frankfurt and booking the Encounter group exhibited his yearning for more signs. Once he had sat in front of the master’s picture after a Kundalini Meditation and later on marveled about what had occurred, it took almost two decades for him to receive a credible explanation.
When Neo took the red pill in the movie The Matrix, Morpheus advised him that there would be no way back. The term “red pill” and its opposite, “blue pill,” became common symbols for the choice between ignorance of illusion (blue) and embracing the sometimes-painful truth of reality (red).
The moment in Athens, Hasmukh noticed the deformed streetcar tracks, he began to feel as if he had boarded a fast-moving train that never stopped and had no emergency brakes.
After the three Germans survived the long flight to Bombay, they took a local taxi late at night, which took them to the long-distance taxi stand. Cool air made their arrival in the subcontinent tolerable. When the vehicle reached the outskirts of the city and began the climb into the mountainous parts of their trip, the experience turned into a more characteristic East Indian welcome. Half the exhaust fumes entered the car, and all windows needed to be open. The family survived this challenge as well, and arrived in the morning in the city of Poona, where the driver dropped them off at a recommended hotel.
Before Hasmukh set foot in the Ashram his very first time, he had to spent a week sick in bed, staying at the hotel continuously. A harmful bug had infected his intestines, causing high temperature and seeing to it that he remained helpless. During this period, Chandra went to the Ashram daily, with and without Parmesh, who sometimes had to keep his father company. Whenever she returned from her day trip, she reported exciting news and related what happened to her. There were also moments when he looked at her flushed face and physical appearance that he almost knew she had been with someone else, which essentially was confirmed one night when she did not return at all. However, his physical condition during this initial week in Poona did not allow him to ponder too much about these details in the life of his partner.
After registration and a negative AIDS test, Hasmukh could finally enter the place where all Sannyasins wanted to be: near Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. He took an orientation tour of the facilities and then was on his own for a while. Most of the attendees inside walked around dressed in a variety of attire, from red to purple, and from kaftans to loose-fitting pants and shirts, which could be purchased in a boutique. The atmosphere on that first day felt very humid and busy; the seasonal monsoon in its final phase soaked the second-largest city in the state of Maharashtra in western India on a daily basis. As Hasmukh roamed the pathways in the Ashram, people everywhere were trying to mop and dry bits and pieces of the property. Makeshift canvas had been spread over specific areas throughout the lush garden area. In the middle of the main section was Buddha Hall, an oval tent construction held together and stretched out by thick ropes and bamboo poles. The marble surface inside Buddha Hall required cleaning and drying after every event. The first one began at 6:00 a.m. in the morning with the Dynamic Mediation and continued until after the Satsang at night.
Hasmukh caught up with the rest of his family in a coffee shop, where they served delicious Western-style cappuccino, cakes, and pies. The priority for many, especially newcomers, were questions such as “How much?” and “Where?” It was mandatory to save money everywhere conceivable and consequently spend as much time as possible in the Ashram. Chandra had a head start with her reconnaissance about where they could stay in the future and leave the more expensive hotel as soon as possible. She took Hasmukh by rickshaw on Main Road to the east and let the driver stop in a rural area mixed with apartment houses.
As the three from Germany walked slowly down a dirt road, they came to a site that appeared to be the remnants of a previous farming enterprise. Chandra knocked at the door of a small house and talked to someone inside, who gave her a key. They walked a few steps back to another small building that stood separate from the others. When she opened the door and let Hasmukh look inside, he did not know what to say; he was in shock.
As he scanned an empty space with dirt floor, almost a hut but concrete walls and a tin roof, without a window, water, or utility, Hasmukh said, “Sorry, I can’t do that.”
From that moment on, they were a separated couple with child.
Nevertheless, he helped them obtain the necessary equipment to start a new home, such as a mattress, a cooking oven, and many small items. He quickly found himself an inexpensive room with an old Sannyasin woman who rented her second bedroom to Bhagwan’s visitors. Whenever coming home or leaving the apartment, he had to go through the property owner’s bedroom, which was a nuisance, but the place was in a perfect location to reach the Ashram via a brief bicycle ride.
