by A. E. Roman
I approached the young woman who sat at the long oak reception desk, behind a basket of red apples, reading a Rolling Stone magazine hidden beneath a yoga magazine.
A ten-foot photograph labeled The Honorable Father Ravi hung over the reception desk. Father Ravi was an Asian Indian man with a gray beard and long gray hair. He looked to be a healthy and strong old man. He sat in a straw chair and wore red, blue, and yellow flowing robes, hands folded in his lap, surrounded by three beautiful, thin, young Asian Indian women, standing, also in flowing robes. I recognized Gabby Gupta. The other two were probably her younger sisters, Mara and Zena Gupta. The “fat” daughter Chase Gupta was not in the photo. Father Ravi sported a beatific smile and a red dot on his forehead. Below, his message was printed loud and clear:
“You are The Superman!”
The young woman greeted me with a cheerful, “Howdy!” She was a thin, tall, pretty blonde, wearing a red blazer and a gold badge that read TSP GUIDE: NARADA.
“Do you need any help, sir?”
“Where should I start?”
“Anywhere you’d like.”
I looked around. The air-conditioned foyer was full of blinding sunshine that streamed in through the windows. The inner walls of the TSP building were gleaming and spotless, all dark wood and marble. I recognized Wagner playing over the loudspeakers, as seemingly happy and healthy people (mostly white) buzzed in and out of doors carrying flowers and files and fruit. I noticed that no one was overweight. All of the women were at least five-ten, and no man stood under six feet. And not one looked over the age of forty.
“It’s funny that all your members look so . . .”
“Perfect?”
“That’s a word.”
“Darn tootin’,” she agreed with a bright smile and a slight Southern accent. “We have a gymnasium on the fifth floor, and trainers. But no worries, everyone who is worthy of membership is given a probationary period to lose extra weight.”
I sucked in my gut and planned on adding to my usual routine of fifty push-ups and sit-ups a day.
She picked up a big red plastic container. “This Superman powder makes losing weight easy. You put it in a blender with milk, soy or rice, or fruit juice. It’s got antioxidants, vitamins, and other good stuff.”
“Does it work?”
“I’ve lost fifteen pounds on the Superman Smoothie,” said the tall blonde. “Since I was laid off, I’ve gotten my résumé out to one hundred companies. I’ve had high returns on my investment in the TSP loan program which not only benefits poor people in India and around the world but guarantees us, as members, the highest returns possible. I feel absolutely fabulous. Wealth, health, success, that’s what TSP is all about. My dreams are coming true. Yours can, too.”
She handed me what looked like a menu. It read:
A personal visit with Father Ravi
10 Minutes for $5
60 Minutes for $15
240 Minutes for $45
480 Minutes for $75
1,440 Minutes for $145
“Unfortunately,” she said. “Those are the old rates and Father Ravi is away on business. But he’ll be back.”
She clapped her hands together. “All righty, then, I know what TSP can offer you. What can you offer TSP?”
“Besides creative spelling?” I said. “Not much but I’m a hard worker and willing to learn.”
“My Super name is Narada,” she said. “You can call me Narada.” She giggled at her own little joke. “My street name is Kirsten.”
As Kirsten began opening drawers, I glanced around.
“Now,” said Kirsten, handing me a blank application. “There is a small cost for meals and gym membership and workshops at the Project. But all the workshops are reasonably priced.”
“Workshops?”
“Anything from dating to real estate.”
She handed me a golden flyer marked WORKSHOPS:
THE SUPERMAN WAY
Biting the Bullet of Love and Commitment, The Locomotive of Financial Security, Basic Emotional Flight Training for Men, Seeing Through His Walls, How to Eject the Kryptonite from your New Real Estate Investments, Confessing into the Sun, Accessing the Stock Market’s Phantom Zone, The Birthing Matrix, Color Therapy, Yoga, Whirlpool, Sauna, and Massage.
“All of the workshop engineers are super-successful experts in their subject. All are guaranteed Supermen, male and female at level F in their spiritual practice. At level F everybody is vegetarian and chaste and all that stuff. There are six levels, A, B, C, D, E, and level F is the highest, A is the lowest. A is achuta.”
