The Yoga Zapper--A Novel Read online

Jack jumped back. “Hey man,” he exclaimed, “No.”

  “Help me,” pleaded the pujari. “Please.” Jack hesitated. The old man’s antics tested his patience, but undeniably, he appeared seriously ill.

  “I will pray to God to bless you. I will die without your help.”

  Jack grimaced. He reluctantly approached the old man and rubbed his bony chest.

  “Yes. Yes,” the man gasped, finally getting some respite from the pain. But the let-up didn’t last long. His breathing became more rapid, more shallow. The pujari quickly forgot what little relief the massage provided when the next wave of pain washed over his thin body. “It’s no use,” he finally panted. “What is destined to happen will happen. Tonight, I will die.”

  “The doctor will arrive soon,” reassured Jack.

  “No,” replied the pujari with conviction. “It’s too late.” He reached into the folds of his dhoti and pulled out a paper, folded many times over. “Take this.”

  With knotted eyebrows, Jack opened the old yellowing parchment. Line upon line of Sanskrit text filled it. His eyes opened wide and he looked up in surprise.

  “What is this?” he exclaimed.

  “It’s named the Yuga Shastra.”

  “What? What’d you call it? The Yoga Zapper?”

  “Please take it. Very, very important. You have to take it.”

  Jack felt embarrassed. He hardly knew this man and yet, on his deathbed, he was gifting him an obviously prized possession. The Yoga Zapper? What did that mean?

  “No. No, I can’t….” started Jack, handing it back. The old man refused and made an extraordinary effort to sit up, gasping in pain. Sweat rolled down his forehead, his thin arms shook uncontrollably, his face paled and his eyes rolled unsteadily.

  “No. No. You have to take it. I cannot explain….” he whispered, pulling in a long, wheezing breath. The candle glimmered on his skull-like face and cast deep shadows on his eye sockets. “You do not understand. This shastra is more valuable than you can ever know. Your life, the future of the entire world depends on it. You have to take it. Only you. No one else!”

  Jack looked questioningly at the delirious old pujari. The man coughed violently and his frail body shook uncontrollably as he lay down. He gazed pleadingly one last time, silently begging Jack to keep the scripture. As the light slowly escaped from his dulling eyes, he gasped fiercely for air one final time, lay straight on his back and with all the bones in his body rattling, died in front of the assembly.

  “Raam! Raam!” exclaimed the gathered pilgrims, hoping that the pure name of God entered the old man’s ears before death took the soul.

  “Jesus Christ!” cried Jack, looking away, witnessing death for the first time. His stomach churned. He sucked air into his lungs, forced the vomit back down, bent over, clung to his knees, wobbled and fell to the floor.

  “Damn! Damn!” he shouted. He swallowed hard, impelling the nausea out of his gut, through his extremities and into the air. He put his hand on the floor, shifted unsteadily back to his feet and stood next to the dead man for several moments, gathering his senses.

  Steve rushed into the dharmashalla. He had brought the doctor just a minute too late.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” yelled Jack.

  Chapter Four

  Kansas City, The Present (Beginning of Kali Yuga)

  They landed early that June Sunday morning at the Kansas City airport with nowhere to go. Out of habit, they returned to their old haunt, the university area, and to an old church near the campus. Jack sat on its cement steps, his well-traveled knapsack at his feet, rubbing his eyes, suffering from the ten and a half hour time difference. Steve slumped beside him, nodding off.

  “Where do we go from here?” Jack asked, nudging his brother.

  Steve forced his bleary eyes to open. “The way I see it, we have two options live with mom, or look for work, save money and apply for grad school. Or at least I can apply if it is not too late.” Jack didn’t take offense. He accepted Steve being the accomplished student as a matter of fact. But how could his brother get enough money for grad school? And flipping burgers for the summer would be the ultimate letdown.

  Living with Mom remained out of the question; she barely managed on her pension. Besides, she let Jack know that he was wasting his money on this trip. Despite her general disapproval, less exotic destinations didn’t draw complaints but, for some reason, India provoked stiff resistance. It happened to be just too foreign. The last thing he wanted now was her ‘See, I told you so.’