A few days later, with Hasmukh not quite settled into his new home with a bed surrounded by a mosquito net, the doorbell of the apartment rang. Since the Ma was not at home, he went to open the door. Chandra stood there with a concerned expression in her eyes but smiling at the same time. “You need to help us. Our place is under water, and everything we have is wet.”
He guided her into his room, where they talked about the recent downpours and the flooding it caused. As they were sitting on the small couch that came with the room, she said to him, “Good to see you. Come a little closer, let me hug you.”
They were pals on gracious relations, with no reason not to indulge. He shifted his position close to her, and then they hugged. She knew him so very well that it was no issue to coerce him softly to undress and have sex with her.
Parmesh meanwhile, in a building near the Ashram where Sannyasins were organizing the beginnings of a new kindergarten and day-care facility, appeared to have had a great time when his parents picked him up. The whole family stayed together one more time for a few days until Chandra found another place to live.
While the new arrivals tried to organize their life in and near the Koregaon Park neighborhood on the east side of Poona, they did not miss anything inside the Ashram. Master Bhagwan sporadically took some time off his nightly discourses, and he happened to be doing just that when the family arrived. At such times, the congregation celebrated with live music and watched one of the master’s videos instead. The interruptions in his live appearances were caused by intermittent ill health, nausea, fatigue, pain in the extremities, and lack of resistance to infection. The master expressed his belief the illnesses were due to poisoning by US authorities while they kept him in prison.
For the average Sannyasin not involved in the dealings of the Rajneesh organizations, the recent developments in Rajneeshpuram, Bhagwan’s deportation, his odyssey around the globe, and finally his return to the Ashram in Poona generated significantly fewer worries than his personal well-being. It had to do with genuine love and respect for the master, as well as a portion of egoistic self-interest because presumably 99.99 percent of the disciples would not express confidence that they had reached sustained enlightenment. For that reason, when it finally came about that Swami Prem Hasmukh met his master in person, he remained in awe for the entire period of approximately two hours, his mouth and eyes wide open.
After the initial lecture, Hasmukh could not have told anybody what had gone on or what Bhagwan said or who sat next to him. Because of problems at Buddha Hall, the lecture took place in an alternative venue, a smaller, more intimate one across from the large tent. Hasmukh had been lucky enough, after passing sniffing and security checks, to find a seat on the floor in the sixth row, almost opposite Bhagwan’s armchair. He remembered the moment Bhagwan appeared and slowly walked a few steps with his hands in the Namaste greeting position in front of him and then settled into the chair. After that, all turned void.
With the help of his landlady, Ma Adarsha, who gave him advice on where to buy things and where to eat when not in the Ashram neighborhood, Hasmukh eased quickly into a daily routine. He got up early to ride his bicycle to the Dynamic Meditation at 6:00 a.m., had breakfast in the Ashram or vicinity, and then went to the morning discourse or video lecture. He equipped himself with a change of red clothes, kaftan and pants with shirt, and soon felt at home in the new outfit.
The only issues that abruptly reappeared, because they had never left, were Chandra and the changing relationship with her, including questions involving Parmesh. Now that they were living apart, they had to organize who took care of him at what time. She had moved into an area close to Koregaon Park, the Indian village, where she found one room in a family’s house that was separated by a locked door. It was modest and basic but considerably improved from the previous situation in the stable.
The actual issue, however, was not external; it came from within Hasmukh’s mind. After a very intensive day in the Ashram, surrounded by hundreds of people, at night he returned to a room he had to tiptoe to, with a bed under a mosquito net—alone. He experienced attacks of anxiety, jealousy, and fear of being alone—his number one issue. Sometimes he could not fall asleep, even though he had been up and going for twenty hours. Then he got out of bed, sneaked quietly through Adarsha’s room again, and went outside into the night, walking or taking the bike through the dark streets of Poona, which had only few streetlights on its main roads. In a way, he enjoyed the odors and noises of the sleeping city, the pungent smell of decay after a downpour, smoke from always-burning fires in empty barrels, the night guards in front of apartment buildings used to keep the mosquitoes at bay, and the frequent urinal spots along streets where men relieved themselves.
