The Joy of Uber Driving

by Yamini Redewill

  My hut had cement floors and walls and an outdoor shower with cold water (perfect for summer weather). Every morning, I awoke beneath my mosquito net to the crowing of peacocks and the call to prayer by a Hindu male singer over a loudspeaker in the distance.

  Most everyone in my neighboring huts were Italian, and they often liked to party at night outside in our shared patio, dancing to many amateur players of drums and flutes. The princess always liked to come to our parties. She invited me for tea in her mansion a few times. She was elegant and beautiful and spoke perfect English.

  During my time in India, I had two or three phone calls from my mother, checking up on me to make sure I was OK. Looking back, it never even occurred to me to call Dad or expect a call from him. He more or less faded from my life when I became a sannyasin. I think he felt betrayed, knowing that I had given Bhagwan the unconditional love and respect generally accorded a father. Later, when I returned and confronted him, he confessed that he didn’t love me anymore and instead was compelled to focus all his love and attention on my adopted brother. At the time I was shocked and deeply wounded. But now, writing this, it all makes sense. He was the one who was wounded. He had invested his whole life in my success and well-being: caring for me as a doctor-father when I was sick; giving me piano lessons, art lessons, and singing lessons; coaching me as a performer; and then sending me off to college. He was particularly proud of my success in the TV industry and bragged about me to all his friends. The thanks I gave him was chucking my successful career and running off to India to be with some “fast-talking guru.”

  In between workshops, my new sannyasin friends and I often got together to either go sunbathing and swimming in the nude at the local well (a deep fifteen-foot-wide cement hole with an eighteen-foot ladder to the water) or go shopping in the town of Pune. Once, while waiting for a rickshaw, I saw a group of Indian men and women (not sannyasins) walking toward me with a baby girl. Pointing to her, they motioned very excitedly. “You take? Only five hundred rupees, please.” I was nonplussed. I didn’t know it was sometimes customary for families to sell their youngest daughters. They didn’t look like beggars or paupers. They were very nicely dressed, the men in business suits and the women in silk saris, and the beautiful baby girl sported a gold earring.

  Another time in downtown Pune, while shopping at a small souvenir store, an elderly Indian man dressed in white with a white turban was sitting cross-legged on the counter. He suddenly grabbed my arm, saying, “I am very good guru. You come. Be my disciple.” Right away I showed him my mala with Bhagwan’s picture. He scowled and brushed it aside as if to say I had made a very poor choice.

  Shopping in Pune was uniquely interesting, with “sacred” cows (all cows are sacred according to the Hindu religion in India) lounging in small street corridors, where you dare not touch them or bother them in any way. Sometimes, you’d see a procession of people singing and playing flutes and tambourines along with a brightly decorated elephant carrying a fringed canopy, beneath which a bride and groom majestically sat. And, of course, there were beggars everywhere and children following you asking for baksheesh. Now, with all the homeless in America, we are not far behind this sad scenario.

  Being that he was outrageously controversial, breaking all the rules for a spiritual guru by embracing material wealth and free sex, it was no wonder Rajneesh was not very well liked in the Indian community, and therefore, neither were his sannyasins. Once, while I was riding my bike, a local deliberately ran into me with his bike, and I ended up flat on the ground with my bike on top of me. No one offered to help me up. They just stood there and nudged each other, laughing. We stood out because of our red clothing. Sannyasins of other “more legitimate” gurus traditionally wore only saffron-colored robes and then only after many years of devotion to their guru and his teachings. Rajneesh was considered a renegade guru in India. He left India eventually because the government didn’t recognize his as a legitimate religion and decided that he owed them ten million dollars in back taxes.

  Speaking of which, I was in the middle of my third month in Pune and was shopping downtown when I had a sudden panicky urge to return to the commune as soon as possible. I hailed a rickshaw and, when I arrived, found out that Bhagwan had just left for America secretively with a small group of his disciples.