“Bless you,” I said. “You need a napkin?”
“You’re a joker,” she smiled. “Achuta. It means polluted and unclean.”
“What level am I?”
“Achuta. Everyone outside the program and when they begin is achuta.”
“How long does it take to reach level F?”
“Oh,” she said, waving her hand at me. “It depends. Honey, we have members who’ve been here twenty years and are still not at level F. We have members who joined within the last year and they’re already at level F and running workshops. It all depends on how quickly you absorb the material and put The Superman tools and techniques into practice. Would you say that you’re a go-getter?”
“Well,” I said, “I guess if the go is there to get, I’ll try and get it.”
“Do you speak any foreign language?”
“A little Spanish,” I said. “Mostly in my sleep. But I’m illiterate in five other languages. Why?”
“Oh,” she said, making a note. “We’re expanding all over the world. Latin America, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, China, Africa, Israel, the Middle East, Europe, Canada. We need members with language skills. I made a note.”
She handed me a form, labeled TSP DIAGNOSTIC, and an apple and said, “Fill that out and follow me.”
“Actually,” I said, “I’m not here to join. I’m looking for Hari Lachan or whoever’s in charge of this Taj Mahal. My name is Chico Santana. I’m a private investigator.”
“Oh,” she said. “Is this about Gabby?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And Esther Sanchez.”
“Follow me,” she said sympathetically.
I followed Kirsten to the back, past some elevators, an empty coat check section, and a mail room, to a bustling administrative area.
I smelled something.
I turned. A dark Indian girl in a yellow sundress dotted with blue and red flowers, a little diamond stud in her nose, moved past like she owned the joint. She stopped and looked at me directly, and smiled like she had known me in another life. She looked familiar as if we’d already met. And I felt it: an electrical charge that shot from my eyebrows to the balls of my feet. The same buzz I felt the first time I saw Ramona’s cynical gaze turn from the Benin masks at the Metropolitan Museum and land directly on my cornea. But this girl was not Ramona; she was taller, younger, limbs a bit long, a bit too thin for my taste. Ramona always accused me of having a weakness for women who resembled my favorite beer—aged just right (somewhere over thirty or so), a bit cold, and robust. Anyway, the Indian girl went past me, with a smile and moving like a proud and confident brown cat, sashaying like a Bollywood starlet; intelligent, almost black eyes, jet-black hair, thick sensual heart-shaped lips, and very gifted in the face department. She marched into an office marked MARA GUPTA.
Thank God I was a professional private investigator and it wasn’t love at first sight.
Kirsten, my TSP guide, caught me staring. “Ahem,” she snapped, fake clearing her throat and grabbing my arm. “Are you okay there?”
“Yeah,” I said, awakening from my daze. I pointed at the girl who had just passed. “Who’s that?”
“Oh, her,” Kirsten said, as if experiencing great fatigue. “That’s Zena.”
“Zena?” Zena Gupta. Of course. I recognized her from that photo in the hall with her Father Ravi.
“She’s the head of the Librar
y and Literature Unit. Kryptonic, if you ask me.”
“Kryptonic?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, honey,” Kirsten said. “You’re not familiar with our terms yet. Kryptonic meaning toxic. Any behavior or people who are off the path to becoming The Superman.”
“Is Zena off the path?”
“Way off. Don’t let the pretty face fool you. That girl has not worked an honest day in her life. She’s a devil wrapped in a woman’s body.”
“Really?”
“Darn tootin’,” Kirsten said, scowling, her gossip meter on go. “I’m from the South. We don’t play that. She’s one of those rich, lazy, selfish girls—”
Kirsten stopped herself. She put on her best smile again. “You’re not an artist, are you?”
“Well,” I said, “if you consider cartoons an art form, I used to be.”
She took a deep, defeated breath. “Too bad for me, artists never seem to end well.”
“Is Zena an artist?”
