Monks in Manhattan

By Jnanagamya Dasa

An upbeat romantic comedy about how a Hare Krishna falls in love with a millionaire heiress.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483566641

Book preview

Glossary

1. MORNING in MANHATTINÉE

As Citi’s day begins seagulls rise over HUD River from their comfy, but lousy nests to swoop, rise, dive, and play under the G.W. & G.H Bushy-CIA Bridge. We have a clear, crisp May morning, with icy blue skies to match cold expressions on the faces of the gulls’ fellow commuters, the humus beans.

Seagulls, however, unlike most of their humus bean counterparts, are not vegetating while driving by listening to radio crackpots tell them what to think, what to buy, who the Gov. suggests we hate today, what needs they must necessarily fulfill, or what-all ambitions they should or should not act upon in order to \-fit-in-/ and be normal, happy beans in the hopper of humus currently called Americca.* Rather, these seagulls laugh at their fellow commuters, the beans, all the way across big oily HUD to Manhattinée, New Yolk, the Big Egg. The Ominous Omelet.

* Americca: pronounced the same in most Latin and Eastern European tongues, or plain ole ‘Mericca,’ if your family has been in the country more than three generations.

2. Shannon Van Locke: Jack’s DAUGHTER

New Yolk’s inhabitants divide themselves into five thousand different classes. Yet they prefer and give lip service to a bizarre ideal called ‘Classlessness’ which anyone who has ever flown in an aeroplane or ridden a train realizes is pure bunkum. As social orders come and go Shannon Van Locke qualifies for all ‘secret’ top ten status levels. A Hidden Controller, yes, but, fortunately, not all such controllers are members of our Hidden Government.

Ms. Van Locke is a Princess; no, a Queen; nay, a mini-Empress of New Yolk’s frustrated, quick-fix, high income culture. She seems to have it all, yet she is not even close to being satisfied. Among her personal holdings are two dozen classic swank apartment buildings on New Yolk’s Eastest Slide, where the sun rises first, if mere nano seconds before it roars through Manhattinée’s Concrete Canyons, on its daily way to Ram’s Out-Westest Slide.

At twenty-nine, Shannon is also senior partner and CEO of a group owning nearly twenty-three medium-to-large-sized advertising agencies, and also extensive residential properties in New Yolk Citi. Mini-Empress Shan-Shan has stocks, bonds, hundreds of employees who have no idea who she is, and could never imagine their Supreme Personality of Employer as an attractive young woman. Our Empress also likes her privacy. Those employees who deal with her directly more or less approve of her, until she has to fire them. She’s not terribly sentimental about people who don’t pull their weight. She has a tendency to load people up with responsibility but also generously reward them for good performance.

From her businessman father, Jack Van Locke, who died two years ago after a three-year struggle with cancer, Shannon inherited, along with vast wealth, a serious attitude. He taught her, ‘everything’ — almost. All he’d learned in his forty years in the business-properties acquisitions and advertising trades was now stored and ready referenced in her neat little brain. A brain Jack had done his fatherly best to mold and create. Shannon’s intelligence was fed by Jack so carefully it was almost an experiment in breeding a financial genius. He never taught her how to cheat, they dealt in Real Estate or Services. His code was ‘Honor Your Word,’ honor everyone you believed wished you well, and hire-fire, hire the best, fire the rest, never waste time or money on mediocrity.

On another happy note Van Lockes are beyond publicity, being old money, with connections they completely control their Media Exposure (ME) and keep their personal ME at absolute zero. After all they were advertisers, they bought Media. Media in return offered most humble obeisances and respected their wishes in all things ME-wise.

Shannon Lower as Shannon Van Locke

Shannon’s father came of age when his family was down on its luck, almost completely bereft of coin, debt approaching astronomically high red numbers. Jack, however, proved to be a genius, a prodigy scion. He did footwork for investors, bought unwanted real estate — mostly apartment buildings — at rock bottom of a nearly decade long down market. He renovated, never sold, always had apartments to rent. Real Estate soon bored him. At thirty, a major turning point in his career, he looked toward advertising. A secret protégée of advertising paterfamilia David Ogilvy, Jack wrote super sales copy. Over 20 years, he’d bought out a dozen agencies resulting in an exponential increase in Van Locke family fortunes. Quietly, in an undisturbed by federal regulations way he managed to nearly monopolize advertising in New Yolk. After all it was a non-union service industry. New Yolk’s, New Jumper’s (Jersey-Sweaters) New UK’s pols were his clients, he got them elected, spun slogans, spinned explanations, captivated minds, won votes. Jack tried to always be on the side of what he considered an Americcan standard of a good politician, i.e., he chose to work for the lesser of two, sometimes the lesser of three or four or a dozen or more, evils.

Van Locke also followed Og Plant Now, Harvest Later Mandino’s tried-and-true formula, defined in ‘The World’s Greatest Salesman,’ he gave away a dollar for every two he made; all anonymously, without fanfare, without plaques, dedicated wings, or press releases glorifying his Van Locke name. How did he get away with keeping himself and his clan free from headlines in an age where nothing was sought so much as notoriety? How could he be so renounced? He made huge donations, yes, but honored friends names, either friends or worthy folks, many of whom he’d never even met, but had heard about, be they dead or alive. He had a kind of canonization project. It elevated honest people who’s generosity was a lifetime of service. Each of his agencies also kept at least one art director-copy writer working pro bono for local charities, churches, or temples, or disaster-struck people in forgotten places.

His charity was never advertised, but word of mouth brought him hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business from impressed people. Wise people, people seeking to patronize good karma lovers not unlike themselves. People who knew Jack Van Locke well loved him, but few knew the extent of his holdings; he kept his and his family’s profile as low as straw in the street, as low as a billionaire can practically manage. It was far more practical this way, he told Shannon, so she, too, developed an innocent desire to be mysterious about her largess and her identity as a rich woman. Whenever Jack anonymously dropped a million on an orphanage, or into a trust for educational scholarships in the name of a long serving teacher he felt pleasure, that pleasure of being a servant. He realized rewarding others in this way made his days brighter, so much lighter than any self-aggrandizement ever could. Every bit her father’s daughter, Shannon, kept strictly to Jack’s practice of keeping the family’s generosity quiet. His one weakness, one might say selfish indulgence, was for collecting art. His mother had had a stunning collection, he’d added to it from time to time.