  He stopped listening to her when his father died. “The only one who can tell me what to do is Dad,” he informed her years ago and he meant it. He loved her well enough, but they exhibited such different personalities. Her solid, Midwestern sensibility cast an unmoving deadweight on his spirit for a long time and while he bore it well enough as a child, it stifled him after Dad’s death.

  He had been just fourteen. Everyone remarked at their resemblance. Yeah, he did inherit his father’s good looks and, he grudgingly admitted, some of his bad qualities as well. Dad had a wandering heart—after all, he wore an army uniform. Growing up meant an interminable exercise in smothering a burgeoning, boundless energy and wanderlust. Jack couldn’t wait to become old enough to travel all over the world. Kansas City developed into a prison, a blip on the map, swallowed up by a thousand miles of featureless prairie. And Mom, bless her heart, remained at the center of this bottomless inertia.

  Jack glanced behind him. The red brick walls of the church stared back. Originally built by the Baptists in 1935, the Hare Krishnas bought it forty years later when the congregation moved from the city to the suburbs and the church lost its base. The old building graced a corner lot on a quiet street and served as a hangout for students who fancied themselves spiritualists. Early mornings saw students in yoga postures on the front lawn and the Krishna devotees engaging visitors in long discussions on intricate points of Indian spirituality.

  “Hey, you remember this place?” he enquired.

  “Yes, we came once for a Sunday program. Besides, I visited a few times for research for one of my religion classes.”

  “Hey! I’ve got an idea,” exclaimed Jack. “Why not stay here? We can work in exchange for room and board.”

  “What do you mean?” Steve questioned, his eyes wide and eyebrows knotted. “Become one of them?”

  “No,” countered Jack. “Maybe they take boarders. I’m sure we can stay here till the end of the summer.”

  “You’ve got to be joking!”

  “No, no,” responded Jack, his eyes bright. “Let’s find out.”

  “No way! Mom would be shocked.”

  “She’s already shocked. Besides, we don’t even have enough money for a deposit on an apartment, never mind jobs.”

  “But the Krishna temple?” probed Steve. “This sounds like another one of your crazy ideas! Wasn't India enough?”

  “Hey, it’s worth a try. Let’s just find out. No commitments. If we don’t like it, we leave.”

  Steve hesitated. “I don’t know….”

  “Do you have any ideas where to spend the rest of the summer?”

  Steve shook his head silently.

  “Okay then, let’s go!” declared Jack, pulling him up by the hand.

  * * * * *

  Dhaneswara dasa, Dhana for short, the temple president of the Kansas City Krishna center, sat behind his desk looking at the two young men in his office. The place smelled faintly of incense and pictures of Hindu divinities and saints lined the walls. The temple needed cleaning, the vegetables required cutting, the pots and pans lay unwashed and seventy or eighty guests would arrive at five o’clock for the weekly Sunday evening program of music, chanting, philosophical discussion and free vegetarian feast.

  He shifted his gaze and looked at the ceiling, fingering a chain of wooden beads on which he silently chanted Hare Krishna. He had just turned forty. The hippie revolution came and went and the interest in Indian spiritua
lity, though strong in some pockets, did not arouse the same curiosity as when he joined the fledgling movement in the sixties.

  Dhana eyed the two young men, remembering them as occasional visitors from the university. Jack helped out with chores the one time he visited while Steve had participated in philosophical discussions. Jack sat strong and proud. Dhana didn’t care for the attitude—he didn’t regard him as a serious candidate for spiritual life. Unfortunately, these kinds of men, he reflected, learn only by hard experience. He remembered Steve asking some especially intelligent questions at a discussion once, but his approach to the divine seemed purely scholarly. Dhana remembered what his guru once stated that an academic approach to spirituality is like licking the outside of a jar of honey. To really understand the sacred, one had to open the container and actually taste the sweetness.

  He pondered their proposal. They appeared honest enough, but how long would they stay? He wasn’t running a hotel and had no interest getting stuck in a long-term commitment.

