by Tim Guest
The adult changed the tape.
The titles came up: The Day After.
Although the video seemed to have been shown with more fanfare than the usual pirate video, no one had told us what the film was about. We were bemused.
It turned out to be about nuclear war in Kansas. Farm boys panicked; B-52 bombers cut a thick vapour trail across the sky. (We’d seen these bombers in the skies above Medina.) Missiles rose from their silos in a spray of fire, adjusted their angles—charting some far-sighted path, arrows to their targets on the farthest shore—and streaked upward, leaving thick white vapour trails as they sped out across the sky. Bombs burst in the air. All the electrics—car engines, radios, the lights in operating theatres—went out. People got out of their cars to run. A mushroom cloud blotted out the sun, and the sky went red. People turned to skeletons, then to dust. Bridges fell, steel burned, houses imploded. Mushroom cloud after mushroom cloud ripped up the earth and threw it into the air.
The screen went black. In the Kids’ Hut we were utterly silent.
And then the fallout began. Over the rubble, it started to snow. People hid in cellars. Other people, wrapped in blankets, wandered like zombies among the remains. Everything looked so cold. Nuclear winter had settled in. The cows were dead in the fields.
There were mass graves. Body bags. Workers in filter masks. The army set up makeshift refugee camps that looked to me like the photos we’d seen of the tent cities in Rajneeshpuram.
Eventually the young hero, his face scabbed, his hair now almost all gone, wandered through the university gym among a crowd of the dead and dying. He found the girl. ‘You look beautiful,’ he said, brushing her last wisp of hair away from her rotting face.
‘We’re lucky to be alive.’
‘We’ll see how lucky that is.’
We filed out of the Kids’ Hut into the sunlight. No one said a word.
‘You have nothing to lose,’ Bhagwan used to say to us fondly—encouraging us to take risks, to transcend our egos, to drop all attachments—‘And if you had anything to lose, you have lost it anyway. Life is such a little thing, so short.’ Maybe that was why the film terrified us so much: Bhagwan had already detonated in our lives. We already knew how easily everything could be stripped away.
For weeks we spoke only in the language of tactical nuclear warfare. We found out the missiles were called ICBMs, and we repeated the words under our breath for days afterwards—‘InterContinental Ballistic Missile, Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile’—so we sounded like we knew what we were talking about. We discussed thirty-minute response times. We knew there were American airbases nearby, and, as we kept reminding each other, ‘They’re definitely major targets.’ One of the kids tore a map out of the Rajneesh Times showing likely nuclear targets in the UK, the whole country—including the part of Suffolk where we were—littered with circles of devastation.
We had picked up the information that cockroaches were impervious to radiation, and when the bombs fell they would replace mankind. ‘You’ll be OK, Purva,’ Gulab would say, ‘because cockroaches are immune to radiation.’
In that first issue of the Rajneesh Times, there was ‘The Kids’ Corner’: a whole page given over entirely to the shorter inhabitants of the Kids’ Hut. We were told the page would be ours to do with as we wished. In the later issues the page is dedicated to swimming, football, climbing, and horse-riding, but on this first occasion the adults picked a suitable subject for us: ‘The Holocaust’. There was one girl’s sketch of a decaying person, half ponytailed girl and half skeletal zombie; and poems in children’s handwriting about the coming fiery Armageddon, including this early work by Swami Prem Majid, age 9:
i think the nuclear war is a very big bore.
afterwards there won’t be any one there
if there is they’ll have no hair.
To keep the issue fresh in our minds, each issue of the Rajneesh Times from early 1984 onwards carried a page or double-spread—‘WALKING BLINDLY INTO THE HOLOCAUST’, or ‘THE HOLOCAUST: NO LONGER IF, BUT WHEN’—each with the same collage of the Pope, Thatcher, the Queen, and Reagan towering over the Earth, all sporting white sticks and blind-man shades, and mushroom clouds billowing in the background. There were local scares, too, thrown into the mix: Bhagwan raising his hands joyfully above a picture of the planet Earth filled with terrible headlines: ‘Gas death toll “at least 3,000”’; ‘Boy hanged himself after bullying’; ‘. . . the worst road accident in the South East of England in living memory’; ‘. . . a call for something to be done about the glue-sniffing problem in Mildenhall’.