3. Ram das, SERVANT of Krishna

Ram das is different. Ram is a shortened name of Lord Ramachandra, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He is Krishna who incarnated 800,000 years ago appearing as an ordinary man, albeit with super powers. Das means servant. Ram das strongly identifies with being an ordinary man.

Joe DeGise II , Yadunath Das, as Ram Das

Ram das is a Hare Krishna devotee, he’s a self-proclaimed ‘fringey.’ Fringy was a term coined by Srila Prabhupada, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, ISKCON’s founder-acarya, to denote someone on the Hare Krishna movements periphery, or fringe, hence, a fringey.

Perhaps, at first, it makes him a little easier to take, right? I mean Ram, the fringey. Well, Srila Prabhupada, too, is easier to appreciate when you consider his ability to coin a word ‘fringey.’ He was grave of demeanor but remarkably humorous, always called things as he saw them. However despite Ram’s own self-impression that he was in a Pluto-esque orbit at the Hare Krishna solar system’s edge, he is labeled a full fledged fanatic by his neighbors and co-workers.

Since His Divine Grace Abhay Charan Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada passed away in 1977, ISKCON centers and temples have increased five fold, now numbering over the five hundred mark. Devotees have chairs at major universities; a devotee serves as general in one of the world’s most powerful armies. They run hospitals, businesses, schools, all stuff normal people do, but they also make time for Krishna in their lives, minds, hearts. Many are serious devotees, others less serious, cutting corners being nominally involved. Some are barely attentive to the supreme mystical powers being offered them, free of charge, by so simple a process as chanting God’s names. But they give it lip service.

Today it’s no longer possible to dismiss Hare Krishna movement as a passing generational phase. It could even be the 21st century’s mega religion, should Lord Jesus fail to reappear with an angel army next few decades to drive out Antichrists (from the Greek antikhristos) who, by now, must surely number in millions. Beyond any doubt Hare Krishnas would be first to dancing in the streets welcoming the Lord on High’s Son. They’ve had years of practice.

4. Ram’s OUT WEST SLIDE Chelsea NEIGHBORHOOD

Ram doesn’t live in a temple, few devotees do anymore. ISKCON is a whole movement of fringeys now, if seen in that ‘old fashioned, early ISKCON’ sense. He has a job not connected to Krishna consciousness. He lives in a half-loft street-side studio (AIRs they are called: Artist In Residence, old warehouse and sweatshop floors great for studios) in Chelsea, some six or seven blocks north of Fourteenth Street which is the upper border line of Greensandwich Village. Chelsea was once Manhattinée’s most popular red-light districts, it’s still active, lower key but slightly higher end now. Ram’s street is a kinda retro-revival red-light district curb-service-hub. ‘Johns’ no longer stroll by, they drive quietly by.

Through his large picture window (with countless cracks in its ancient wood frame which cause endless speculation as to when, by a sudden change in atmospheric pressure, its wood would fail and its giant four hundred pound glass pane be sucked out of its rotten frame to plane down hardly airborne and sever an unsuspecting Pro’s, as Ram calls them, head from his or her rentable body, or bifurcate a neighbor’s little white dog’s gayly ribboned tummy) he can see New Jumper City’s sky-scrapper high-rises beyond the old Out West Slide Highway’s (OWSH) ruins and HUD River, which appears as a glowing, oil slickish, thickish gray-brown flat silkish thread unraveling itself as it flows almost directly Southeasterly in an attempt to wash the Statue of the Last Libertarian’s feet, and on out to merge with Atlantis’s Ocean.

Directly below, (out of view unless one looks directly down while leaning on the time bomb killer pane of glass, walk Pros, sex workers, prostitutes, hookers, hoes who work his street. He has a different relationship with them — he gives them cookies, sometimes yogurt mixed with orange juice — Krishna prasadam, food offered to Krishna. Krishna’s mercy.

Ram doesn’t trade sweets for sex. (God forbids.) He tries to keep friendly, neighborly relations, offers them spiritual food, gets them to chant Hare Krishna to shorten their duration of their voluntarily self-imposed sentence in their current prostitute-body-I-enjoy-mindset-prison. They tend to tease him, but most condescendingly appreciate his efforts to purify them, while failing to believe any purification is possible, or necessary.

A few are what he’d call vicious, but it’s never too hard to keep a respectful distance from those who fiercely resent his assumption something is missing in their lives, even if it is simply free cookies. Ram is saddened by these kids’ choice of professions, but Krishna also regarded some sex workers as His devotees, so who is he to look askance. He knows many things are beyond comprehension. First thing to understand about God is you’ll never completely understand Him.

Curiously his street is unusually quiet, more so than most normal NYC streets. Business transactions here are discreet. Hoes here are well heeled high heeled high enders, high hoe, high hoe it’s off to work quietly, not shouting, we go. Horns, being nearly obsolete on this street, are heard from distant blocks away, mostly on Twenty-third Street. Orchestral accents to compliment actions a`la Rhapsody in Blue. Slowly cruising drivers stop briefly, interview, are appraised in turn; offerings are made or withheld; accepted or declined; all in whispers; contracts are made in seconds. There is no lengthy bartering, no historic insulting-one’s-manhood battery barkering bickering from bitchy flesh peddlers. Pros close their John’s car doors quietly as newly matched intimacy bound couples glide away in expensive late model sports cars, or often limos. Such transactions remind Ram of hotdog cart operators on Wall-Eyed Street. Super fast, super quiet. Both customer and client believe taste, not the Kosher Hebrew National hot dog’s high cost is most important. Neither vendors nor clients are figuring karmic costs of either product or service.

