For a while, as long he had some cash, he rather enjoyed his new position on the outside, sitting in the German bakery and watching the comings and goings of Sannyas traffic passing by. However, when the Satsangs and lectures began and only a few tourists or seedy individuals lingered around the area, he felt very lonely. With the force of nature, Anand Jaan began to walk on the edge and then stepped into the world of here and now.
The sudden lack of money enabled an uncomplicated transition from the state of planning and remembering to unconcealed awareness. One morning, Jaan woke up, had nothing to drink or eat, and then began a long journey. First, he became a member of an exclusive group of people, some of them illicit, sick, mad, and homeless.
He learned when and where to be and discreetly score a cup of coffee or some food. Surviving in the summer heat twenty-four hours a day on free sugar from the tables in a restaurant became a daily exercise. Knowing where to cool off with running water splashing on his head was a necessity for survival. He experienced almost continuously intense, sensational moments, and the most intense feelings one can imagine came when hunger set in. If it was satisfied for a moment, it still lingered on in the background like a wildcat ready to attack again. It was as if he himself turned into an animal with awareness.
Daily, he met new people who shared a few moments of their life with him. He was a regular in the known crowd around the Ashram and beyond. Absolute highlights were a few instances he would never be able to forget.
One was when his ex-girlfriend with little Parmesh on the back of her moped pulled up at the supermarket next to the German bakery. Even though he stood up from his chair, she did not look at him and quickly went with their son inside to go shopping. Jaan waited for her exit to catch another glimpse of his beloveds, and when they came out, Parmesh awkwardly glanced at him but without real acknowledgement, and then off they went.
Another night, Jaan accidentally hooked up with one of the regulars in the rebel crowd, a tall, handsome, well-dressed British mulatto. They were standing around with a large bunch of people listening to a modest open-air concert in the neighborhood and met two young Iranian students who invited them to join them for a party night. First, they went in a car to the Iranian’s apartment and had a few drinks and some joints. Then they got back into the car and visited pubs in Poona. It had become very late at night. The Persians were sitting in the front of the small Indian-made vehicle, the mulatto and Jaan on the backseat. There was no traffic whatsoever on the streets of Poona. The driver accelerated fast, racing along a very long, very straight section of a main road. They approached intersections and sped through them without using the brakes.
The car’s speed was about 100 kilometers per hour as the driver steered toward another crossroad, when Jaan noticed from the distance that a bicycle rider was moving very slowly from the left toward the middle of the intersection without looking or noticing the approaching, speeding car. It was unclear whether the Persian had noticed the bicycle. He hit the bike and rider, who flew about thirty feet straight up in the air. The car rushed through the intersection. Jaan looked through the rear windows, saw the man fall to the ground where he did not move anymore.
The Iranian stopped the car some distance away, and the four walked slowly back to the scene without attracting attention. Before the crowd of curious onlookers became too large, they returned to the car and left. Jaan and his acquaintance preferred walking together and separated later.
The fact that Lalitya’s stay in Poona was ending concerned her very much. That might have been one reason she did not really grasp the situation Jaan was in when the two met before she departed to Zurich. She promised to help and send money for a plane ticket with a friend. As time passed and Jaan thought sporadically about how to get out of the position he was in, he remembered her and the promise. One day, a concerned person who had been aware of his predicament approached him with a letter. It had been sitting in the Ashram’s mailbox for a while. In the letter, Lalitya told him that a Sannyasin from Switzerland, Samit, had left for Poona with money for him. Jaan investigated, and someone pointed out the Swiss Sannyasin to him when he walked down Main Road. He approached Samit, introduced himself, and asked for the money. However, Samit told him he had no money.
Jaan forgot quickly about the issue because matters of more immediate importance were developing moment by moment. The electricity in his apartment had been turned off some time ago. He used the place for sleeping, which became more difficult because of all the mosquitoes, to take showers, and to drink water. A long time ago, he had let go of any caution about drinking the local tap water.
Once, the mulatto with a beautiful, blond-haired, and caring Danish woman and he stayed the night on his futon mattress. Jaan thought that they had sex. In fact, he was very attracted to her. When she looked at him with her radiant blue eyes whenever she sat in the restaurant next to the supermarket and he entered, she acknowledged him with a smile. He always felt invited to sit with her. If Kiersten was not already there, he would wait for her impatiently and feel disappointed if she did not show up. During the weeks and months of Jaan’s existence outside the Ashram, the two of them became close. Kiersten had no intention of taking Sannyas. She had come from a long vacation in Goa and dropped by Poona to check out the scene she’d heard about.
Then it happened. Jaan walked up the stairs to the second floor of his building to take an afternoon shower and could not open his apartment door. The lock had been changed, with all his belongings inside. He walked to his rental agent’s home and negotiated that he could leave his personal belongings, including passport, with him until further notice.
Now that he faced homelessness in Poona, the daily survival pressure increased to some degree. Where to sleep, clean up, stay cool, eat, and drink were the only concerns.
A Nordic angel came to the rescue. “Get your passport. I’ll take you out of here to Bombay and arrange that money will be sent from my home,” Kiersten said.