For any visitor to the Ashram on a modest budget, one method of long-term survival in Poona was the opportunity to worship—work—full time in the Ashram. Reimbursements for this activity included free entry, meditations, lectures, and most of all, free food. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner for worshippers were served in the back of the area, where kitchen and cafeteria space filled a wide expanse, with doings almost around the clock. Additional to the external benefits, Ashram workers were given the opportunity on a rotating basis, to sit in rows close to the front during the master’s discourses. Here, the inner circle around Bhagwan nestled on embroidered cushions and custom-made low-sitting chairs. Therapists, performers, financial benefactors, physical caretakers of the master, secretaries, and prominent visitors had their permanent seats up front, close to Him.
Once their organizational issues with Parmesh had been taken care of and the parents knew, he spent the days in good hands with other Sannyasin children, Hasmukh faced the question of what to do with all the time between meditations.
It was one of these beautiful, glorious Poona mornings, when the clouds disappeared and the sun dried up all moisture after the Satsang. Birds chirped during Bhagwan’s lecture; he told his followers to stop worrying all the time, to listen to the birds and take them as an example. The session left everybody in a very mellow mood. As Hasmukh walked down the lane toward Main Road to have a cappuccino at the German bakery, he ran into Chandra, who smiled all over her face and asked him, “What are you doing? Come, let’s walk together. Why don’t you join us in the electrical department? Right now, we are a crew of two but could use another person. Very cool and easy job. They leave you alone.”
He thought about this prospect for a few days, visited her and the second person, Abhirat, a very young, blond man from England, in the Ashram during their worshipping hours, and decided it would be worth a try, including all the benefits. The electrical department leader accepted Hasmukh immediately and assigned him to join the other two members of the team. It truly felt hip, suddenly to be an insider with different dealings, and the work could not really be labeled as such—frequently there was no job to do at all. When the electrician team had an assignment, it meant fun—laying a cable over roofs and drilling through walls from one place to the other. Sometimes they were up on ladders between people strolling around in the Ashram, hanging a cable on trees and lampposts. Hasmukh visited areas of the Ashram, he had no idea existed before. His new position came just in time to save money. He had been looking for a new place to live and found a basic one-bedroom apartment about a mile away, where he paid only a little more than for the room in Adarsha’s apartment.
What immediately drew his attention, and increasing suspicion, however, was the way his worship partners reacted to each other. They appeared to have a lot of fun, laughing often when Hasmukh did not get the point, and most of all, every now and then, they disappeared without telling him where they were going. The old jealousy machine in what he thought of as his heart began working again and caused frequent pain attacks until Chandra candidly admitted that the two did have a sexual relationship.
For Hasmukh, this confirmation of his suspicion actually was easier to handle than the initial wariness. In addition, he sort of liked young Abhirat and his open, fresh British points of view about the whole scene. He appreciated the young man’s knowledge of details in the Ashram that he had no clue about—such as the small space above the boutique in the Ashram; its windows faced Buddha Hall, and during Satsangs. By sitting up there, one could avoid long lines and checks, view the master directly across the space, and hear him over the speaker system.
Sometimes, it became so intense in their cubicle-sized office that the electricians were shaken inside out. Throughout the day, the small room facilitated switchboard operations, and at night, one or two members of the electrical department used it for their functions. They discovered that the switchboard was not locked for outgoing calls. Hasmukh began calling Germany free and talked to Yogesh in Hamburg and his assistant Monika, who took Sannyas and had received the name Eshana. Both of them appreciated the live conversation from within the Ashram with the music group playing in the background.
The six acres that contained Bhagwan’s Ashram were perpetually changing—reconstructed, rearranged, cleaned, maintained, and used. During Hasmukh’s initial visit, there was a small park-like recreational area right behind the fence and the main gate, in front of the administration and shops building. The smoker community met in parts of it, and the rest served as a place to relax in the shade of bushes and trees. Isolated bamboo benches between trees provided rest spots away from the crowd. In the midst of the brush was a concrete platform with an iron cap, perhaps some kind of utility access. People used it to sit on, puff a beedi or smoke cigarettes. One night after a video lecture, Hasmukh went to this spot and lay down on his back, his legs resting on the gravel around the area.