Ram’s block feels secret, but is well frequented by those in regular need of a thrill, or whatever solace a warm willing rent-a-bod can provide. Our Chelsea Street is a haven for same-sex couples, a few with children, almost all with little black or white dogs. Some are committed, or even married, most only living together after all wasn’t marriage for straight squares, wasn’t gay about freedom of choice, unchained liberated sex. But then along came AIDS. Times changed. Freedom from disease trumped free love. Ram’s Manhattinée Chelsea could be from an earlier, or current, or future, or a mixture of time periods…anything is possible. Krishna reveals Himself thus, Time I am.

Every morning Ram worships his deities, Gaura-Nitai, incarnations of Krishna, as Lord Caitanya, or Gaura, and Balarama, as Lord Nityananda, or Nitai. God has unlimited names, all are holy. Balarama is Krishna’s older brother. God can have anything He wants. Older Brother, Mother, Father, Girl Friends. He creates/owns everything, so why should he not enjoy everything ordinary beans enjoy?

Krishna and Balarama appeared in India 5,225 years ago approximately if you go by the Astrological calculations of heavenly movements, two eclipses phenomonally close to each other. Astrological observances recorded in scriptural history trumps artificial calendar dates set by pols. Sri Krishna Caitanya and Nityananda are incarnations; the same divine brothers. They appeared, danced, chanted throughout India almost 530 years ago. Their chanting Hare Krishna maha mantra…Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare opened Bhakti’s storehouses of love of God. They plundered Bhakti’s storehouses, freely distributing love of God to everyone, regardless of qualifications, lack of qualifications or over qualification to receive it. Regardless of what price they were, or were not offered for this greatest of all gifts They distributed it, freely giving it to anyone who would take it.

Their ecstatic pastimes are written in two principal books, Caitanya Bhagavat and Caitanya Caritamrta, books giving whosoever reads them a taste of devotion to God. They offer a pure taste, an ultimate, deep absolute experience of love for God, Krishna prema.

Ram carefully inspects his walnut-butterscotch-chip cookies on a tray in his glass fronted oven. They’re ready, he lifts the tray to stove top, two more trays follow. He tests for softness, turns one over hoping to see medium brown, not too dark brown, he raises his eyebrows, they are right. He lifts three biscotti at a time with a Japanese steel paper-thin sixteen centimeters long spatula, sliding them onto one of three wire cooling racks. He takes down plastic bags, as his cookies cool. Pouring hot milk from a sauce pan into three, two inch high silver cups, dropping a few spoonfuls of oatmeal into a similar silver bowl, pouring on a few drops of milk, drizzling raw honey from a bear-shaped squeeze bottle he is almost ready to make ‘an offering.’ A final touch, Tulasi Tree leaves from one of a dozen Tulasi trees he keeps rooftop grace the top layer of cookies, with one on the oatmeal, one in the milk. Everything is carefully arranged on a silver tray. With his offering to God and His (also God) Brother, he approaches Their altar. Ram kneels reverently, praying to Their Lordships to accept his bhoga offering (food not yet offered). By accepting it Krishna transforms it into prasadam, literally Krishna’s mercy. It becomes transubstancially Krishna.

Even on a gross material level the molecular constitution tests of Masaru Emoto, a Japanese scientist, are strong transubstantiation examples. His work on water’s atomic mutability when exposed to words defining different levels of love, or conversely hateful, grossly abusive words, clearly showed a difference in water’s structural composition. The effects such kind or harsh words had on plants watered with benign or nasty treated water revealed a reality generally missed by ravaging consumers and their suppliers. Such molecular differences are easily seen in frozen water exposed to either sacred or profane treatments. They could be classified as ‘symmetrically angelic’ or ‘chaotic mutant demoniac’ respectively. The atomic structural changes of prasadam, however, are not realignments of material elements in the cookies’ atomic structures. They are not merely beneficially reorganized, or healed. Rather foods offered in such a devotional manner become Krishna, God, Himself. A spiritual concept verifiable by practitioners who both take prasadam themselves, and distribute it to others.

Unlike the exclusive Catholic ‘only in a state of grace’ communion, the partaking of Jesus Christ’s body and blood, all persons, regardless of pious elevation or sinful baseness, are encouraged to benefit from eating — or taking — as devotees say, Krishna prasadam. One need not be in a ‘state of grace’ to benefit from God’s association. He follows us, seated in our hearts, through all our seemingly endless mucking about in Maya’s material world.

Accepting prasadam purifies those who honor it by giving them an experience; Krishna’s direct contact. Ram thinks, a spiritual proposition for the Pros.

God wants us to return to Him in no uncertain terms. His terms are definitely magnanimous. No one should be deprived of spiritual information, never denied mercy which enables them to progress back toward their original constitutional position in the spiritual world. Everyone is allowed to taste this forgotten pleasure of Krishna’s mercy. Tasting prasadam, spiritual food, is often a first step in our developing a desire to return to Krishna.

You change when you honor and enjoy prasadam. Demons consider it a brainwashing process. Indeed it does cleanse impurities from our minds. Committed materialists, karma kandis, vikarmis, atheists, avoid taking prasadam when they hear of its spiritual benefits.

By offering God’s gifts back to Him, food He has provided, in lovingly prepared preparations, love already present in a transcendental family, God and his devoted servants’ family, expands. An example: children offering simple gifts to their parents, gifts bought with money their parents provided. Such exchanges come naturally to those who want God in their family, to devotees who call him Father, or Mother. Radha-Krishna are both. Desiring to give, then receive love, is natural, but how to do so in perfect reciprocation, without offense, without duplicity, that is an unselfish perfection, a high transcendental skill which persons situated in pure bhakti, loving devotion, possess. Fortunately, it is a process that begins from whatever level we find ourselves on. Pure hearts result from bhakti’s practice. First comes a simple desire to know and please God. Then bhakti, devotion, naturally manifests.

