The Yoga Zapper--A Novel Read online

  “So where are we now in this big picture?” enquired Jack.

  “Five thousand years into Kali yuga,” replied Dhana, “an age of strife and worry.”

  Jack considered this. If his own life at all reflected Kali Yuga, maybe this wasn’t so outlandish an idea after all.

  “So by chanting this mantra, it is possible to travel from through time?”

  “Yes,” replied Dhana, “but it is not so simple. Several things must work correctly for a mantra to have effect. Just repeating it is not sufficient. The level of consciousness, or should I say, the spiritual advancement, of the person repeating the mantra, is also important.”

  “Well, that rules me out,” stated Jack.

  “Not necessarily,” countered Dhana. “Your spiritual qualifications remain unknown. But if Krishna desires, He can make things possible even for the unqualified. The impossible is achieved through His grace.”

  Jack pumped his hand up in the air. “All right,” he exclaimed impulsively.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Steve, his eyebrows raised. “You don’t really believe all this, do you?” A purely an intellectual project, the translation was now a closed subject. It felt pretty thrilling to translate an original Sanskrit text, but it was time to move on to reality; though, Steve recognized, it would make a good paper for graduate school one day.

  Jack smiled mischievously. “You know me, I’ll try anything once.”

  Dhana continued. “There are other factors to take into account.”

  “Like?” asked Jack.

  “Like ensuring the proper alignment of the stars.”

  “And performing the yajna, the ritual,” added Steve, “and chanting the mantra properly.”

  “Right,” declared Dhana.

  “Geez. It sounds pretty complicated to travel through time!” remarked Jack.

  They all laughed earnestly, suddenly realizing the absurdity of the whole scenario. Traveling through thousands of years by chanting mantras! Steve put his notebook away.

  Nimai, completely quiet all this time while holding the Yoga Zapper, looked up. “I do a lot of astrological work,” he stated. “The naming of a child, a marriage or buying of a house, among others, is done on astrologically favorable dates. Thus, I am quite familiar with the first part of this scripture.” Jack, who had slouched back on the bed, sat up again. Steve stopped.

  “According to this description, in exactly one week, that is, next Sunday, the moon, the planets, and the stars will be in the prescribed alignment. You can do the yajna, chant the mantra, and if Krishna allows, gain the power to travel to the various yugas. So if you are at all serious, make up your minds now.”

  Steve looked at Nimai dasa intently. Did he really believe in all this astrology stuff? He must.

  “Shall we perform the yajna then?” asked Dhana, looking at Steve.

  Steve surveyed the devotees in the room. “Maybe in my next life,” he joked. They all laughed, got up and left.

  Chapter Six

  Kansas City, The Present (Beginning of Kali Yuga)

  The following week, Steve turned his attention to the immediate task at hand; figuring out his next steps. Though late, he could apply for graduate school, assured, with his academic record, of acceptance at any of the first-rate schools in the country. But that seemed the last alternative. Even with a master’s degree, the job prospects weren’t particularly bright. He looked at his watch. It indicated one-thirty, and the rest of the Friday afternoon remained unplanned.

  He closed the door to the room and sauntered to the foyer of the main chapel, spotting Jack talking to Christine, turning on the charm as she smiled, following his facial expressions. Steve arched his eyebrows. He interrupted and pulled Jack aside.

  “I’m going to see Mom,” he said.

  “I promised the devotees to help them distribute prasadam at Union Station,” Jack replied, glancing back at the young woman.

  “Come on. We haven’t seen her in ages.”

  “I don’t know. Mom just gets on my case. You know the drill—find a job, get married, have kids and live in Kansas City for the rest of my life like one big happy family. Hell, when I hear that, I run for the door!”

  “What will you do, hide here for the rest of your life? Besides, you didn’t even see Mom before we left for India!”

  “I’ll be over. Just not now.”

  Steve persisted. “So when will you visit?”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Look, I’m not talking about this anymore,” hissed Jack, his voice tinged with exasperation. He ran his fingers through his long locks. “I’ll do my best. Dammit, Steve, quit bugging me.” He strode back to Christine. Steve rubbed his forehead, sighed and walked out of the temple and down the street to the bus stop.

  The ride took hardly twenty minutes. The second house from the corner on Hope Street bore Marjorie Goode’s name. A split-rail fence ran around the ranch-style home, with its large front verandah and flower beds lining the path to the front door. How many times had he run down those steps from the verandah, along the same flower beds and out to the street when he was young? He went up to the door and rang the bell. His white-haired mother appeared on the other side of the screen door.

  “Steve! Come in. I’ve been waiting for you!” She hugged and kissed his cheek. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine, Mom.” He followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the table as she poured a cup of coffee.

  “When did you get back?”

  “About three weeks ago. We would have spent more time in India, but things didn’t work out.”

  “So where are you staying? You and Jack didn’t renew the lease for the apartment, did you?”

  “We’re staying at the Hare Krishna temple near the university.”

  “What!” she exclaimed. “The Hare Krishna temple?”