  “Okay. Let’s make an agreement until the end of the summer. That’s two months. But you must follow our rules while staying here. That means no smoking, no drinking, no gambling, no meat-eating since we are religious vegetarians and, as you are unmarried, no girlfriends. We are like monks and these are our principles. While in the temple, you need to wear your dhotis. And you must do a minimum of five hours of service each day, such as washing the pots, cleaning the temple and other things.” They nodded, still half asleep.

  “Make yourselves at home then,” he concluded. “Some prasadam, some food, is in the fridge just outside the kitchen.” He didn’t wait for more discussion. He got up, walked to the door, stopped and looked behind. “And when you’re finished, start cutting the vegetables.”

  “Well, that was easy,” mumbled Jack, somewhat startled. The consent came quickly, unexpectedly.

  It also left Steve slightly nonplussed. “Should we go through with this?”

  “Yeah, well, in eighteen hours on the plane, we couldn’t come up with a better idea. So here we are.”

  Chapter Five

  Kansas City, The Present (Beginning of Kali Yuga)

  Steve felt a cool early-morning breeze blowing in from the open window above his desk. The sparse furniture, probably salvaged from some long-forgotten yard sale, reflected the renounced mood of the devotees. Across the room, a bunk bed pushed up against the wall and in its front sat a long, low table. A couple of dressers and chairs completed the furnishings.

  The temple, a quiet place, suited the devotees well. Their lives revolved around their spiritual practices. Gracious hosts, they welcomed guests and students who dropped in but, by and large, they led rather insular lives, unaffected by university politics, dorm parties, television programs or other disturbances swirling around them.

  Besides Dhana, a veteran Hare Krishna, Steve acquainted himself with Nimai, the head pujari and his wife, Daya, both natives of the island of Madagascar. A quiet, retiring, bookish sort of man, Nimai spent many hours every day poring over texts of astrology. His wife, refreshingly forthright, had a fiery character. Of Indian descent and favorites of the local Indian community, the couple busied themselves performing various religious rituals upon births, deaths or marriages. Two young unmarried American women, both recent entrants, one named Lori and the other Christine, rounded out the crew. Once their strange appearances and lifestyles wore off, the devotees reminded him of anyone else—they maintained their individualities, their quirks, their likes, and dislikes.

  And they did not force their beliefs on them, though one morning, about a week after his arrival, Lori eagerly showed Steve her string of wooden beads. “This mala has a hundred and eight beads,” she explained. She held a bead between her thumb and middle finger. “On each of these we chant the Maha-Mantra, the sixteen syllable recitation Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.” Steve nodded. “Once one round of 108 beads is finished, we start all over again, until a total of 16 rounds are chanted every day. This is called Japa meditation.” He tried his hand at this practice but never finished the prescribed rounds of daily chanting.

  Jack barged into the room, swinging the door shut behind him. He walked around a few times and slumped on the bottom bunk, running his fingers vacantly through his hair.

  Steve smiled. “Restless already?”

  “I’m throwing myself into everything the devotees do—like chanting on the streets, distributing books and handing out vegetarian food to the needy near Union Station on Fridays.”

  Steve cocked his right eye. “Is all this enthusiasm real or are you trying to impress the unattached women?”

  Jack didn’t smile. “I don’t know how they do it. The devotees do lead different lives but still, it’s mostly contemplative. I may get used to it, but certainly not now. The devotees, after all, have a routine. And the routine was always the same.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’m bored.” Steve laughed.

  Jack suddenly straightened up.

  “What is it?” remarked Steve.

  “Look. My backpack,” he exclaimed. The unopened backpack hid behind the door as if, in all this time, Jack hesitated in confronting his ignominious retreat from India by opening and sorting out his things. Sighing, he pulled it up, opened the zipper and emptied the contents on the table. T-shirts laden with the dust of India, a map of Delhi and old bus schedules all poured out. As he arranged the assorted debris of his travels, he noticed a small yellow parchment, all folded up.

  Steve immediately perked up. “What’s this?”

  “That old pujari in Badrinath, you know the one who died, handed it over when you went to get the doctor. It completely slipped my mind. He called it the Yoga Zapper.”

  “The Yoga Zapper?”

