by CW Ullman
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That night Darla and Charlie went to see Mahatma Ji’s body in the funeral home where they were the only two in the viewing room. They sat for awhile, then she stood and slowly went alone to the casket. She straightened Mahatma Ji’s saffron-colored robes. Next to his arm, she put an item Charlie could not see. Then she spoke to Mahatma Ji.
“You were supposed to live forever,” she sighed. “Now, who’s going to look after you? Nobody in heaven knows how to fix your tea -,”
She was interrupted by giggling in the outer foyer. Darla turned to see who it was, when into the room walked Raja Ji and Sharma smiling. They walked up to the casket and looked at her.
“You can go back to the ashram, we’ll handle this. He’ll be cremated back in Punjab,” Raja Ji said. Then a thought lit up his face and he said to Sharma, “Actually, they could do it here. We’d save money by not flying the body back.”
Charlie noticed Darla straighten. Sharma looked at a gold necklace around Mahatma Ji’s neck and pointed it out to Raja Ji.
“Should we take that?” Sharma said.
“If you touch one thing on him I’ll break your fucking necks,” Charlie heard himself say.
“Excuse me,” Raja Ji said.
“You heard him,” Darla said. “And I will help. Now if you two know what’s good for you, you’ll get out of here.”
“I do not like your tone –“ Raja Ji was interrupted by Darla. Raja Ji and Sharma had never seen an angry American black woman.
“This saint is being flown back to Punjab the way he looks right now. You don’t touch him or take anything from him. He gets a funeral befitting the holiest of men and if he doesn’t get what I think he deserves, I will go to the Denver Post and give them the inside story on the mission.”
“What inside story?” Raja Ji asked.
“The story of how you two frequented strip clubs and brought girls back to the residence. How Guru Ji got drunk at the residence and hit on the premie girls,” Darla continued. “The donations in this country, which your father is counting on, will dry up so fast you won’t have cab fare to the airport.”
“Who’s going to believe you - a black girl?” said Sharma.
And there it was: what Charlie and Darla only suspected was now evident for them to see clearly. Affluent their entire lives, Raja and Sharma were the latest version of India’s caste system. Even though they had received Western educations, the schools they attended were private British academies that kept them isolated from the general population. Their sense of entitlement had been nourished from birth. While Charlie had gone to prep school with wealthy kids in Tulsa, they could not hold a candle to Raja and Sharma’s prejudice and superciliousness. While Mahatma Ji was alive, he was never happier than to be in the presence of any family members of Guru Ji, but Charlie could only see their arrogance. In India, the Prajwal Family was a business, and the business was to sell meditation like it was a commodity; using the devotion of the mahatmas as a selling tool.
She was glaring at them when Charlie walked up and stood next to her exuding the same menace.
“You had better leave,” Charlie threatened in a whisper.
Raja and Sharma backed away from the casket and hesitated a moment then left. Charlie turned to Darla. “Is that true?” he asked.
“You remember when Guru Ji was in town, and you and I were doing service out at the residence?” Darla said. “You’d go back to the ashram at night after chauffeuring them around and I would stay at the house and cook. I never told anybody what was going on at the residence because I wanted to be near Mahatma Ji. I knew they’d boot me out, so I minded my own business, but it got wild some nights. Remember when Ellen Driscoll, the house mom from Race Street, left the mission to go home because her mother was sick? Her mother wasn’t sick; she left because Guru Ji had his hands all over her one night when he was drunk. When she left, the lawyers for the mission paid her off to keep her mouth shut. When they weren’t trying to seduce girls, all Guru Ji and President Bob talked about was getting more money for the mission; who had a trust fund; who had money. It was sordid.”
“I’ve had my suspicions,” Charlie said.
“I want to sing Aarti for Mahatma Ji one more time,” Darla said. She pulled out ghee and lit a candle. Charlie turned off the lights in the room and they sang over Mahatma Ji. Darla cried through the whole song. When the song ended, she ran her fingers through the flames and then caressed Mahatma Ji’s face. She leaned over the casket and kissed his forehead.