  Again, I felt betrayed. I sat on the curb and thought, What am I going to do now? I had come to India to live forever with Bhagwan. It felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Now everything seemed hollow and meaningless. Others joined me, and we all hugged each other in our shared emptiness. We had heard something like this was going to happen. There were secret preparations made, but nothing was ever announced and no timeline was publicly known. We all got up and walked aimlessly to nowhere in particular, deep in thought. During this moment, I acquired a young male companion, Swami Prem Deva, who held my hand and invited me to have chai with him to talk over possibilities. I welcomed this new wrinkle in my massively wrinkled journey.

  As he proved no threat to my longstanding fear of commitment, we decided to move in together in a new space to figure things out for ourselves individually, using each other for support. I went looking on my own for the ideal apartment. I was told that there was a certain swami (all male sannyasins were called swami and women ma) who had real estate connections, and they gave me his address. Knocking on his door, I was greeted by an Indian butler who directed me to a bedroom down the hall. By this time nothing much surprised or shocked me, but I was totally unprepared for what I encountered that day: an unabashedly handsome semi-naked European or American man between two beautiful naked women in a threesome embrace on a king-size bed. Of course, I acted as though nothing was out of the ordinary and continued to inquire about an apartment.

  PING! Arriving at a cute cottage in San Anselmo, I rang the passenger up after waiting two minutes. A woman named Aggie answered, laughing, “Oh, I’m in the middle of making love to a complete stranger. I’ll be down in a minute.” I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard and thought I must have heard it wrong. Down came a nice-looking guy with short brown hair and beard and a baseball hat, carrying a woman’s bag and shoes. He climbed in, saying she’d be down soon.

  We waited another five to seven minutes, then finally, slowly, stumbling barefoot down the stairs, came a rather plain, heavyset, long-haired hippie in her early forties, wearing a long cotton lavender-print dress. To my mind, this was not a match, but apparently I’m not a very good judge of that, as he was totally into her. They smooched in the back seat as I proceeded to their destination.

  She was drunk and very talkative, shouting out many times, “Where’s my keys? Oh, here they are!” followed by gales of laughter. She decided to brag about her sister, who was currently working on a thriller movie in New York as the prop master. I brightened up, thinking I could join in the conversation by saying I had also worked in the business, but was brusquely ignored, as I had interrupted her important stream of thought. I remained quiet the rest of the ride. Her friend seemed to be quite taken with her story. She finally put her shoes on and found her keys, and they departed, he with his arm around her waist holding her firm, as she was quite unsteady and still talking and laughing loudly.

  Why is it that a very plain, overweight, and ridiculous-acting woman has no trouble finding love? Why am I still so unlucky in this area? Is it perhaps because I am still overly judgmental? Hmmmm!

  Prem Deva and I stayed together for the next month or so in a large one-bedroom apartment and played house. We experienced the famous Indian monsoon, which was preceded by swarms of mosquitos and millions of little frogs everywhere. The mosquitos were particularly bothersome while trying to ride a bike. You would have to have at least one hand, and sometimes two, batting them away or shielding your eyes. Young Indian women love the monsoon. They celebrate by dancing wildly in the street while getting drenched. It always follows a very hot summer, and the rain is a welcome relief.

  UP, UP, AND AWAY
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  To Unchartered Territory

  After my brief affair with this sweet, young pretend husband, I, and many sannyasins, made arrangements to go to Amsterdam for the 1981 Orange Affair Festival, called “The Last Tango in Poona,” before returning home. A month before leaving, I had engaged an Indian tailor to sew a halter-top party dress with three yards of fancy dress fabric I bought. It was a simple design that I drew on paper. It took all of four weeks for him to complete the job. I went back every week in hopes it would be finished, but he always had some reason why it wasn’t and would assure me that it would be finished next week. Finally, the fourth week, with fingers crossed, I knocked on his door just hours before my plane was scheduled to depart for Bombay, where I would then fly to Amsterdam. He still hadn’t finished it, and I explained in a rather loud voice that he must finish it then and there because I was leaving. He sat me down in the living room and had his wife prepare a delicious meal while I waited. An hour later, he presented me with the finished product, which was unfortunately pretty shoddy. Apparently, that design was completely unfamiliar to him and hard for him to translate into an actual garment. I thanked him anyway and pretended that it was perfect. I hurriedly left and threw it in a public trashcan before hailing a rickshaw.