  “No, Mom. It’s not what you think,” interjected Steve quickly. “It’s free and it’s a nice quiet place. Trust me. We didn’t join them.”

  “It’s Jack! He dragged you into that place, didn’t he? Is he one of them now?”

  “No, Mom,” he reassured her. “It’s nothing like that.” Given what Steve knew of them though, it wasn’t such a bad option for his younger brother.

  “Where’s Jack?”

  Steve bit his lip. “He agreed to come tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I don’t know.” A pause ensued.

  “You know, it’s good that you and Jack are so close. He listens to you, even though he won’t hear a word I tell him.”

  “I don’t know about Jack listening to me.”

  “Maybe. He’s just like your father was when I first met him.”

  Steve looked through the large, glass patio doors and into the back yard. Mom talked often about how Jack adored Dad. How Jack took so much after his father; his sense of adventure, his wild ways.

  “It took a long time to get your Dad under control. For years after we married he hung around with his army buddies until all hours of the night.”

  Steve smiled. He couldn’t imagine that she, with her interest in literature, could fall for a hard-drinking, hard-living army man. It was love at first sight, she confided, but he never understood what brought the two together in the first place. There’s no figuring out parents, he thought.

  “Steve, Jack needs guidance but don’t get me wrong. You don’t need to look after him for the rest of your life. At a certain point, you must think of your own future.” Yet, she continued, “please talk to him. He’s got do something with himself. And if he doesn’t…well, move on.”

  Steve examined his mother. The worry in her voice, whenever she spoke about Jack, felt familiar. But now he sensed an urgency, something deeper. “We can talk to each other most of the time,” he stated, “but Jack usually does what he wants. He thinks taking someone’s guidance makes him less of a man.”

  “No, Steve. You don’t know how i
mportant you are to him. At his age, he is too hotheaded to listen to me. If he heeds anyone, it’s you.”

  “We’ll, maybe you’re right.” He gave her the benefit of the doubt. After all, he had curbed some of Jack’s wildest impulses. He shuddered. Where would his brother be without his bringing Jack to his senses once in a while?

  His mother reached out and touched him. Her hand shook slightly.

  “You know I’m getting on in years. The good Lord knows I’ve had a difficult life. You two are the only ones I have left.”

  “What is it, Mom?” asked Steve. She never wanted to bother them.

  “I’m worried about Jack.”

  “You’re always anxious about Jack.”

  “But it’s different this time. I’m not getting any younger. Sometimes I wonder will happen after I’m gone.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Steve, his voice tinged with alarm.

  “Well, son, I do think about your futures when I’m not here. In fact, more so now than ever.”

  “Mom!”

  Her eyes glistened. “Jack’s got no career, no ambition. He never finished his studies. He’s not settled, he just goes from one thing to another. What will he do with his life? I’m afraid he’ll end up in a bad place.”

  He looked into her old, worried eyes. At this stage, she had only him to trust. He held her hands tightly. “Don’t worry! Mom, I’m making a promise to you right now that I’ll look after Jack!”

  “No. No. You don’t have to.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s a guarantee.”

  She drew a deep breath of relief. “Thank you for your promise. I already feel better.”

  “You know what?” he continued, “We’ll move back. The temple’s served its purpose.” He hoped to somehow convince his brother—at least Jack always loved Mom’s cooking. They walked back to the front door.

  “And please tell Jack to call me tomorrow. I really miss him and want to hear his voice.”

  “Of course. Bye, Mom,” he said, opening the door and stepping out on the verandah. “See you soon. Love you.”

  The late afternoon sun streamed down on her face through the screen door. Her age covered her like a worn out blanket. She never looked older, more fragile. “I love you too, son.”

  * * * * *

  Steve looked out the bus window and witnessed the tall trees lining the wide streets, the broad sidewalks, the magnificent buildings, the immensity of the city, the spread of human creation, the infinity of the sky and the sun and the clouds on the limitless horizon. His emotions blurred. What did Dhana say concerning the temporary nature of this world, the mortality of all living things, the amazingly strong illusion of solidity, the eternality of things? That everything created is bound for dissolution? Caught in the web of actions, he never before considered such things. Sitting in the bus, watching the material creation stream by, constantly changing and yet remaining the same, a profound realization of the ephemeral nature of reality overcame him.

  He sighed deeply, broke the contemplation and remembered one of Dhana’s instructions; on the importance of doing the right thing— that while still alive, duties remained inescapable—a lesson learned from the Bhagavad Gita. He recalled the promise to his mother. Jack had a stubborn nature. But he had to try.

  He went to his room and discovered his brother asleep already. Steve climbed into bed, pulled up the covers and closed his eyes.

  * * * * *

  Marjorie Goode sat on her favorite chair on the verandah, watching the sun set slowly. She enjoyed most this time of day, when the heat and humidity evaporated and dusk heralded the cooling breezes off the mighty Missouri and Kansas rivers. She woke up at seven that morning, as she did every day. When she graduated from high school and started working at the local library at sixteen, she had stopped using an alarm clock.