“I don’t want to stay in the ashram tonight. I don’t trust Raja Ji and Sharma not to send some of their Indian goons over and try something stupid. I am going to leave tonight and start back to Manhattan Beach and I want you to come with me,” Charlie said.
“That’s probably a good idea. Before we leave, do you mind if I am alone with him for a few minutes?” Darla asked.
Charlie waited in the foyer for ten minutes before she came to him.
“I need you to be with me. I’m not in good shape and I’m not promising I’m gonna be okay. Do you understand?” Darla said. She had a strange look to her face and Charlie knew she was emotionally spent and very fragile.
Charlie and Darla went back to the ashram, collected their belongings, and packed up the car. Charlie tied Mahatma Ji’s rocking chair to the roof and drove west out of Denver with Darla sitting shotgun. It was April 1978, and Charlie thought bad things usually happened to him in April.
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It is believed that when someone reaches the height of Samadhi, they have complete control over their bodies. They can speed up their heart rates, raise or lower their blood pressure, stop a cut from bleeding, or stop their breathing for extended periods of time without dying. Mahasamadhi is believed to be ultra supreme control of the body and a yogi who has mastered this state will consciously and intentionally leave his body. They only do this once, because what Indians call Mahasamadhi, everyone else calls death.
Charlie wondered if Mahatma Ji had practiced Mahasamadhi. He may have been in so much pain that he could not take it anymore and just willed himself to death. He wanted to ask Darla about it, but in her fragile state he thought it was a bad idea. In the first few hours on the road she spoke about how dark her life had been before Mahatma Ji. She tried committing suicide through drug overdoses, and was thwarted each time by her friends or pimps. A side of Darla he had not known was being revealed to Charlie and he wondered if he might have acted too hastily by taking Darla on a cross-country journey, alone.
They traveled Interstate 70 out of Denver. Whenever he saw a beautiful vista he would point it out to Darla, but she did not express much enthusiasm for it or anything. She sat slumped against the door with her sunglasses on, sleeping, or attempting to sleep. Charlie was not sure what to talk about, so he asked her a question when they were about thirty miles west of Grand Junction, Colorado, and her answer surprised him.
“Is meditating helping you with this? For me it-,“ he said when she interrupted him.
“I don’t meditate,” she stated.
Charlie was stunned. How could she not meditate? His very reason for joining the ashram was Darla’s pitch about meditation. He imagined that her smile and joy came from the inner peace she achieved through meditation.
“If you don’t want to talk, we don’t have to,” he said.
“No. Let’s, because if I don’t do something to distract me from the noise in my head, I’m going to fucking jump out of the car.
“Mahatma Ji once told me something that I didn’t understand until right now. He said that everyone talks about the eyes being the mirror of the soul and the Third Eye as the seat of Enlightenment, but there is something more powerful: the ears - because the ears are the echo of the soul.” She continued in Mahatma Ji’s accent, “You don’t go crazy from what you see; you go crazy from what you hear.”
“Why…how…uh, I mean-,” Charlie stammered. She interrupted him again.
“You drive, I’
ll talk. Why don’t I meditate? Is that the pinball rolling around inside your head? Because it doesn’t work for me as well as it does for you. I’ve seen enough people in the ashram who are true meditators, and you’re one of them. You close your eyes and in a few minutes you’re in bliss-ville.
“I received the techniques from Mahatma Ji and I worked hard at it; he would sit with me and give pointers, but I couldn’t fucking concentrate. I don’t know why; the years of drug use, just plain inability to focus, I’m horny as fuck; I don’t know. I tried, oh God, how I tried. And, he would be so gentle and encouraging. He’d say, ‘Darla, you’re doing good. Don’t you worry.’