Recently pain had come back; jealousy and his number one fear. First, he had found out by talking to young Abhirat that Abhirat was not the only one who enjoyed Chandra’s fondness. Then he had witnessed with his own eyes during one of the almost-nightly private parties how she left with men—especially one Brazilian guy who looked like a bearded bear. Tall and huge, he apparently worked somewhere close to the master. Hasmukh felt like the rug had been pulled from under him, that he had no chance against this type of competition. Therefore, when he lay on his back on the concrete pedestal, he let the pain sink in overpoweringly, feeling it sweep over him, and as he became aware of tears running down his cheeks, he felt a space between the observing and the actual feeling.
At that moment, he felt first gentle fingers and then a hand slowly closing on his right hand resting on the concrete. He did not do anything. He sensed the contact, which seemed to be a miracle. Hasmukh did not investigate immediately who it might be. As time passed, the fingers first gently played with his fingers, then an entire hand carefully feeling and caressing his. He opened his eyes and saw a shadow between him and the moon and streetlights—the silhouette of a person with long hair that slowly moved down toward his face, and then the hair surrounded his head and a cheek nestled against his cheek.
Much later, after a seeming eternity, at the Ashram’s closing time, a couple walked hand-in-hands down Lane 1 in Koregaon Park and took the next available rickshaw. It transported them to a hotel about two miles away.
Hasmukh had found a new friend. Her name, Lalitya, meant Loveliness, Grace, and she was the only person he had ever met in whom he recognized sadness that might have been deeper than his. He gladly accepted Lalitya’s invitation to join her at the hotel, instantly drawn to her. Hasmukh learned that she arrived from Switzerland some time ago, which enabled them to communicate in German. This first night, however, the two new friends did not talk a lot. They rested on the bed and felt each other’s energy, touched with hands, and cuddled tenderly while a candle burned down slowly. He found her very attractive in a way that needed further exploration. Lalitya’s physique was also alluring but it stayed in the background during their encounter. Only when the first light of morning shimmered through the curtains did they undress and feel each other’s naked bodies, but they were too fatigued for further activities.
Meeting Lalitya distracted Hasmukh somewhat from his internal brew, but ongoing surges of jealousy kept him frequently on his toes. On any given night were many opportunities to party; it became impossible to keep track of Chandra, and he felt helpless to let her go.
One day when he came by her room to see Parmesh, she invited him inside and said, “He is with the Indian family across the street; the children are his new friends.”
Then she continued, “I tell you, I can hardly walk. This Brazilian last night, he did it to me so much, I am raw down below.”
Hasmukh could see that she waddled like a duck.
Through a strict routine, starting the day early with the Dynamic, working in the Ashram, and meeting with other people, and of course the congregations with the master, he survived this testing time. It was at night, after lectures and dinner, that the challenge to stay calm and centered began. Habitually, he rode the bike after dark to Chandra’s place and checked whether he could see or hear anything. He never did.
Abhirat introduced Chandra and him to a couple of nice British Sannyasins who were visiting the Ashram only for a short time and made sure they had a good time at night by organizing parties. On several occasions, they all went together and took the new designer drug Ecstasy, which triggered amazing feelings but left users with strong aftereffects. This early version of the drug might have been practically toxic.
Following one of these social events, Abhirat, Chandra, and Hasmukh went to her room and lay down on her bed under a mosquito net, next to Parmesh. She had invited him to join them for the night. When everybody settled down under the bed sheet, the young Brit took her from the back while she was lying on the side. She faced Hasmukh and he could see how she enjoyed the attention. For some reason, this situation did not hurt him at all and also did not have a stimulating effect. Hasmukh thought he might have conquered jealousy by going through with this.
Then a dramatic event occurred.
