Goddess for Hire (4 page)

DESPITE THE FACT
it was Monday afternoon, the two-story Barnes & Noble bookstore was doing steady business. Students and shoppers occupied all the tables in the café. I opted for a Venti Caramel Macchiato and, sipping my drink, headed toward the escalator. Religion was on the second floor. An accident or direct attempt to put the section closer to the heavens?

I passed by the information desk where a heavyset blond woman was arguing with a harried male clerk. “But the book was there last week, and now it's gone!”

“Do you know the title or author?” the clerk asked.

The woman pursed her lips. “No. But it had a purple cover.”

Leaving the clerk to the delights of customer service, I let the escalator carry me up, up and away.

I got off next to the political science section and had to walk to the opposite end of the floor to find religion. The bookstore was clearly adhering to the separation of church and state.

I started on one end of the aisle and began working my way down. There were three full shelves on Christianity, one shelf on Judaism, and a third of a shelf for Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.

Hmm, talk about your Holy War.

I plucked three titles on Hinduism off the shelf, then had to circle the floor several times before nabbing a corner table vacated by two students wearing UCI sweatshirts.

I took a revitalizing sip of my drink and cracked open the first book. Scanning the table of contents I found the page number, flipped to the chapter on Kali, and began reading.

Umm…

I didn't know if it was the mint chutney, but an uncomfortable stirring had begun in my stomach.

Okay maybe it was just the author's bias that made Kali sound like Lakshmi's ugly stepsister. I took another fortifying sip of my coffee, and turned to a different page.

Yuck!

The stirring in my stomach had become a churning.

There were a few things Ram had neglected to tell me about Kali, namely, her freakish fashion sense. If I were Kali's personal shopper I'd dress her in Dolce & Gabbana, and advise leaving the necklace of freshly cut heads at home.

I needed to see a picture. Quick.

I picked up another book and turned a few pages until I came upon one. I studied it for a few moments, then cocked my head and considered it from another angle.

Personally, I didn't see what was so scary about the goddess Kali. So her red protruding tongue contrasted with her ink black skin, and yeah, she was juggling a trio of human heads, and had teeth that would put Dracula to shame but…

I slammed the book shut.

Pushing back my chair, I grabbed my purse and ran to the bathroom. Thankfully it was empty. I stood in front of the mirror. My reflection stared back at me. Flawless oval face, smooth black brows that arched perfectly to frame my almond-shaped brown eyes, full lips, long black hair…

I held up my slender hands—definitely not claw-shaped. And I would never drink blood, not even if it were guaranteed to make me lose weight. Plus there
weren't any cremation grounds in Orange County that I knew of, but if there were, you wouldn't find me partying it up there on a Saturday night.

The blenderlike movements in my stomach subsided a bit.

I returned to the table, which was, of course, occupied, and grabbed a different book. I leaned against a shelf of Stephen King novels, appropriate for the subject matter and flipped pages until I came to another picture. This time Kali was shown straddling a pale, white, male form. The caption read:

Gross!

And, technically, it'd been more than a year since my yoni had sexually devoured any lingam.

I tossed the book onto an empty cart and stepped over a little boy sprawled in the aisle, busy drooling over pictures in the
Joy of Sex
. He looked up and stared at me defiantly.

I wasn't about to steer him toward the Newbery Award winners, and left the little pervert stewing in his hormones. There were bigger things to think about. Namely, Kali was a horrifying creature who looked more like the Incredible Hulk than Wonder Woman. I couldn't be her, could I?

Considering the state my stomach was in, I tossed my coffee into the trash can. I'd also stop off at the drugstore for some Tums, just in case.

There was one surefire way to settle this once and for all.

It was time to do that womb-tomb mediation thing Ram had told me about.

POPPING TUMS LIKE CANDY
, I drove down Newport Boulevard, traffic parting before me faster than the Red Sea for Moses. My dad referred to me in my H2 as a weapon of mass destruction.