“Next time we’d get together and try it again - nothing. I felt horrible; not for me, but for him. He felt like it was his fault. Everyone to whom he gave the Knowledge – and that’s thousands of people over his lifetime - he saw as his personal responsibility. If they weren’t succeeding, he always thought it was his fault. He wanted me to know bliss and I wanted to know it, if for no other reason than to make him happy, but I was hopeless. It just didn’t take.
“In his crazy Indian accent, he would say, ‘I tink dis time it vill verk.’ Then we’d sit there for an hour. He’s meditating, while Jimi fuckin’ Hendrix is thrashing around inside my skull. I felt like somebody was going to call for his wings. Eventually, I just put on an act. I would sit with him, Jimi ripping through my nervous system, and I tamped down my behavior and acted blissed out for him,” she finished.
“So you were…-,” Charlie started to say but was cut off.
“Are you trying to say I lied? Yes, I did. I fucking lied to the holiest man I know. Don’t look at me like that, Charlie, or I swear to Christ I’ll jump right the fuck out of this car!” She said.
She started beating her head, then the dashboard, and then tried to pull up the door lock. Charlie wrestled her to get her away from the lock. Because of the tussle with Darla, he was veering between lanes. The car was crossing a bridge and he did not want to stop, because if he did, she would be out and over the railing in seconds. She pulled the lock up; he pushed it down and then tried to hold it down with his fingers. He only had another fifty yards to go before they were off the bridge, then he could pull over and calm her down. She got his fingers off the lock and shoved an elbow into his side knocking the breath out of him. He had to slow down, because she had opened the door. She put one foot out and then stepped out of the car. By the time both her feet were down on the road, he had gotten the speed under fifteen miles an hour. However, the forward momentum of the car rolled her off her feet and she fell down. She got up and ran for the railing on her side of the road. Charlie had gotten his wind back and ran after her.
“Darla! Please don’t! Stop! Stop! STOP!” he yelled at her. He was ten feet behind when he tripped and fell on the pavement. He looked up just as she dove over the railing.
He was prostrate on the ground screaming her name and watching the car drift to the curb and stop. He moaned her name and did not want to get up to look over the rail and see her below, so he laid there on the pavement. With time she would have found something for which to live. If he could have gotten her back to Manhattan Beach, she would have the support of his family to get her life back on track.
He was seized by the same trepidation he felt on the Enterprise when he had to pull back the rope that was stuck on the ledge of the ship; the rope used to retrieve the girl from the water. Back then he did not want to go to the ledge and see the girl floating in the ocean, and now he did not want to go to the railing and see Darla on the ground below.
He lay there for minutes. Eventually, he stood up and brushed his hands to get the loose rocks out of his palms. Her voice was resonating in his head. He shuffled slowly to the rail with his eyes closed. Once he got to the rail the voice in his head was louder. It was louder for a reason: she was lying on her back on the ground two feet from the bridge, yelling.
“I can’t even fucking kill myself!” She was looking up at Charlie yelling, crying and laughing all at the same time.
By the time she had jumped out of the car, they were within a few feet of the end of the bridge where the slope of the hill was virtually flat. Darla’s momentum, as she dove over the rail, had flipped her in the air landing her on her back. Charlie let himself down from the bridge railing, walked to where she lay and stood over Darla scowling.
“Darla, you try that one more time and I will kill you myself. C’mon, give me your hand.”
“Charlie, lay down next to me. I want to show you something,” she entreated.
Charlie complied. He sat down next to her, then stretched out. Their heads were inches apart.
“Remember what he used to say?” Then in Mahatma Ji’s accent she repeated, “Now, close your eyes den open dem and tell me what you see. Hmmm? I tink you vill like it.”
Charlie saw brilliant white cumulus clouds. In Oklahoma these majestic clouds were called thunderheads. The clouds were massive and white with peach-colored shading, cast on their edges from the setting sun. Thunderheads were usually the lead clouds of a rainstorm. Darla pointed up to a cloud shape directly overhead. It appeared to be an old bald man dressed in robes bending from the waist. The setting sun made the robes appear saffron in color. Near this old man in saffron robes was a rainbow.