“Can you please come quickly? Something happened with Parmesh; we have to bring him to the hospital immediately. His shinbone might be broken. He sat on the back of my bike and his leg came in between the spokes.” Chandra met Hasmukh in the electric department and told him the news.
The parents transported their son in a rickshaw to an emergency room, where the staff took an X-ray and put the whole leg in plaster. For the next month, one of the parents sat always by Parmesh’s bedside to take care of the little boy. Hasmukh began to paint a picture during this period. When the broken bone healed, the family thought it would be time for a vacation, and they took an overnight bus to Panaji in Goa.
While they camped out at Anjuna beach, Hasmukh and Chandra took their last two Ecstasy trips and went through a memorable night at the beach. Fog settled in after midnight. The two walked next to each other through the thick of it for what seemed to be an eternity. The matured partners enjoyed another extraordinary experience while walking and feeling the fog and their next step, since they could not see anything. Back with small, sleeping Parmesh on the beach, they talked all night long until the next morning.
Suddenly Abhirat arrived from Poona, changing the whole chemistry of things. For a few more days, the group delighted in the cheap but good seafood that the native restaurants served and then boarded a return bus to Poona, where they had to face reality, their future, and how to survive a little longer.
Concentrated efforts contemplating the money issue brought about the idea to contact Yogesh in Hamburg and ask him for a loan. He was the only person Hasmukh and Chandra knew who had access to funds. After the telephone operator crew in the Ashram left their workplace for the day, the two Germans went into the switchboard compartment on the second floor and placed the call to Hamburg, Chandra carrying out the conversation. Once again, Yogesh was happy to receive a ring from the Ashram, where he wanted to be as well, and thought briefly about the request of his friends. He agreed to hand over the cash to Eshana, who would be leaving Hamburg for a visit to the Ashram shortly.
A couple of weeks later, Hasmukh and Chandra received the money from the messenger, and all three were happy.
To invest and increase the loan amount, the couple concocted the project idea of purchasing inexpensive hashish in Poona, then moving it to Australia and selling it there for a huge profit. Subsequently, with the profit made, they would buy gold in Sydney and sell the gold back in Poona. The original hash idea came from Abhirat, who said he knew people who had done it successfully. As a starter, he provided the connection in a faraway slum area of the city, where he and Hasmukh went by rickshaw one night. Between huts, fireplaces, playing children, and elderly squatting people, a woman produced some samples from her dark sari that appeared to be black hash and looked OK to Hasmukh. He told her he wanted two pounds of it, and she told them to come back in two weeks, that someone had to get it from Bombay.
While they waited for the goods to arrive, Chandra and Hasmukh discussed repeatedly who would take the trip to Sydney. He wanted to take the risk and responsibility, but she argued that customs officials would not inspect a woman as thoroughly as they would a man. His idea was based on the method of transportation.
Hasmukh wanted to cut down the whole two pounds in little pieces, wrap them in plastic film, which he would ingest before departure and then pick out of a toilet bowl in Sydney.
They reached a temporary agreement: Hasmukh would do the job, but whenever he felt unsure, Chandra would take over. First, the product had to arrive, and then the tedious processing would begin, which they could work on together. Hasmukh’s apartment was perfect for this kind of task: no adjoining neighbors through a door, a third-floor private entrance in an apartment building overlooking a green zone with occasional settlements.
When the merchandise arrived, it did not possess the quality of black Afghan, felt a bit dried out, and weighed less than a kilo, but Hasmukh accepted it anyway. For the next month, he visited the Ashram only occasionally to eat and get fresh, filtered water from their purification system. Otherwise, he stayed in his apartment to process the hash. Using a hammer and then a coffee grinder, he produced a powdery, sticky quality of hash that he could easily mold into larger, capsule-size pieces. After that, he used two layers of cling wrap to seal the bits and then fused both ends with fire. Chandra dropped by rarely to sit in for a few hours while working on the merchandise and after a few weeks stopped completely. She told him she could not handle working with it.
Lalitya showed up sometimes, wondering had what happened to Hasmukh. When he told her, she became quite concerned about his plan. From then on her visits occurred more often, as well as her overnight stays.