“No way,” she said. “She has some kinda useless degree in English or something. Makes fifty grand as a project manager here, doing a lot of nothing. That girl is bad luck and of dubious reputation.”
“What do you mean bad luck?”
“I am so sorry,” she said and reached out and touched my Northern cheek with her Southern fingers and pinched lightly. “I’m gossiping. That’s old Kryptonic behavior. That’s no way . . . I apologize.”
“Oh,” I said, “you’re just talking.”
“Right,” she said and winked. “Just talking. Just between me and the private investigator, right?”
“Right.”
Kirsten made for a door in a corner of the room.
I turned and saw bad-luck Zena of the dubious reputation and the useless English degree storm angrily out of the office marked MARA GUPTA carrying a Jim Croce CD and a paperback novel called The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. I remember Ramona had read it in college for some paper she was writing. It was about apples or something. Anyway, Zena stormed through an outdoor garden with fountains and potted plants where young people seemed to be studying, relaxing, and making with the jibber-jabber. There were firecrackers in her eyes now. She was pissed.
After I got through with Hari Lachan, Mara Gupta was next. Maybe Zena Gupta, too. There was plenty of Chico to go around.
Kirsten led me into a room marked CONFERENCE. It had a long wooden table, leather chairs, a bookshelf full of videotapes, books, a television, and another cuckoo clock. That Hari Lachan sure do like him some cuckoo clocks.
Kirsten pointed at a bookshelf full of tapes in black cases. Four years’ worth of messages from Father Ravi, she said, and pointed at another ten-foot blowup of Father Ravi. In this one, Father Ravi wore a tight-fitting blue body suit, under a red flowing robe, with a yellow sash at the waist, hands at his hips, legs apart. He smiled a brilliant happy smile, promising you his secret of youth, a sort of Asian Indian Superman look. He also reminded me of my old karate teacher Mr. Chang. I thought about going back to Fordham Road and finding Mr. Chang of Tiger Chang’s Martial Arts and Chang’s Sporting Goods—peddling sneakers below the training studio above it.
“Can you believe he’s eighty years old?” said Kirsten.
I glanced at a sculpture in a corner of the room. The sculpture, spotlighted by the sun shining through a tall window, was a dream, six feet high: two figures, one with wings, wrestling.
“Beautiful,” Kirsten said. “Isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said, and casually got closer. “Who did it?”
“A feller by the name of Giovanni Vaninni. He’s no longer a member of TSP.”
“What’d he do?” I said. “Tug on Superman’s cape?”
“Worse. He stopped believing in the principles of TSP.”
“You don’t say?”
“Yup,” said Kirsten. “You stop believing in TSP; well, that’s like you just plum stopped believing in yourself. It was as if he was already dead.”
“Is he dead?”
“Yup,” said Kirsten. “Spiritually.”
“Truth?” I said. “It’s the physical part that bothers me.”
“Follow me, joker,” she said.
I followed Kirsten through another door at the other end of the CONFERENCE ROOM, down a long hall, to another green door marked Men’s Orientation Meeting.
“Don’t take this first step lightly,” said Kirsten, holding the knob to the green door. “Not everyone has TSP potential, but everyone is afforded the opportunity to try. I know you’re not here for membership, but this may be your opportunity. You never know.”
“Uno nunca sabe,” I said.
“Are you ready?”
“I think so.”
She smiled coquettishly and she batted her lashes and I said, “We going in?”
“Oh, no,” said Kirsten. “I can’t guide you any farther than this. You gotta go on alone.”
She pulled open the green door and said, “Go on now. You wanted Hari Lachan. You got him, honey. Toodles. Go on.”
So I did.
NINE
I entered the dark, air-conditioned, blue and yellow auditorium with red carpet and was guided to my chair by another TSP GUIDE in a red blazer and gold badge. I sat. Music played. I recognized it. Strauss. Ramona played Wagner and Strauss and Count Basie and Duke Ellington when she worked on her books. Strauss played, and the hall smelled of burning incense. Men, mostly in business suits and, again, mostly white, sat in rows of folding chairs facing a stage where a simple table, a chair, and a microphone sat before a giant painting of a yellow sun so realistic-looking that if the real sun knew it existed, it might just get jealous and refuse to shine until the fake sun was destroyed.