  She sighed, remembering her teenage years. With long golden hair, blue eyes and a pretty face, she gained the lengthy looks of her male classmates, but painfully shy, never reciprocated their admiring glances. Maybe growing up an only child on a farm in Kansas, at least until the dust, drought and Depression forced her family to quit the homestead and move to the city explained her reticence. She never forgot her humble, farm girl origins and, instead, developed a life-long love of the written word and when offered the job at the library right out of high school, she gladly accepted.

  She worked there for forty-nine years but the last few years at the job were difficult. It wasn’t enough to love books. At the end, the new kids working in the library came armed with university degrees, and the City asked her to accept a lesser position at the Children’s Library on the other side of town. Rather than accept the humiliation, the lower pay, not to mention the inconvenience of the hour-long bus ride back and forth, she accepted early retirement. That and her late husband’s army pension allowed her to live frugally and to send, at a regular and sometimes unexpected basis, money to her two sons.

  The old house became difficult to manage. Or maybe she lost interest. It felt easier to take care of just her bedroom and the kitchen. Her living space, like her life, shrunk to the demands of necessity. She rarely went into the basement and the boys’ rooms stayed as undisturbed as when they left to live in that apartment near the university.

  She wriggled into her slippers, returned to the kitchen and put the coffee on. The long day and the heat tired her. She had nothing to do and took comfort in that. She turned the TV on, waiting for the water to boil. The drone of the voices reassured her though she didn’t pay attention to anything said. She lost interest in TV shows about ten years ago when strange people with stranger problems showed their faces with increasing regularity during the daytime hours.

  She got up, brewed herself a cup of coffee, put off the television and went out to the verandah. She wondered about the change in her life once the boys returned. She knew, of course, that in a short while, once they accepted good jobs, resumed studies or married, the house would empty again.

  They’re both good kids, she thought, and nothing could have been done differently. She never controlled her life. Her husband and children did as they pleased and she kept things together, picking up the pieces.

  She remembered the first time she saw Jim, a few years after the war. He resembled every schoolgirl’s dream with his neat, handsome uniform and dark eyes set in a strong-jawed face. She wondered at his presence in the library and when she glanced at the title of the book he handed over, she had blushed. He took that as an invitation and asked her out. Not even aware of her actions, she agreed, and by the end of the month they married.

  It was probably the only rash thing she ever did, and its unforeseen, inescapable consequences spread through her life, like the Missouri does through innumerable streams, gullies and creeks when it floods. Jim liked to drink and many times in the beginning he didn’t come home for days on end, leaving her lying awake at night with fear and dread, mixed with anger and jealousy at his neglect. He always gave the same excuse out drinking with his army buddies. She tolerated this for years until finally one day Jim took Steve, only six, out on one of his all-night drinking parties, leaving her alone with the baby. He had skipped from bar to bar and, though Jim denied it vigorously, she had no doubt that he bought the boy more than one cheap beer that night. The episode so infuriated her that he arrived early the next morning to find all of his possessions packed neatly in several suitcases by the front door. She snatched her inebriated son and slammed the door in her husband’s face.

  He slunk off like a rat into a hole and returned the next day with an apology and a dull realization that he had to grow up and become a man. The transformation shocked and filled her with a wonder that he could, after all, become a real husband, and she thanked her lucky stars that she would not end up a ditched woman living in a trailer park at the edge of town.

  And then, several years after things started going well, he had to get himself killed. Jim took the family car on a cold winter morning in February to
the base on the same road he had driven hundreds of times before. The road may have iced over or maybe he fell asleep at the wheel, but it made no difference now. He smashed head-on into a military truck coming from the opposite direction and death was instant.

  The army buddies came, held a wake, but after everything ended, she was left alone at home with her children. Fortunately the pension, and not to mention Steve’s job at the restaurant, helped her raise them, but since that moment, she knew with a deep and unnerving clarity how really alone she was and how false is the sense of security in an inherently insecure universe.

  She fought desperately against this primal sense of fragility for the rest of her life, or rather, struggled to protect her children from the inevitability of defeat at the hands of fate. She succeeded somewhat at this futile task Steve, old enough when Jim died, understood her distress. He viewed destiny with a sense of respect; that by following the rules of society and morality, that fate, while not defeated, could at least be thwarted or deflected. At the very least by being disciplined and honorable, Steve kept the furies at bay.

  The good son—he made her proud. His studies, his love of books, all came from her and his success at college made her heart almost burst with pride. She didn’t want to admit it, but he was a mama’s boy. Nothing wrong with that, she hastily thought, but Steve needs to get out of his shell. The world could offer so much if he just accepted it.

  Jack so much reflected his father. Jim was Jack’s buddy, a dashing romantic figure frozen in the glow of childhood, devoid of all frailties and flaws. Unsurprisingly, Jack embodied all of his father’s great abilities, and now, more and more, his abundant flaws. Smart, stubborn, restless, good with their hands and perpetually in trouble, they charmed women off their feet. Yet, Jack, like Jim, displayed another side; a courageous heart, great generosity, a championing faith in the underdog and the loyalty of a true friend. If only he learned to trust, to take advice. In many ways, he was his own worst enemy.