Ram said to try the exercise outside. For obvious reasons I didn't think the Barnes & Noble parking lot would suffice, I knew a far more suitable place.

I turned onto Iris Avenue, heading toward a small, secluded section of Corona del Mar beach. It was practically deserted, and I parked on the shoulder of the road. On the weekend both sides of the street would be lined with cars.

Slipping out of my Tommy Bahama sandals, I scooped them up in one hand and stepped onto the sand. I walked toward the water's edge, and looked around surreptitiously, but this area of the beach was empty—no body surfers, no bobbing bosoms in bikinis, no bloated bodies burning brightly.

Ram said to close my eyes and visualize the energy
flowing up from my womb and down from my third eye. Too bad I had no idea where either spot was. Was my third eye between my eyebrows or slightly above?

According to my birthmark it was slightly above, like a pyramid. Now where the hell was my womb? Would the stomach region suffice? Maybe I'd focus on my uterus? Thanks to Aunt Gayatri, I knew exactly where that was.

I closed my eyes and began to chant “Om.” I was playing by ear, and
Om
seemed as good a word as any. Personally, I doubted I'd experience anything other than a few relaxing yogic breaths.

“Ommm.” I stretched the syllable out as far as I could. Other than the call of seagulls in the distance, the beach was relatively silent. The Pacific Ocean truly lived up to her name. Waves eased onto the shore with barely a whisper.

I took another deep breath and imagined energy as a golden hand, traveling up from the nether reaches of my body, and down from my forehead, connecting as two fingertips in my chest.

Okay, so I stole the idea from Michelangelo.

I did this a few times, staring hard at the insides of my eyelids, and saw nothing except for the usual swirls of geometric colors. Moments passed.

Zilch.

I opened my eyes and exhaled. It hadn't worked. Had I expected it to? But it wasn't like I had any pressing matters to attend to, so I tried again.

My eyes flew open and I kicked at the sand. This was ridiculous!

I wasn't one of those people who crossed over with John Edward or happily panted with the Pet Psychic. I didn't scamper through the woods looking for fairies or roam the desert trying to contact E.T. I believed in the tangible, like credit cards. But here I was, trying to summon up cosmic energy from my fallopian tubes.

I suppose I could have continued being disgusted with myself, but that wasn't any fun. Instead, I channeled my anger against Ram. What right did he have to disrupt my life this way? I was going to drop-kick him on the side of the head. I was going to run over his bony ass in my megaton SUV.

Righteously pissed, I threw out my arms and shouted, “Om!”

And something happened…

A pool of warmth began building in my stomach. Like soft liquid lava it traveled up, spread through my chest, rushed along my arms, and seeped down into my legs. The point between my eyes began tingling. With a shaking hand I pressed the tip of my finger there. It burned.

A shadow fell across my face, and my eyes drifted upward. The blue sky was spreading with black.

Oh-my-God!

A FIERCE WIND
, warm and carrying the scent of a faraway land, sprang up and lashed out at the smooth surface of the ocean, kicking the water into massive, churning waves. My long hair swirled around me like a shawl of black silk.

Lightning strikes laced through the darkness, and the warmth inside me seethed into pure intense power. My nerve endings were buzzing.

The wind swelled with hurricane force. It was all I could do to keep on standing, but I felt better than I ever had in my life. Laughter spilled from my mouth, and the wind carried the sound until it echoed all around me.

I was sheer energy. I was light.

I was invincible.

Then, like tendrils of a venomous creeper, an image of Kali I'd glimpsed in one of the books slowly spread through my mind. Dark, fierce, holding a bloodstained sword in one hand, and a decapitated man's head in the other. Threads of cartilage hung where his neck used to be.

“No!”

My hands fell to my side. In haste, I jumped back from the water and fell hard against the sand. “Stop!” I didn't know who or what I was talking to.

I only hoped someone was listening.

My adrenaline rush of atomic proportions was swallowed up by sheer panic. What if I'd opened some sort of Pandora's box? What if I'd unleashed an unstoppable force?