I wanted to see firsthand what TSP was all about and I was getting my shot. The lights cut off.
I heard in the dark a giant “Ommmm . . .”
Soon, the TSP GUIDES in red blazers moved out of the room, the music stopped. From the darkness came a booming male voice: “What is The Superman Project?”
No one in the dark seemed to know the answer.
“YOU are The Superman Project.”
The lights snapped suddenly on and like magic a muscular Asian Indian man appeared. He was dark brown, very dark brown. So dark that if he were American born, you’d say he was black, in his thirties, onstage, behind the microphone, seated at the simple wooden table in a gleaming wheelchair, grinning in a dark blue suit, yellow handkerchief, and a red tie.
“My name is Hari Lachan,” he boomed into the microphone. “If you’ve come looking for a religion, you’ve come to the wrong place. TSP is not a religion. We are a vision of the future for people with superior knowledge of what that future will be. You are here because it is not enough for you to live and die in the cycle of suffering. Mere living is not enough. You want glory, greatness, and POWER. You want to overcome your fear. To go from self-indulgent to self-disciplined, from unhappily alone to happily in community, from unemployed to working in abundance. You want THE SECRET.”
A giant GONG went off and everybody jumped a bit in their seats. Or was that just me?
None of the wannabe members said a thing, but everyone seemed to be impressed by the dramatic beginning. I know I was.
“SUPERMAN,” Hari Lachan continued, “is a translation of the German word Übermensch. A German philosopher once explained that man’s destiny is power. Father Ravi has identified the Twelve Steps to Power through which anyone can become The Superman. Are you ready?”
Everyone nodded.
Hari Lachan said, “I was born in Bihar. Go to Bihar. See the poverty there. See how people sink into the mud. Then look at me. Who is worse off? I know what you’re thinking. This man is in a wheelchair. But the path is a difficult path for everyone. Many may attempt to pass this way, few will succeed. Tear to pieces the idea of what you think you are. The things you are have made you sick. Your desire has made you sick. If you wish to be well you must give up your love of sickness. You must become T
he Superman. TSP is a revolution. We must get back to the male-female models. We must defeat the modern-day childless and miserable women. We must become as creative as soldiers at war in our will to power. We must do away with the deadly sexual practices which threaten mankind’s survival. We must identify people deemed hostile to our way. We must spread our pro-Superman ideology. Kryptonic practices must be wiped out. Smoking, drinking, drugs, promiscuous sex, the eating of dead flesh. They are incompatible with the beliefs and practices of The Superman Project. The question is, Are you ready?”
“Yes,” said one man.
“Yes?” Hari repeated and shook his head judgmentally.
“YES!” said more would-be members.
“Gentlemen,” Hari yelled. “I need more. ARE YOU READY?”
The room exploded with male voices. “YES!”
“Better,” said Hari and signaled with a loud rapping on the desk. Another loud GONG went off and the troop of TSP GUIDES in red blazers stormed back into the room and passed around handouts that read: 12 PERSONALITY DEFECTS.
“You think you know yourself,” said Hari Gupta. “You don’t know yourself. You don’t know your power.”
Two men started nodding.
“Some of you have been hurt, beaten, and rejected, by your mothers, your fathers, your brothers, your sisters, your wives, your country, your culture.”
Some more men nodded.
“You’ve overcome the odds because you always suspected the truth,” said Hari. “They told you all your life that you must be weak to inherit the earth.”
More nods.
“But you are NOT weak.”
Yes, a young man in a gray suit nodded.
“All along you suspected you had The Superman in you. You achieved, you worked, you succeeded against the odds and you didn’t even know why. They didn’t want you to know. They still don’t. Because if you know, that’s knowledge, and knowledge is power, and they are all afraid of YOUR POWER.”
Almost every potential member in the room was now nodding along to the sermon, and all I kept wondering was who “they” were that didn’t want a room full of mostly young white men in suits to know they were powerful Supermen.