Even though he did not smoke any of the hash, the continuous smell in his apartment and the sticky stuff on his fingers made him feel dazed. His entire way of life and purpose of being in Poona changed. When he could estimate the end of his preparations, he visited Chandra to get her part of the money for the Australia trip. To his disbelief, she told him she did not want to participate anymore, which after his investment and time spent on the groundwork, would have left him unable to purchase the ticket.
He left her place without major confrontation, returning at a time when he knew she would be in the Ashram and retrieved the funds from her hiding place. Then he purchased his ticket.
Lalitya spent one more night with him during which they made sweet love and she told him to take good care of himself. The night before his departure, he went to dinner with Chandra, who had forgiven him his desperate move with the money. Hasmukh selected lamb stew on rice in the Indian restaurant, enjoyed a bottle of beer, and then at home began swallowing the tabs with lots of nonalcoholic liquids. At the same time, he took medication to stop bowel movements.
It will never be known for sure if the lamb stew or something else was the cause, but when he arrived in Bombay and checked into a hotel, he began to vomit, and diarrhea set in. It was an ugly situation Hasmukh found himself in; the consumption procedure became more hurtful the more he swallowed, his throat did not want any more of it, but he forced himself. By the end of the nightmare, he had recovered from the toilet and cleaned approximately half of what he had taken earlier. Frantically he tried to think of a solution with his battered brain; he needed to leave for the airport soon. Hasmukh took a plastic shopping bag and threw the smelly merchandise into the bag. Then he placed a pair of reeking sneakers on top of it. Thinking it would make anyone reluctant to look into the plastic bag, he placed one of the extremely dirty, stinking hotel towels on top of the sneakers.
He made it on board the Quantas flight with the plastic bag and an oversized, Indian-made business case. As he approached the customs counter at Sydney’s Kingsford-Smith Airport, Hasmukh felt calm inside. His physical and mental condition had been overwhelmed too long to worry any further; he prepared himself to accept anything. As he put his two items onto the inspection table, the agent briefly touched the rim of the plastic bag, glanced inside, and then waved the new arrival to the exit. His idea had worked.
By recommendation, Hasmukh made his way to Bondi Beach by public transportation and checked into a small hotel. As he was about to leave the reception area, he noticed a framed black-and-white flyer on the wall. It contained a reproduction of a local newspaper report about a man caught by the police with a large amount of drugs in this particular hotel. Chuckling to himself, Hasmukh walked down the open-air veranda to his room.
The smile on his face froze when he talked to his dealer connection on the phone. The ambiguous arrangement Hasmukh and Madir had made in Poona was in the event he ever showed up in Australia. It also included price and method of handling the deal. Madir, whining about the situation in Sydney, made an offer for the entire cargo that did not come close to what he had previously proposed. After the events of the previous forty-eight hours, Hasmukh’s woozy condition did not help him avoid a panic attack. He felt duped, but agreed to the deal because he could not imagine him selling the merchandise on the streets. Desperately, he stayed up most of the night, searching the room and neighborhood for tiny pieces of metal, such as screws, nails, and coins, to implant into randomly picked tablets and produce more weight. Often he went to the toilet and recovered more of it.
The next day, he met with Madir at his apartment. Hasmukh did not expect the man to examine, peel, and weigh each of the perhaps two hundred capsules, but he did. He also discovered each little weight and enjoyed the opportunity to drop the purchase price even further.
Nevertheless, after all was said and done, Hasmukh still had a considerable amount of cash in his pocket. He inquired at a Sannyas community that leased a large house in a chic neighborhood, and they offered him a room. From the slum of Poona to the big house with swimming pool and nice people around him, he took a week off and went sightseeing, swimming in the pool, and hanging out.
Two weeks later, on an early morning, Hasmukh arrived back in Poona, where he checked into a hotel. The size of his luggage had quadrupled before he left Sydney. He now owned a Fender Stratocaster, a small but powerful sound amplifier, two large loudspeakers without boxes, and four small bars of gold. After he informed the sub lessee of his apartment that he had returned and needed the apartment, he walk