But the wind died down to nothing, the sky cleared, and the surface of the water was once again calm.

Whoa.

If Starbucks bottled a jolt like that, they'd make millions.

Oh right, they already had.

Hours passed, and the sun hovered along the rim of blue. I continued to sit, watching the water gently caress the sand. I didn't try the womb-tomb exercise again. There were now some scattered surfers paddling out into the ocean, and I didn't think they'd appreciate tsunami-force waves, even if they did manage to catch the ride of their lives, literally.

The more I thought about what happened, the less strange it began to feel. It wasn't just the surreal nature of it all. With that power inside me, everything had felt so—right. Like all the pieces inside of me finally clicked together.

God, I was starting to sound like New Age guru Deepak Chopra. But maybe people like Deepak had it
right? There was another world beyond this world. A world I had neither seen nor believed existed, until now.

Besides, there was a Mehra family reunion coming up in a few months, and I was curious about what else I could do.

Standing, I dusted the sand from my jeans and slowly walked back to the car. Retrieving my purse from the passenger seat, I pulled out my cell phone along with the paper Ram had given me and began dialing.

Oprah always said every woman was a goddess…

As the phone began to ring, I knew exactly what I was going to ask Ram first—

How much did this job pay anyway?

RAM WANTED
to meet immediatel.

I called home, left a message on the answering machine that I was having dinner with a friend, and hung up. Both my parents had cell phones but I wasn't about to call them and deal with potential questions. Tonight, Mom, Dad, and their guest could have a nice quiet dinner without me. Sooner or later Tahir would criticize the food or the furniture, and my parents would see the man for the ass he was.

Around seven I pulled up outside the Woodbridge apartment complex in Irvine. Ram was waiting outside, wearing orange robes as usual. I imagined he had quite a few of them hanging in his closet.

With anticipation I watched him approach the car. What was going to happen next? What would he teach me? He took a seat, and I caught a whiff of sandalwood. He'd also added a necklace of wooden beads.

“Where to?” I asked.

“Sanjay says there is a very good restaurant just down the lane. Why not go there?”

Not exactly the exciting beginning I'd imagined, but I was the student, and he was the teacher. I drove slowly down the street, keeping an eye out for restaurants.

“There! There!” He pointed excitedly. “That is the one!”

The familiar neon sign featured two words. I turned to him. “You can't be serious. Taco Bell?”

“Yes, yes, it is Sanjay's favorite place.”

“Okay…”

I parked and we walked inside. Ram gazed around the fluorescent fast-food establishment beaming, his sandals making a
clip-clop
sound on the linoleum floor. All around us people stared. I stared fixedly back, and most of them looked away.

He gazed up at the oversized menu screen, rubbing his hands gleefully. “What to have? Oh what to have?”

I'd never seen anyone this excited over Taco Bell before.

Ram looked over his shoulder and a thoughtful expression crossed his face. “I shall reserve a table. You will please order the food.”

I guess we knew who was paying. “Sure,” I said, and watched as he walked from table to occupied table, and eventually stopped beside a couple that looked like they were halfway through dinner. They glanced up and Ram smiled.

“Uh, we're not exactly done yet,” the guy said.

“Please take your time.” Ram's smile grew even wider. “I will sit only when you are through.”

The girl's eyes traveled from his full head of white hair, down to his wrinkled face, and even farther down to his sandal-clad feet. “We're done,” she said and stood up with the tray.

“Thank you. You are most kind.” Still smiling, Ram took her vacated seat.

For a moment the guy stubbornly continued to sit there. “Come on,” the girl insisted. Grumbling, he threw down his burrito and followed her.

Ram waved at me, and I found myself smiling and waving back. The priests of his temple had kept watch on the skies for thousands of years, waiting for my birth. A couple halfway through dinner at Taco Bell did not pose a problem.

When it was my turn to order, I decided to get one of every vegetarian item on the menu. I had no idea what Ram would like and figured he might as well try everything. At the last minute I ordered a Nacho Bell Grande for myself, without meat, in case he wanted a bite.