“Do you see it, Charlie?” Darla said. “The night before he died, he told me that when he was gone I would see him in the clouds.”
The first drop hit Darla on the forehead. The second drop hit Charlie on his forehead and then the sky opened up and rained on them. The cloud form changed shape and the rainbow faded slowly. They lay there getting drenched in the downpour as the bridge railing above them became crowded with people who had exited their cars to see what was below. The people looked down upon Charlie and Darla and wondered why these two crazy people were lying on their backs in the rain, laughing.
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They got a hotel room for the night in Durango, Colorado. Darla called first dibs on the shower. Charlie yelled at her not to use all the hot water and she told him to shut up, because they were not back in the ashram where hot water was always in short supply. Charlie took off his rain-soaked clothes and put on sweats. He then sat on the side of one of the beds and dialed the phone.
Chris Palmer came home from his chiropractic office. When he walked in the front door, he checked the mail on the hall table and turned to walk upstairs when he noticed the blinking light on the answering machine. He pushed the green button and heard this:
“Hey guys, it’s your wandering son. I am coming back home if you’ll have me. I have a lot to tell you, but first I want to tell Dad something. I am very sorry for what I said that night at Dockweiler. I was completely out of line and if you don’t want me to stay at the house I understand. I was drunk, pissed off, and feeling sorry for myself. I am truly sorry.
“Mom, I’m sorry I left without telling you and not calling for a year. I should be home in about four days. If you let me eat dinner at the house, Mom, I would really love your pot roast and noodles. Wooohooo!
“Anyway, this is long distance so I’m gonna hang up. I’ll call you tomorrow night when I stop.” He paused briefly before continuing, “I want you guys to know I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me and I miss you and love you a bunch, I really do. Thank you for being the best parents anybody could ever have. I love you guys. Bye.”
When the message ended Chris looked up and there at the end of the hall near the kitchen was Colleen in an apron drying her hands, with tears in her eyes.
She said, “I guess we better go to Bristol Farms and get a roast.”
Chris could not talk, because it was the first time in a year he had heard his son’s voice. He could only nod as his eyes glistened with tears. Colleen came up to him with the dish towel and dabbed his cheeks.
“I’ve listened to it seven times. Do you want to hear it again?” Colleen asked.
That night they pushed the green button twenty-three
more times.
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The bathroom door opened letting out a steam cloud shrouding Darla drying her hair. She was wearing the white terry cloth bathrobe provided by the hotel.
She exhaled, “Man, did that feel good.”
Charlie asked if she was finished and when she nodded, he went into the shower. After he came out he lay down on the bed.
“I’m exhausted. What do you want to do? Eat?” Charlie asked.
She got up from a chair, went to her purse and pulled out a joint.
She said, “Connie’s stash. When I told her I was leaving, she said I might need this. When was the last time you got high?”
Charlie sat up on the side of the bed and Darla sat next to him. He said, “About a year ago.”
Darla said, “I was hitting this fairly regularly in the ashram to keep my sanity. You got spring water running through those veins, so go easy.”
She lit the joint while taking a hit and then passed it to Charlie. He took a small draw and held his hand over his mouth so as not to cough. The high was immediate for Charlie. Darla took another hit and passed it to Charlie who declined.
“I’m good,” he said, then he lay down on the bed. Darla snuffed the doobie out in an ash tray and lay down next to him.
Charlie said, “That’s some good shit.”
She turned on her side facing Charlie. He could feel her looking at him and had to say something.
“Darla… do you think this is a good idea?” Charlie asked.
She turned his face toward her and kissed him full on the mouth.
“I guess you do,” Charlie said.
She pulled open the terry cloth bathrobe and exposed her toned chocolate body. She told him to take off his shirt. He sat up and pulled it off.
“I want to feel your skin next to mine,” she said.
She pushed close to him, letting her full breasts touch his body. The areolas became firm and he could feel her nipples firming against him. He pulled his pants off and she reached down and grabbed him, holding until he was hard.