Steven Thomas - Criminal Carma

Glancing up, she caught both me and Reggie looking but didn’t seem to mind too much. She gave us a half smile that was a delicious blend of tolerance and contempt as she brushed past us into the bookstore. I wondered if she had done it on purpose.

“He’ll be down in ten minutes, Ganesha,” she said to a young man who was sitting on a stool behind the cash register, reading a paperback copy of the Bhagavad Gita. “Let’s close the shop and get everybody into the meditation room.”

“Okay.” He stood up from the stool. “It’s time to go into the meditation room, folks. Satsang will begin shortly.”

He was wearing the traditional orange robe of Indian monks that symbolizes the spiritual fire in which all worldly ambitions and attachments have been burnt up. But the longing gaze he bestowed on the girl as she turned away from him made me think a few pesky embers of desire were still glowing somewhere in his tofu-fed frame. As he herded the people out of the shop, the girl locked the cash register and put the key in a drawer behind the counter. Even with her as a distraction, I couldn’t help noticing that she didn’t lock the drawer.

“Did you see those nipples?” Reggie cackled in my ear, as the girl moved around the shop, snuffing out candles and turning off the lights. “She better not come close to me in that getup or I’ll be snapping at those things like a trout at a mayfly.” He had gone fishing when he was a Scout, too.

Stepping into the hallway, the girl turned her back to us to close the shop’s glass-paned doors, showing us the shape of her cute little behind through the thin cotton cloth of her robe, giving me unspiritual urges.

Turning around, she looked me in the eye, as if she knew what I was thinking. Her blue irises sparkled and there was a hint of a smile. Two latecomers were taking off their shoes in the foyer. Behind me, someone rang a bell in the meditation room, a single pure note that lingered in the atmosphere like a color wash.

“What’s the routine, babe?” Reggie said, thrusting himself into the situation.

The girl turned her head slightly and gave him a look that would have silenced most men. Reggie not only bore up under it but grinned through his grizzled beard and mustache.

“The routine?” she said, haughty.

“Yeah, we gonna sing hymns or square dance or what?”

“Baba will give a short talk from the Gita and then there will be forty-five minutes of silent meditation.”

“That don’t sound too exciting,” Reggie said. “Why don’t me and you go in the back parlor and you can give me some personal instructions.”

“Hah,” she gave a short, harsh, but not necessarily unfriendly laugh. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

“Depends on the bush,” Reggie said.

He got another laugh. Though her features were delicate and she was making an effort to speak in a refined manner, there was something working-class about the girl’s frankness and the way she held her body. She didn’t seem to be offended by Reggie’s crude approach.

“You have to come a couple of times before you get private lessons, pal,” she said.

“How ‘bout if I go out and come back in a couple of times?” Reggie said, lowering his voice to a growl. “That count?”

When the blonde laughed again, I figured Reggie was going to do what he usually did and snag the girl before I had a chance to make a move. Sometimes I hated the guy.

“Whudaya say, babe?” he said, taking a step toward her, as if to crowd her down the hallway. “Can a stranger get some lovin’ in this church?”

“Whoa, big boy,” the girl said, holding her arm straight out and putting her palm against his chest like a running back stiff-arming an opponent. “You can probably get some loving if you play your cards right, but not from me. Is that what you guys are here for?”

“That’s what I’m everywhere for, sweetheart,” Reggie said.

“Yeah, I see that. How about your friend? What’s his story?” She nodded her head sideways, glancing over at me.

“Whudaya mean?” Reggie snapped, disconcerted to feel her attention shifting away from him.

“You two are completely different types,” she said to me. “Why are you here?”

“Baba Raba invited me,” I said. “Don’t you remember?”

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I couldn’t resist.” We were looking into each other’s eyes again and something between us dilated.

“I’m glad,” she said, and I felt a warm glow in my cold heart. Then, as if catching herself, she added indifferently: “Baba will be pleased to see you.”

“Shakti! It is time for satsang!” It was the lad in the orange robe, standing in the door of the meditation room. He sounded a little peeved, either because the girl was putting God behind schedule or because she was talking to us instead of sitting beside him on an embroidered cushion.

“Relax, Ganesha,” the girl said. “I’m going to get him right now. And don’t call me Shakti. My name is Mary, same as it’s always been.”

“Baba said you are called Shakti now,” Ganesha whined. “He knows the best name for each of us.”

“You and your friend need to go in and find a seat,” the girl said to me, and then went down the hall toward the staircase. Reggie had been demoted. I was the primary and he was the secondary.

“Hurry up, you two,” Ganesha said to us. “Everyone needs to be seated when Baba comes.”

Reggie bumped the would-be swami with his shoulder as we went past him into the dim room.

“Watch where you’re going,” Ganesha said in an angry whisper.

“You watch it, or I’ll stick one of those candles up your ass!” Reggie said.

The lights had been dimmed and the air was mystic with the scent of sandalwood incense. The candles Reggie had made reference to were flickering on the altar. I took two small round pillows from a pile in the corner and sat down on them. It had been years since I practiced hatha yoga, but I was still able to contort my legs into a lotus position without actually screaming out loud. Sitting on two pillows took some of the strain off my knees.

“Where’s the chairs?” Reggie asked in a stage whisper after watching me make a pretzel out of myself.

“They don’t use them for meditation,” I said. “Grab a couple of cushions and sit down.”

People around us stirred and cleared their throats, giving us a subtle spiritual signal that we were disturbing them.

Reggie piled up three cushions and plopped down on them, sitting American Indian-style, with his thick legs crossed but not locked into the lotus position.

Ganesha closed the double doors, which had cloth draped over the glass on the inside, and sat down on the floor by the wall, showing his relative enlightenment by not using a cushion.

I closed my eyes and began to take deep breaths, pushing my abdomen out so that the bottom of my lungs could fully inflate, then slowly pulling it back in to expel the air, taking twice as long to exhale as to inhale. It is the simplest form of breathing exercise and one of the simplest forms of meditation, very effective at dissolving negative emotions such as anxiety or sadness. Yoga has many complex breathing exercises with specific and startling psychic effects, but simple deep breathing is a surprisingly powerful technique. If you keep your attention focused on your breath, and breathe in and out steadily and slowly, it invariably calms the mind.

A feeling of peace had begun to stain me, spreading like blue dye from cell to cell, when there was a stir at the front of the room. Opening my eyes, I saw Baba Raba entering through a door at the far end. An attendant helped him up onto a low platform. It creaked beneath his barnyard weight as he walked forward and sat down cross-legged in front of the altar, facing the audience. The blonde, who came in with him, walked around and sat down on the floor in front of the platform, keeping her distance from a cluster of flower girls.