Ram finishes his offering prayers to his guru, who passes the offering on to Krishna. After washing and putting away the Deities silver plates he stores his oatmeal, first the maha prasadam, the portion offered directly to his Deities, the larger prasadam portion is left in its pot, put in the fridge. This day is called Ekadasi, he doesn’t eat grains, or beans today. All the cookies in the seven dozen stack are maha prasadam, for distribution, he packs them three to a bag.

Beginning and ending his days happily, unrushed, living in a regulated manner, following a routine he has worked out now over a few years, Ram is content with his simple life. His early mornings are in the mode of goodness. Content, non-aggressive in his plans, surrendered to this generous routine of baking, then distributing prasadam. Letting Krishna place him where he might be useful. Ram does simple things, does them well, as St. Francis advocated. Vedic self-realization processes are not a burst of enlightenment after intense years of self-denial, austere restraint, or meditation on a void. Rather it is a step-by-step escalation of loving exchanges with Krishna. Vedic scriptures prescribe a lifelong, even multi-lifelong plan, to reach pure Krishna consciousness, to attain this fixed realization, I am not God; I am a servant of God.

Ram has an idea about going to preach in India. He’s been there several times, watching it change from backwards, but very friendly, to high tech, highly haughty in some places, but still overall simple, basic. To some extent India has become a back office for Americcan mega-corps, with a TV-promoted, upgraded sense of false pride, but to a foreigner India is still behind the times, a mess. So is every other country in the world compared to the organization of the spiritual world with its loving benign autocrat, Krishna. India’s middle class is said to be the largest in the world, but it is still in a minority, caught awkwardly between an upper one percent rich and an overwhelmingly poor seventy percent. From visit to visit, he’s seen it become more difficult to get a smile from people. They are aping the West, Srila Prabhupada once said. One could still find pockets of Vedic culture in India, in Vraja’s holy district in Uttar Pradesh, and in Mayapur, West Bengal, Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s birthplace. In these and other holy places India’s real treasure, her temple-centered culture still flourished, a spiritual wonder, fully active, and on colorful display. Often mixed-up priorities on local, or national levels were spoiling holy places’ beauty and tranquility. This is Kali Yuga, Age of Quarrel and Hypocrisy and India was not unscathed despite her spiritual foundations.

Ram has another plan, too, one about which he is, understandably slightly shaky. He wants to be celibate, for life. He’s already gotten a fair start on his ambition, but realizes it requires a rather strict, slightly anti-social attitude (his misconception). It is a discipline, this offering of chastity, he isn’t sure he will always maintain it, but currently it’s his set serious goal.

5. Shannon’s MORNING RUSH

Princess Shannon’s morning is a rush: an eight-minute workout on her ROM machine (priced at $14,999 + tax at 8.something%) followed by a four-minute ten-nozzle steam shower with a two-minute cold-water rinse. A look over Wall-Eyed Alley Journal; a call to her broker, telling him to sell junk, (Example: Enron). Her morning also involves a series of simple moves, a routine, but all done mode of passion. She’s hyper slightly, yes; bipolar, no.

Shannon has a hasty aura about her, as if she wants to get her day started and finished, all at once so she can move on to something more important. She’ll make some more megabucks, keep on track to get to who knows where. Once there she’ll consider to next go-where. Our Princess is rich, fairly young still, well, middle aged starts at thirty-two, or thirty-five these days, attractive, levelheaded, redheaded, a material success. In short an ideal woman for some kind of ideal man. Woman and Superwoman. She’s definitely a person, who, if you approached outright with information about Krishna consciousness, would reply with a classic line we all use from time to time, Sorry, no time (SNT). Self-made Americcan Nobility, people of Empress Shannon’s ilk are rarely approached to take books from Krishna devotees; their SNT mood is too obvious. Devotees distributing information about our eternal relationship with Krishna tend to look for receptive human beans, the mangos low on a tree.

Sybil, Shannon calls, is Carol out front?

Your 300 horse carriage is revving up curbside, Princess Shanny, waiting for Your Highness to alight, then wiz you off to your new seat of power.

Syb, you’re teasing me to death…again, Shannon replies, her voice lilting on again.

Ah, Shanny girl, you didn’t die last time. You’ll live; you love it. Sybil thought, sometimes I think my teasing her keeps her alive. She’s had a hard time these past few years.

Shannon has to admit she more than enjoys, she loves being teased by Sybil, Van Locke family retainer. Syb is an anchor to Shannon’s speedboat, her teasing Shannon is a mutual pleasure shared by both at home, and by the Empress’s two favorite partners, Amritabh and Victoria at work. Another friend, Patti, is less of a tease, more of an older sister curmudgeon.

Marion Markham as Sybil

Shannon’s bodyguard-chauffeur, Carol, doesn’t tease her. However, she does openly disapprove of her on occasion. Sybil had been with her family for two years when Shannon’s mother died. Shannon was nine. Sybil became her surrogate mother. She had an Irish watchdog’s temper — yet she was fluffy, often funny, but ever alert to the potential pitfalls awaiting Shannon and whoever her juvenile associates at the time might be. Always the protector of her poor little rich girl, but not taking Her Highness as seriously as might a slower, more intimidated, governess-nanny-cook-housekeeper combo, as if such talented multitasking people could ever be considered slow. Sybil knew the ability to laugh at oneself is one of life’s paramount pleasures, as well as an unparalleled sanity preserving survival tool. Her teasing was always kind, it built character. Syb had many frank talks with her Shanny over the years. The young woman profited mightily from the older’s wisdom. Being among those rare souls with first-class intelligence Shannon learned by hearing that fire is hot; you don’t have to hold your hand over a flame for three minutes to believe it.

So schooled by Nanny Sybil and Father Jack, who spent oceans of time with her especially after becoming a single parent, Shannon became a down-to-earth clever young woman with a business maturity far beyond her years. She shared with her father, at least internally, an inclination she also keeps secret from public eyes and ears. Our Princess has a kinder, gentler side she is loathe to let anyone discover; she hides it well. Business was business, charity was charity. She loves to give money away but is most attentively careful to whom and for what her donations are bestowed.