Hefting the fully packed tray, I grabbed thirty packets or so of hot sauce from the bin, because bland food comes right after malaria on India's list of things to be avoided at all cost, and made my way over to the table.

“
Bon appétit
,” I said.

Ram reached for his drink and took a long sip. Grimacing, he stuck out his tongue. “This is Pepsi. I wanted Coke.”

“Taco Bell only has Pepsi.”

“Pepsi is too sweet.”

“I know. I prefer Coke myself.”

He sighed. “I am having a very serious Pepsi problem in this country.”

There wasn't much conversation for the next thirty minutes, other than Ram holding up a quesadilla or tostada and asking me what it was called. “This is my favorite,” he said, taking a bite out of a seven-layer burrito. “What is this green sauce?”

I glanced over. “Guacamole. It's made from avocado.”

“Delicious.”

“If you like, I can make it for you fresh. Guacamole is one thing I do well.” Maybe in the future I could add saving the world from destruction to that list.

“Yes please.” Ram popped the last bite of the burrito in his mouth, sat back, and let out a huge belch. A few kids next to us began giggling. Ram winked and smiled at them.

“About the lesson,” I began.

Ram sat up. “Yes, we will begin.”

“Great.” I stood up.

“We will do it here.”

“Here?” I sat back down. “In Taco Bell?”

“It is a most wonderful place, is it not?”

“I don't know. I guess.”

“We need to be in a place with many people.”

It looked like we were staying. I'd long since finished my nachos and reached for a bean-and-cheese
burrito Ram had left untouched. “Okay, so what's the lesson?”

“First, what have you learned regarding Kali-Ma?”

“Well,” I chewed thoughtfully, “everything about her is so eww.”

Ram frowned. “What is the meaning of this eww?”

“She's nasty, Ram. Why's she always shown curling up to severed body parts?”

“Kali is the Dravidian She-Goddess,” he began patiently.

“Dravidian She-Ogre is more like it.”

Ram cleared his throat and fixed me with a stern look over the rim of his glasses. No longer was he the burrito-loving swami. “The essence of divinity is the absence of fear. That is Kali-Ma. That is why she is shown in the cremation ground, why she surrounds herself with blood and gore. She is bound with the terrifying, and she is unafraid. She is divine.”

I squirted some more hot sauce on my burrito. “You know, I've always considered myself pretty divine, too.”

“The battle to save the world will be fought between the divine and antidivine forces.”

“Antidivine, meaning evil?”

Ram nodded. “Evil is always based on fear and, therefore, not divine.”

“I've been wanting to ask you. Why didn't I show any signs of being a goddess earlier? You know, like zapping my trigonometry teacher to the darkest corners of the universe or something?”

Ram stared at me puzzled. “Why would you do that to your teacher?”

“Why wouldn't I?”

“A woman does not attain her full shakti until the age of thirty.”

“Shakti?” I knew that was Sanskrit for feminine power or energy.

“You would not have been able to call the Goddess Within, until your thirtieth birthday. Now you are at full shakti.”

I wondered what the fashion magazines would say to that? Considering they subscribed to the idea that a woman peaked at eighteen. “I'm ready. What do I do?”

Ram pushed the tray away and rested his arms on the table. “Call the Goddess Within as you did earlier. Focus on the energy moving inside you.”

I recalled the storm I had summoned. “I can't do that here,” I hissed. “Taco Bell wrappers will be flying all over the place, not to mention Taco Bell customers.”

“What you do not choose to happen, will not happen,” Ram replied firmly.

He did have a point. When I'd wanted everything to return to normal, it had, immediately. I nodded. “Okay, do I need to do anything besides that?”

“Stare at the people around you.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Malevolence.”

Malevolence? Who didn't feel malevolent after ingest
ing a few fifty-nine-cent tacos? What if I confused it with heartburn? “How will I recognize malevolence?”

“You will know. It is what you are meant to do. Recognize evil and stop it.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

Here we go again.