  Our Amsterdam adventure began with a harrowing experience on a flight from Bombay. Just after takeoff, I looked out my window and saw that one of the engines was on fire. An announcement came over the loudspeaker saying that we were circling Bombay and dumping fuel from that engine into the Indian Ocean before landing back in Bombay. “Om mani padme Om!” There were a lot of incantations and chanting in the cabin while we circled. We landed safely and were treated to a luxury hotel on the beach for two days. This was the first time I’d had a hot bath in over three months. I felt like the queen of Sheba while I lathered up in a warm bath full of scented bubbles. We were treated like royalty, with beautiful banquets of food laid out for us in addition to prompt service to our rooms for anything we needed or wanted. I hooked up with a tall, good-looking German swami who didn’t speak a word of English—or I German. But somehow, we got along just fine (smile).

  Two days later, floating on a cloud (and scrubbed clean), we headed back to the airport. Cheerfully, we gathered around a sannyasin guitarist and sang some of our Rajneesh songs waiting to board our new plane. What happened next stopped us in our tracks! Picture a group of happy, excited people rushing to get on board after being called and suddenly coming to a dead stop, bumping into each other as they all see that the new plane is, in fact, the original plane, but now a new engine is strapped onto the wing with chains next to the old burned-out engine!

  Dear Mother of God! What do we do now? I had forgotten this was India, and this is what you call a jugaad solution. In India, jugaad means “hack.” This Indian philosophy means getting the job done, no matter how sloppy or inefficient, but always with flair and a sales pitch. I experienced this often in Pune; when going to buy a dress, I was always met with a bobbing head that said, “Very fine quality, madam,” even if a seam was ripped or buttons hung by a thread. I laugh about it now, but at that particular moment, it was no laughing matter as we wondered if this would be our last day on Planet Earth. Again, chanting and incantations sprung up everywhere, but miraculously the fix got us to Holland safely.

  Thousands of us descended upon the Amsterdam canals, ending up at a large hall, dancing, singing, eating, attending lectures, and then sleeping in a rented and abandoned prison. Our first night, after the day’s events, we slept huddled together on cold concrete floors in a jail cell, and the next night I found a bunk bed in a hostel for a lot more comfort and sleep. Both were quite a departure from the luxury hotel we were treated to in Bombay.

  Coming back to the States was a shock to my nervous system after three months of meditation, gentle group love, and joyous celebration. It’s as if I was suddenly thrown into a world of sharp elbows and migraine headaches. I found that my costumers union membership had lapsed, so I was now a low-level Costumer 1 again, looking for work in the movie and TV industry. I ended up doing a lot of TV commercials, which were one or two-day assignments. I also did a couple of days on the TV version of 10 with Bo Derrick, Dudley Moore, and Julie Andrews. It turned out to be mostly the naked pool scene with a porn group from San Francisco. I had little work to do as the wardrobe coordinator, except to provide towels. Poor Dudley had to come out to the pool area in full frontal to the unbridled snickers of cast and crew. But he was such a good sport he laughed roundly when someone cracked a joke about the size of his “humble appendage.” Meanwhile, members of the porn group hung out everywhere in provocative poses in between takes in broad daylight. It was unnerving even to this prior jetsetter and seasoned Rajneesh disciple.

  About two months later, Sandesh and Daya, a couple of very enterprising sannyasins I met in India, invited me to live with them in the Monkees’ old house in Laurel Canyon. My stepbrother, Les, and my Buddhist friend (Dallas actor) Patrick Duffy helped me move from my apartment to what later became the infamous Rajneesh Hollywood house. This cut down my living expenses to a fraction of what I was paying before, as I shared this space with nine other full-time residents. It was a huge house with many levels. The garage was converted into two bedrooms accommodating four, and the sunporch also housed four people, usually guests. We had guests coming and going from around the world all the time, so full capacity reached eighteen at one point.