The next day she took his hand and they both went by rickshaw to the train station. For a moment, for the first time in a very long time, Jaan felt relaxed as they sat in an air-conditioned train car on the way to Bombay. The rental agent had let him take whatever he could carry in his bags.
In the big city, they searched for a proper hotel and took a room on the third floor. Here the two had sex for the first time. Jaan wore his sunglasses, with Kiersten on top of him. She rode him like a horse until she noticed that he was not seriously into it. They were lying in a room, illuminated with neon light and with wooden window shutters. The windows were surrounded by a veranda on which soldiers passed by continuously and tried to peek into their room. They changed hotels and ended up in a quieter, more neglected space; but they did not really care because they took a couple of Kiersten’s LSD pills, which took them through the night.
She once again took Jaan by the hand to the German consulate, where he explained that he had lost all his money in a robbery and needed a return ticket. The consular officer gave him a small amount of cash, which would not last more than a few hours, and told him that the procedure for getting the ticket could take a week. When Kiersten heard that, she told Jaan that she would wire money to an Indian bank, since she had to leave for Copenhagen the next day. After another night together, the friends said good-bye, and Jaan was by himself again. He had to survive the next days on a mini budget, waiting for money from Kiersten or a ticket from his consulate—whichever came first. After a few hamburgers and coffees in the Taj Mahal Hotel coffee shop, his budget money was gone.
Jaan lingered around and luckily, later that night he met Hans sitting at the counter in the coffee shop. They began talking in German about this and that. Hans worked for Lufthansa administration, and when Jaan began to tell his story, he handed him a wad of rupees under the counter and said, “Let’s have some fun. I might know just the right place.”
The two Germans took a taxicab, and Hans asked the driver to take them to the red-light district. It took a while until the trip ended in an area where the main street was crowded with many people; the scene looked like a mixture of market and festival. Jaan noticed a building that attracted his attention because of its small balconies and red lights in some windows. Inside the building was a courtyard surrounded by a four-story staircase. Many doors and secondary levels of floors branched off from it.
In this maze, Jaan lost Hans and went through many open doors with bizarre attractions inside. There were organized meetings, tarot readers, fire-eaters, clowns, and deformed humans. Then he came to a door, which opened into a brightly lit room with a bench on one side and a mirror on the other. Through the mirror, he could see into another room. Perhaps twenty women of all shapes and sizes stood in a row next to each other.
A man appeared at Jaan’s side and said, “Take your pick.”
He took his best choice, and the woman guided him through a network of small paths until they reached an available cubicle, not much wider than the single-sized mattress on a pedestal. She lay down on the bed with her dress on and hoisted it above her midsection to expose the divine vulva. The poor woman had no condom available, but Jaan luckily had his germicidal and also some arousing spray in his pocket. He had bought it in the gift shop of the Taj Mahal, where it caught his attention because of the erotic Oriental picture on the package and its contents based on artificial cocaine.
Back on the street, he walked to the queue of waiting taxis and returned to his hotel. Once he paid the driver, he realized that the money left from Hans was just enough to pay for one more night in the hotel and some food. After only a few hours in bed, he converted his new plan of action into reality. His requirements included food, running water, air conditioning, and security. Jaan succeeded in catching a ride on the bus serving the Bombay International Airport. The desperate idea he had come up with during the night was that he could wait near the Lufthansa counter until they would take him to Frankfurt.
He located the German airline operations office but found it closed. Jaan settled down with his luggage and began to wait opposite the ticket counter on a row of airport seats. He waited for a long time and forgot how long he had been waiting. After the second night on the floor or a seat in the terminal, he knew where and how he would get something to drink or eat. Sometimes his hunger became so intense that he almost began begging, as the local street beggars did, but luckily, he always found a giving person by talking to people. The forty-eight hours had been very exhausting, and because he did not understand what was going on with Lufthansa, he grew angry.
When it turned dark outside for the third night, the hunger and resentment were too much to handle. He jumped the counter and began knocking on the office door until the glass window in the upper part shattered. Airport security arrived shortly. The agents handed him over to the police, who drove him to their station close the airport. As soon as Jaan entered the building and saw the scene inside, he relaxed and knew it would be OK. The police officers began questioning him and filed a report. They told him that in the morning, they would contact the German consulate, and then they offered chai and some rice with dal. Jaan was the only customer that night.
He shared the station building with a few officers, who let him stay overnight on one of their own cots. Later in the morning, a consular employee arrived with a file folder that included his ticket to Frankfurt. A very happy Jaan boarded the huge Boeing 747 and enjoyed every moment of this luxurious part of his journey, especially the airline food and drinks.
To his amazement, Hilde stood waiting for him at the arrival terminal in Frankfurt. Clerks of the Interior Ministry had contacted Jaan’s mother regarding payment for his ticket. She had declined to pay, but they told her on what flight he would be arriving. She had called Hilde to let her know. The moment he recognized her in the crowd, he became very emotional and went to his knees to kiss the ground. He felt very grateful to be back in Germany.