Her three different foundations employ administrators, naturally, but she personally reviews responses to 80% of requests for grants, gifts, endowments, etc. Not only ones initially screened by administrators but fresh ones from ‘simple folks.’ People looking not so much for a new computer or short term scholarship in a trade school as for someone to care about them for once in their lives and to prove it with a boon. Someone to encourage them with a gift which said, ‘I have confidence you will use this wisely.’ Even if their application was not always precisely filled in she enjoyed interviewing applicants for grants. This welfare work had convinced her that most world problems were 99% mental and could not be solved by money, rather solutions lay in attitudes. If one’s mindset is right, money comes. Shannon could change peoples’ minds, redirect them toward a winning successful attitude.

Empress Shanny seems to have it all but suffers from two notable absences in her life. First, although very generous, she has practically no spiritual consciousness, at least none of which she is aware. Yes, she is pious, her natural inclination is to do good works, but what her charity’s ultimate aim is she hasn’t a clue past ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Your Basic Instinctive Karmic Philosophy. She is not naïve, rather guileless, having no preconceived religious notions. Second, she has no man in her life, no significant other, no Emperor. Her single remotely amorous experience having been a brief, unfortunate, explorative encounter in her late teens with a young man named Rich Finder, who subsequently, admittedly, became a full time fortune hunter. Rich, however, enjoyed scant success in his chosen profession. He found rich women aplenty, but could never marry any.

Shannon fought alongside her father nearly every day of his three year contest with cancer. As he was devoted to her, she was in turn to him. Their affection was personal. They were tight business partners, loving family members, close friends; their lives were so intricately intertwined neither needed anyone else to fulfill them. Jack had two dates after Shannon’s mother died; both business related. He had a beautiful bright sweetheart of a child. Being a wise, continent, content man he relished the time they spent together. He taught her business, on occasion he kept her back from school to attend twelve-hour closing or negotiation sessions. Sometimes having her dress in a style years younger than her actual age and then on signal have her espouse a barrage of information and figures. Infantile intimidation at its finest. Sometimes she’d dress years older than her age and then pester her father for a popular new toy as if she were seven years old. He used this masquerade to unnerve opponents in negotiations. It was cutesy, but won many a round of intense arbitration. The two would spend weeks discussing pros and cons of potential acquisitions. They daily traded stock-market tips. Jack’s most important educational gift to his daughter, he felt sure, was introducing her to advertising’s power. So, Shannon was not entirely guileless or innocent.

If Ms.Van Locke was spoiled in any way, it was due to her father granting her too much power at too young and age. But what could he do? She’d learned to read at twenty-six months of age, was three when she first began visiting his office; she climbed into a chair and watched for hours as her father worked at his desk. She started examining charts, drawing childish fantasy production graphs; by four she was perusing his extensive library on assorted business practices.

Jack, along with his staff, was convinced she was a business prodigy. For years, nearly every day after elementary school she’d shadow her father, or his employees at their jobs, or disappear into VLG’s corporate files. The office expanded for her as she grew, first as her nursery, second as her playground, eventually, by choice it became her teenage haunt. By fifteen, Shannon ran her own company a roller blade parts supply company. She had a storefront and did a thriving mail order business. At twenty-one, with a Columbo University MBA, her father decreed it was a must, she entered Van Locke Group as a full partner poised to be inheriting CEO. A position she assumed, to her great sadness, far sooner than she or her father expected.

Shannon always enjoyed exercising power; Jack enjoyed seeing her use it. Jack was wise, good, Sybil strong, moral, kind — Shannon became honest, fair, financially creative, and, as was her father, secretly generous. She can occasionally be, it must be admitted, a wee bit bitchy, but in her defense, nearly all rich women, especially New Yolkers, claim griping as a sacred privilege, ultimately their divinely bestowed responsibility to keep others, namely lazy lamenting poor folk from drifting into somnambulence. Fussy is expected, has some merit, is generally incurable. Especially in hard-boiled Big Egg New Yolkers.

6. Ram GOETH FORTH to WORK for KRISHNA

Today Ram dresses in his dhoti-kurta uniform, a devotional habit, a kurta, a short-sleeve, four-buttoned, collarless cotton shirt hanging from shoulder to mid-thigh over a dhoti, five plus yards of a white cotton cloth wrapped, rolled, twisted, folded, finally tucked in forming an article of clothing part way between a long skirt and an extremely loose thin cloth diaper.

T’was fun, exciting, to walk down a street in such a bizarre outfit. There’s a touch of a showman in Ram, (in all devotees who ‘come out’) but not enough aggressiveness in him to capitalize on it. He has many quiet talents; it doesn’t bother him he’s not a movie star; any more than it bothers, say, half the world’s male population. Most men are shy, they want movie star money, and attractive qualities, but minus the insane publicity.

He has his home deities, his temple life with devotee friends, a pious job. He doesn’t do ugrakarma (ultra-bad-karmic-reaction work) jobs. He is a clever creative man with simple tastes, he has another virtue, too, far rarer than creative genius, simple humility.

Humility, that ever elusive term, was defined by his spiritual master Srila Prabhupada as recognizing there was no shelter in anything but Krishna, not in your intelligence, or education, not in your money, your fame, not in your gun, trusting only in Krishna. Seeing yourself as helpless but for God’s mercy.

Ram is also generous; he can’t give away money, as Shannon does, and he wouldn’t do that anyway, but he has other things to offer. He can afford to make, then give away free of charge, delicious prasadam cookies almost daily. He has faith in prasadam. An attractive kind of preaching, it is Krishna consciousness taken in a highly digestible form. He preaches verbally, too.

Ram works in one of Shannon’s Ad agencies, though he has no idea it belongs to her. After all, it has been a short week since Shannon knew it was definitely hers, Van Locke Group’s (VLG’s) most recent acquisition. A new division at VLG had organized ADMen & ADWomen’s purchase, Shannon wanted to see if they’d gotten it right. When such transactions are made as a private exchange, few employees ever realize what’s even happening until new owners decide to effect major managerial changes by purging those considered to be redundant, or by merging similar holdings, or by firing everyone then selling off company assets to raise cash, or, in advertising, to reduce competition with other agencies an owner controls. Our Americcan High-Roller Repatrician Way, the Bain-of-Capitalism way, the any way to make a fast buck way, no matter who has to suck it up, lose their job, go homeless. The New Americcan Sociopathic Capitalistic Way looks as old as the hills.