  “Yeah,” affirmed Jack. “Something like that. I can’t remember exactly.”

  Steve laughed. “I like that. The Yoga Zapper.”

  Jack asked the obvious question. “Can you read it?”

  Steve examined the document with rising excitement. “Sanskrit is a phonetic language. It’s easy to read, but much harder to understand. Sanskrit words can have multiple meanings and a slight alteration of grammar can change the entire meaning of a sentence.” His hands trembled slightly and a broad smile lit his face. “I have to study it thoroughly. Fortunately, I have a lot of time and we’re in the right place to do this.”

  Over the next week, using every spare minute, Steve pored over the ancient text. It felt good to be intellectually engaged, to be in his element. He made comments in his note-book, constantly revising his translations. Jack came often and noticing the slow progress, walked around the room restlessly and left. The news of the Yoga Zapper spread quickly through the small temple community, becoming a favorite topic of discussion during the shared breakfasts.

  The following mid-July Sunday morning was a beauty; the sun rose warm and early but with none of the humidity associated with the Midwestern summer season. Jack and Steve sat on the bunk bed while Dhana and the Nimai settled on chairs across from them. Steve placed the Yoga Zapper on the low table between them, picked up his notebook and spoke.

  “The Yoga Zapper, as we call it, is 62 lines long. The first ten lines describe a certain phase of the moon, the position of the stars and constellations.”

  Nimai immediately perked up and picked up the parchment.

  Steve continued. “The next twelve lines are more interesting. They refer to yoga, but not the exercises we Americans think of when we hear the word. More precisely, the text refers to a specific a yogic power, called a siddhi—one of traveling between yugas.” Dhana immediately straightened up.

  Jack stared uncomprehendingly. “What are yugas?”

  “Wait a minute,” Dhana interrupted. “Tell us the rest.”

  “These twelve lines also describe a ritual, technically called a yajna, to be performed for achieving this siddhi.”

  Dhana interjected again. “What doe
s the rest of the document say?”

  “The last forty lines of the Yuga Zapper is a mantra, which is untranslatable and actually, not meant to be translated, but rather, to be chanted, without deviation, in the original Sanskrit. By reciting this mantra, the practitioner attains the power of the yogic siddhi.”

  Jack’s confusion was evident. “I’m lost. Can you repeat that?”

  Steve started with the description of the position of the moon, the sun, and the stars; the depiction of the yogic siddhi of travel between yugas, and the exposition of the ritual to be enacted. He ended by reciting the forty line long mantra. He read it a third time. Some things fell in place.

  “So, what do you make of this?” asked Jack, to no one in particular.

  “Basically, one can travel between yugas by performing the ritual and chanting the mantras at the astrologically appropriate time,” replied Dhana dasa.

  “Exactly,” agreed Steve.

  “Ok, so this mantra confers the power of travel from one yuga to another. But what’s a yuga exactly?” questioned Jack.

  “A yuga refers to an age, an eon,” answered Dhana. “According to the Vedas, the original books of spiritual wisdom revealed to the rishis in India, time is divided into cycles of four ages Satya yuga, the first age, Treta yuga, the second, then Dwapara yuga, and finally Kali yuga. After one cycle of these four yugas ends, another cycle starts.”

  “So time is circular?” asked Jack.

  “Yes.”

  “So what separates these yugas?”

  “Satya yuga, the golden age, lasts for one million, seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand years.”

  “That’s a stretch!” exclaimed Jack.

  “And Treta yuga lasts for one million, two and ninety-six thousand years; Dwapara yuga, eight hundred and sixty-four thousand years; and Kali yuga takes only four hundred and thirty-two thousand years.” Jack chuckled. It all seemed impossible.

  “These are not just time periods. Each has distinct spiritual or moral characteristics,” Dhana continued. “For example, in Satya yuga, spiritual principles such as honesty, morality, and humility exist in full. Life is devoid of anxiety, worry and division in human society. At the conclusion of this age, one-quarter of these principles disappear. By the end of Treta yuga, the second age, they lessen by half; when Dwapara yuga finishes, they diminish by three-quarters; and finally, at the conclusion of Kali Yuga, they become totally absent.”