  Apart from my time in a sorority at Berkeley and a dorm at UCLA, this was my first experience in communal living. While in India I shared a space with only one other person. The Pune ashram was essentially a meeting place: Buddha Hall, a building for dozens of workshops, a cafeteria, administrative offices, bookstore, arts and crafts shop, mind/body treatment and medical center, publishing house, and living quarters for Bhagwan and key staff members.

  PING! Coming from a ranch-style home in Marin was a short dark-haired woman of unknown nationality until we engaged in a conversation. I found out her name, Aruna, meant “clear and bright like the sun,” and she was an au pair from Mongolia who was studying to be an accountant in San Francisco. I asked her where Mongolia was, not being well versed in global geography, and she said it was near China. I then asked how it compared to her experience in the US, and she became effusive in her appreciation of our country due to the fact that at the age of fifty, she would be considered old and useless in her country, with no possibility for employment. She reported that her parents died shortly after they turned fifty, and she swore that would never happen to her. I told her my age, and her eyes got big and she gasped, saying, “Wow, you are certainly proof of the American dream.” She then laughingly said her favorite pastime was swinging on the monkey bars in the park near her home, which she did every day to the amazement of passersby. I applauded this woman who escaped the death sentence her country would have given her.

  We took turns keeping our Monkees house clean, cooking dinner, and washing dishes. It was efficient and fun. I became a vegetarian and was amazed at the great variety of gourmet vegetarian dishes many of the girls knew how to cook. Besides eating sumptuous meals, dishwashing was the most fun, done to Flashdance’s “What a Feeling,” Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive,” The Beatles, and other pop stars of the seventies and eighties. We didn’t have a TV for entertainment, just weed, wine, and each other. We often sat around the fireplace sipping wine and sharing a joint and talking about what we were going to do when we got to the ranch where Bhagwan had settled in Oregon. Most of the residents were from England or Germany, with a few of us “Westerners” in the mix.

  Contrary to what you might think went on at that house, we never had any orgies, and everyone was very discreet about their sex life. The so-called orgies in Pune were therapeutic workshops done with the written consent of all participants for the purpose of releasing unhealthy notions of sex and discovering our own authentic and natural sexuality. Bhagwan was way ahead of his time and, of course, vilified constantly by t
he local press and Indian government. Years later, I saw a documentary about the ashram in Pune made in the US, and it was manifestly incorrect and sensationalized with its portrayal of communal sex orgies.

  One thing we did at the Hollywood house, which might’ve lapsed into an orgy had we not been so respectful of each other, was our Wednesday night group massage. We would assemble in groups of five, with one person lying on the floor in the middle while the other four worked on his/her torso, arms, hands, feet, and head. We would alternate every thirty minutes so that everyone got a thirty-minute massage. It was a meditative, albeit sensual, experience with scented candles, a flickering fire in the fireplace, and soft music flooding the darkened room. What happened later in the privacy of the bedrooms of already formed couples can be left to your imagination.

  Every day in this house was an adventure, with very little conflict. I loved everyone for the unique and loving individuals they were. There were no blanket belief systems, as with the Buddhist group I was married to before. We enjoyed our diversity and our universal intelligence. Our love of Bhagwan, along with meditation and celebration, was our common bond.

  Now that Rajneesh had relocated to the US, intermarriages began popping up between American and European sannyasins so they could live legally with their spouses on the ranch in Oregon.

  I agreed to marry Tosh, a Brit, for whom I had a schoolgirl crush. Naively, I thought this would give me an opening to his heart. He was a professional actor from London and had been in charge of the drama group in Pune. He was also assigned to protect Bhagwan and lived in his compound as a trained samurai (sannyasins who had black belts from the West). Being the crass opportunist I was, I also calculated that marrying him would give me a free ticket to be among the hierarchy at Rajneeshpuram, the ranch in Oregon, where we were all preparing to move.