After all is said and duh, duh, da duh da, done AD agencies are media playing teams. Same as baseball or football or basketball teams, agencies are always up for sale at a good right price, its players, even its stars, are regularly hired, fired, or swapped. Ram is off to such a workplace, heading out with seven dozen pieces (Eighty-four Cookies) of sweet prasadam sorted into twenty plastic bags of three per bag with two dozen loose for his cubical cookie jar. He has his bag of beads, his japa-mala, 108 strung beads made of tulasi (Sacred Basil) wood, a knot between each bead, two ends of thread tied over a larger guru bead to mark beginnings and ends of each round of chanting. Ram’s mind, at least these days is not bogged down by life’s myriad problems; he sees Krishna consciousness as a complete solution to all life’s problems, in particular to the problem of impending death. Part of that solution is to give everyone prasadam, his adopted devotional service. Ram is a Krishna Prasadam Biscotti Baker & Distributor.

7. Shannon BECOMES a FRUMP

Shannon lingers before her dressing room’s huge wall mirror clothed in her Tom Wolfe labeled traditional X-ray-woman black dress, she shakes her head. Got to have a makeover; I’m not frumpy enough. Dad would say, go incognito. She remembers his pleasure at those ‘secret identity’ sessions as she looks through some boxes. After rejecting several old jerseys, she finds a white one stored in a vacuum cleaner airtight plastic bag. It has big black-and-green centered yellow-petalled sunflowers, her mother’s long in storage treasure. Ah-ha! Eureka! Mom would be pleased, too. Her mother had had a wonderful sense of humor which Shannon developed then inherited in full.

Inside a special shallow tray drawer are a dozen pairs of non-prescription lens glasses. She picks out an outdated pair of butterfly-shaped white mother of pearl frames with blue tiger stripes. Her effect is perfectly frumpacious. She doesn’t wear glasses or contacts, her eyesight is perfect, but she often plays dress-up, or dress-down, when playing detective to investigate potential acquisitions.

Okay, this is more like it; now for a bag. An old touristy bag woven from palm frond leaves is pulled out of a closet devoted to luggage. Lettered "Come back to Jamaica; No problem!" in green and yellow script, with mellow native style painting all about its base depicting a beach, ocean waves, palm trees, with sun rise and sunset on opposite sides. Delighted with her organic antique she thinks, it was easy. Not so hard to disguise a little black dress, after all. I am Supergirl. She considers socks—White? No! Red? No. Argyle with tan-black diamonds, knee-high from High School. Black canvas Chinese shoes with brown plastic soles and Mary Jane straps internationalize the Princess’ dowdy ensemble. A quick hair spray effecting a stray cow lick completes her undercover foil. Bravo Princess Shan-Shan!

Going to work in her ADMen & ADWomen Advertising Agency, her role will be editor/office manager, mostly OM, but in reality she wants to assess the agency’s efficiency, get a clear picture of who is, or who isn’t, organizationally essential, or at least marginally valuable. It should take about a week to see who stays hired, who gets fired.

Grabbing her assorted props, she moves out, a corporate commando. See ya, Syb, she calls.

Sybil calls, Let me see, leaves the kitchen to give Shannon a customary appraisal. Don’t get too close to any shredding machines. In that outfit they’ll want to get rid of you any way they can.

You’re so protective, Syb, how could anything possibly happen to me? Who would dare bother a woman dressed so…innocently? Not even a machine would dare!

You look atrocious, beautiful, but ridiculous. Have to give you credit, it’s a turn off.

Thank you Syb, back to the kitchen with you!

Happily, happily I return to a far more tastefully decorated kitchen sink. Shannon shakes her head, Pretty bad, huh?

No kid, wear it, but don’t be surprised if people put candy in your Jamaica Bag! Trick or treat. They laugh, Shannon resolves, I’ll take more time dressing tomorrow.

8. Ram, Lowetta & The PROS

Street-side, Ram spots Pros — sex workers, hookers, hoes who use the sidewalk as a cat walk, a recruiting stage booking office. Lowetta appears with her morning gang. As usual, they’re chatting, sipping coffee, waiting for cookies before they disperse after a long night shift, but mornings can be busy, too. They see Ram coming out and immediately start their customary heckling in the easygoing fashion of street people familiarity. Today his dhoti is a primary object of ridicule, as it is every two weeks on Ekadasi. The Pros have some idea about Ekadasi, Ram had told them whys and where for’s about today’s extra odd austerity. For some it increased their respect for him, for others it made him seem more bizarre. Austerity is a difficult concept for committed sense gratifiers to understand. But Prasadam does gratify their senses so most all will take Prasadam when it is offered.

Ram isn’t sanctimonious; he deals with them as easily as he deals with everyone else; respectfully, generously, kindly, almost without a trace of condescension. Perhaps he’s more talkative.

Everyone in New Yolk is family. Brother-in-laws, with or without polite (or impolite) references to your sister, or your mother. If you take a He’s Family attitude when someone screams, or curses in your direction, you can survive, otherwise ever tightening tensions in everyone due to near universal frustrations caused by broken promises of All Ameri-con Dreams (which most New Yolkers, rich or poor, have tried and failed to realize themselves living) will do you in.

Upper, middle, lower class…it didn’t matter; no one is ever satisfied. Someone else’s building, apartment, office next door, on the other side of the street, or down three blocks is always bigger, newer, sharper, chicer and just better than yours. As reality slowly melted away most aspirations of the Silent ‘Just Happy to have a Job’ majority, many mutes placated their wounded egos trying to restore atrophied tongues with gargantuan quantities of cream cheese on hot bagels, or roof-of-the-mouth burning pizza, chased by icy good for cleaning gunk off diesel engines, better than bleach stain remover on toilets Coka-Callous soda or Gut Buster never-get-wiser beer. Yes, New Yolk Citi is entertaining, but you pay a high price to fight traffic, shell out exorbitant rent, joust for parking, eat funky junky food, go out of your way to avoid muggers, pay tickets issued by justice-forsaking cops keeping their jobs by fulfilling their quota of citations awarded to honest non-criminal types taken off-guard by absurd traffic rules; these and assorted other headaches in ole Big Egg make life seem even more egg-shell-fragile, perishable, cracked and crazy. New Yolkers are always on edge, as was Humpty Dumpty on his wall. They seem to fully anticipate their fall; it’s simply a matter of time. As a constant reminder to keep their balance, they see ‘fried out,’ or ‘discounted due to being cracked’ beans all around pushing shopping carts piled with moldy clothes. All a bit too much, over the top mad.

Ekelesvari dasi as Lowetta

Most of Ram’s hecklers are regular teases. Lowetta, cutest prostitute in Chelsea — on Ram’s street anyway — greets him with a warm suggestion: Hey, big Guy-Rambo. When you gonna try some of my sweets? One of her standard lines.

Low, honor my scene, please, they’ve discussed his renunciation.

Still Celibate in Chelsea, huh, honey? You take the cake but never eat a piece Hare Krishna Boy. She laughs at him, he laughs back, wonders if he is intimidated.

Well, you’ll take some cookies, Low, right?

Lowetta is a lovely, striking…what? Flesh-a-Pod-covered-spirit-soul? What could a kind person say about her? Don’t know. Not so kind, myself. She’s hot, for sure ‘hot.’ At about twenty (or a bit more, though miraculously, she still looks a world weary sixteen at first glance), she often has an all Americcan, heart-wrenching-waif look about her. Sometimes other looks are put on. Think Iris, Jody Foster, in Taxi Driver, but an in-control Iris. Not fourteen, but twenty.

She makes Ram blush. His desire is not so obvious, both he and Lowetta have their principles: he would never pay for sex, wouldn’t accept the indulgence even if offered for free; Lowetta would never offer a freebee, she knows it wouldn’t pay.

I’ve got nothing for free, Vaggie taunts, too, but I’ve got a sliding scale charity rate.

You got cookies, Ram? pipes up Mary M. "Prasadam, Saint Ram?"

Ram holds up several bags of cookies. Smiles. Been thinking of you kids all morning — thinking, praying, chanting. Ram thinks, they are not, not, not my meditation but someone has to give them something, not exploit them. I’ve got Krishna’s mercy for you, sure enough! I know they think I am crazy.

The girls almost line up, each says, Hare Krishna as Ram hands out their three-cookie bags, a routine, they are self-disciplined to some degree, focused actors, as every street performer must be.

LeRoyla, a trannie (transsexual, in case you didn’t spot it) comments, You got your dress on today, honey. You looking to take my place out here?

"No, but I was hoping you’d take my place — start distributing prasadam, too, LeRoyla?"

Go on about your business, Hari, but she agrees to do some devotional service. Gimme some for bag ladies. Ram gives her three bags. Now you got to distribute them. Get them to chant Hare Krishna, too, right?

Go on now! LeRoyla never says Hare Krishna, for her there is prasadam, edible mercy, only. Ram knows she will give them away, He’s seen her give her own away. Little things impress him. A little Prasadam is potent beyond description, engaging another bean in its distribution process is meritorious beyond calculation.

Ram smiles at his girls, turns, walks off. Today Lowetta is surprisingly in tow.

I read some in that last book you gave me. Some of it made sense.

He stops to look at her, a glimmer of hope flashing in his heart. Try chanting, Low, it’ll all make sense. You okay otherwise?

I expect. She pauses, looks around, as if searching for someone. Ram guesses she’s looking out for her pimp, Horas Whore Monger. She’s afraid of him seeing her with Ram. He doesn’t care for spiritual life, he definitely doesn’t want his fambly to get interested.

Low, there are places you can go to, to get out of this. I’ve told you before. I’d give you an address, some money.

Yeah, when I die, I’ll be moving on. See ya. I got plenty of money, silly.

Chant Hare Krishna, Low.

She turns, leaving with a sally Hell, Low’s my name, Ram-bobo. Hare Krishna to you, too.

The sad part of his morning is over. But they seem a nano bite more receptive every day. How amazing Krishna is, how incrementally He allows our return to Him to progress.

9. Shannon RIDES LIMONA to WORK

Shannon is caught in a traffic jam. Sitting in Limona’s back seat. ‘Limona’ was VLG’s first limo. Jack Van Locke dubbed her ‘Limona’ after being delighted with Shannon’s first efforts to pronounce ‘limousine.’ She fidgets with her watch, feels bored. Suddenly her eye catches movement outside, someone is looking through her smoked window, but when she turns, she’s looking directly into a camera lens of some wannabe paparazzi. He snaps a shot: there’s a muted flash, dulled by the smoked glass. Wannabe Paparazzi moves on to next car’s victim, takes another shot; next, again, then another. Shannon expects he only got a picture of a bright white light bouncing off a black window but wonders, What was that all about? The Big Egg is an omelet Chock Full o’Nuts, even if those once-popular concession shops are nearly gone, replaced many multiple times by Starveducks. Maybe this guy was photographing star flashes on various car finishes. Maybe he was a Starveduck commercial maker. Shannon is advertising minded, often amused by making absurd connections and fantasizing commercials. She plays with a mental story board: Paparazzi, flash, dissolve into car interior, see passenger drinking a latte, complete with milky mustache. Repeat next car, with a teen, repeat next car an old person, next, oh, forget it! It’s all been done. She’s bored. Mental Commercial Storyboard puzzles are a mundane pleasure she’ll soon consider discarding.

10. Ram RIDES a SubWorm

Ram enters a SubWorm at Twenty-third Street and Eighth Avenue. He always felt people are better behaved in a SubWorm’s belly; maybe feeling safer underground has something to do with it. He’s often wrong, not being fully enlightened, yet. Our own feelings when generalized then cast upon others can deceive us. Some people are terrified to go underground. They take it as a prelude to visiting the underworld, again.

Aboard in his dhoti, his head shaved with a sikha, a tuft of hair on back of his head, with a tilok mark on his forehead, Ram notes his fellow passengers examining his arrestingly different apparel cum make-up. Since eternally ancient times, a sikha, literally, ‘a flag,’ has marked slaves, or servants. Remember the original Spartacus’ scene when Kirk Douglas cuts his sikha off, declaring himself no longer a slave? He was so intense. Oh, before your time? You missed a great film era.

Well, Ram had amputated his sikha too, once, not as dramatically and with disaffected remorse rather than satisfied defiance. He’d deemed this disfiguration essential to disguise his spiritual proclivities, to cover up his essential self for ‘getting a job’ to ‘earn money.’ He’d gotten a job, but lost it when it was discovered he was indeed different, not an enthusiastic participant in mainstream consumer tribe cultural rituals. He was thought by his then boss to have no business making money to support his religion, much less himself. If he’d spent his money on drugs, alcohol, sex, fast cars and fast women, or gambled it away at OTBs, there would have been no such resentment, but when it was revealed to his pseudo-liberal employers he donated nearly half his salary to Hare Krishna street chanters and a spiritual book trust, they found he was intolerable. They liberally fired him. We can’t use you anymore, was the note he found taped to his desk one morning. Fortunately his sikha grew back by mystic power. He now embraced being Krishna’s slave and treasured all outward signs of this eternal status.

His tilok (make-up: two vertical stripes on his forehead, a finger’s width apart, with a down pointing leaf shape on his nose, made with a yellow cream colored clay obtained from Yamuna River’s banks in Vrindavan India) identifies him as a Vishnu Bhakta.

To further emphasize various important <->__<-> philosophical aspects we have inserted some markers thus:

<><> BEGIN ‘Whatever’ DIGRESSION <><>

They indicate roughly a page long foot note. You can skip over them and jump back into plot sequence if they seem too stridently preachy, as some editor-readers have commented. I have a feeling, Ram would want you to know, so I have included them. If you are antsy and anxious to see how the storyline progresses skip over these text digressions to next text marker . . .

<><> END ‘Whatever’ DIGRESSION <><>

<.><.> BEGIN ‘On Krishna and Vishnu’ DIGRESSION <.><.>

Vishnu is Krishna’s four-armed form. Krishna, being God, has nothing to do but play on His flute in His two-arms-two-hands form.

Vishnu performs duties. He maintains unlimited universes in the material world. He carries four tools. A conch shell for benedictions which when blown terrifies His demoniac enemies; a chakra, a disc, razor-sharp fire weapon that spins on his forefinger, perfect for beheading murderous detractors; a gada, a bejeweled golden club weapon; a padma, a lotus flower, the beautiful, delicate, sweet-scented ornament of His own personal design, as is everything He wears.

The dictionary calls Vishnu a ‘Hindu God.’ It also calls Krishna a Hindu God. Vishnu is a different manifestation of Krishna, but they are the One and Same Supreme Person. Krishna is the Original Person, Vishnu is an Expansion, Vishnu is Chief Deity of three modes of nature — goodness, passion, and ignorance — Vishnu oversees the mode of goodness, He maintains the material world, is worshiped in awe and reverence. Lord Brahma, the Creator empowered by Krishna, presides over the mode of passion, Lord Shiva rules the mode of ignorance. Shiva eventually destroys the entire material world, again and again. Those individuals in it who chose indolent ignorance as a life style are his followers. Brahma and Shiva are devotee servants of Krishna’s dutiful expansion, Lord Vishnu. Bare in mind the Modes of Nature are Mixed, they compete for dominance, sometimes passion is predominant, or ignorance mixed with goodness or passion. 3 times 3 times 3 times 3 equals 81, to give you an idea of how many variations the modes can manifest themselves.

Krishna, the Original Supreme Personality of Godhead, has no work to perform; He enjoys loving familiar relationships with His devotees on the spiritual world’s topmost level. Those devotees are completely absorbed in Him in Goloka, the place of ultimate pleasure. Go means senses, loka means a location. Go also means Cow, Goloka is literally the planet of the Cows, Krishna’s favorite animal.

Vishnu is worshiped as God in the spiritual world’s ‘Vaikuntha planets’ in a mood of awe and reverence by devotees in dasya rasa, an attitude of service. Vaikuntha is literally ‘the place of no anxiety.’ Devotees in Goloka are usually blind to Krishna being God. Because of his Yogamaya potency they rarely see Krishna as God. Instead of seeing Him in a mood of awe and reverence they see Him as their most beloved equal friend, fully dependent child, or paramour.

Sometimes, to prevent these devotees from completely taking Krishna for an ordinary personality, Goloka’s residents are briefly reminded of Krishna’s Supreme Position. Such reminders are short term. Awe and reverence is not a mood they, or Krishna, prefers in Goloka Vrindavan. They are quickly relieved of thinking of Krishna as God. For them Krishna is a village boy, a village family member. His supreme grandeur and potencies are hidden, but His all attractive nature, his lovability, is fully manifest to the highest degree. He simply wants reciprocal love in Goloka, not reverential formality.

Such an illusion of familiarity, or commonality with God is Krishna’s Yogamaya potency it manifests when pure love of God overcomes our perception of God as great, supremely powerful. Here in this material world we suffer from Mahamaya, the great (Maha) illusion (Maya) that we ourselves are God. In this ‘conditioned’ consciousness our perception of God is overcome by our envy of Him. Some of us here are so envious we cannot tolerate or perceive even a conception of Krishna. It is doubtful that anyone who has read so far into this elevated digression from our story line is all that envious. Congratulations!

<><> END ‘On Krishna and Vishnu’ DIGRESSION <><>

In SubWorm: Ram is eyed by a small but well rounded sample selection