I always had wild hair in the commune. For the school disco, sometimes I’d wet it and smooth it down like one of the girls showed me, but combs used to hurt and mostly I just didn’t bother. That summer Nurendra, a flamboyant New York sannyasin with long painted nails, came to stay at Medina Rajneesh; he offered to pay for his stay by cutting everybody’s hair. Our mothers made appointments for us. Once we were in his makeshift salon—the green-glazed bathroom on the first-floor landing—the style of the haircut was up to us. It was Gulab, I think, who went first. Once we saw how cool he looked, we all decided to have it done. When I went into Nurendra’s makeshift salon, I, too, asked for a ‘crew cut’.
That day all our mothers came across us in turn, playing football in the courtyard outside the Main House. They had been expecting Nurendra to accentuate our long, free-flowing, liberated locks. The sight of us with our heads shorn made each one of them shriek.
At about that time a man died at Medina. He was carried into the meditation room, and we gathered around his body. The kids knelt on the floor right up next to him. Although I had hardly known him, I cried. Later they burned his body, and we all went along. A hundred sannyasins came to the crematorium, and we sang Sufi songs in the frosty air as his coffin was carried into the building. ‘Step into the holy fire,’ we sang, as his coffin moved along the conveyor belt and into the incinerator. ‘Step into the holy flame.’ His hair was shorn, too—or it had all fallen out—and all these things, death, nuclear war, winter, crew cuts, began to blur together in my mind. Not long after the funeral, the world’s oldest man—we were told—came to visit Medina. He was a stooped, wrinkly Japanese man with long, curly nails, and—we whispered among each other as we followed him at a safe distance—he stank. He had lived the longest of anyone on Earth, and he smelled like a corpse. He was us; he was death and life combined.
On the back page of the February issue of the European Rajneesh Times, there is a medical column—‘HERPES—THE FACTS’—that speaks volumes about everything that had not yet happened.
In early March 1984 Bhagwan came out into Rajneesh Mandir, the huge glass auditorium at the Ranch, and made his third public announcement since going into silence three years before. A new disease had arrived that would ravage mankind: it was the scourge predicted by Nostradamus. AIDS. ‘AIDS will kill two thirds of the world population,’ he said. ‘The time has come for the sexual habits and sexual carelessness of the modern age to end.
‘If you are ready to drop sex, do so,’ Bhagwan said. ‘If not, be monogamous. If you can’t do that, wear condoms and gloves.’ If you hadn’t been monogamous for seven years—and which sannyasin had been?—you needed to use the prophylactics, too. Plans had been drawn up for an AIDS community on the other side of the hills in Oregon to care for hundreds of patients. That day, Rajneeshpuram central purchasing bought up every available condom and rubber glove in Oregon.
Gathered together in the Main Hall that evening, all the Medina residents, kids and adults, were told by Poonam about Bhagwan’s predictions for the new disease. For a long time, Poonam told us, Bhagwan had been predicting a disease that would wipe out over two thirds of mankind. Bhagwan had now announced: AIDS was that disease. AIDS could be transmitted in any interchange of bodily fluids, we were told: in order that sannyasins would survive, a radical programme of preventative measures was to be introduced immediately. As of today, sh
e said, all sexual intercourse, with other sannyasins and between sannyasins and non-sannyasins, would take place using protection. Condoms, plastic gloves, and dental dams were to be issued to every sexually active sannyasin. Plastic gloves had to be worn for all genital contact. Contaminated waste-bins would be available for disposal in the kitchens, toilets, and dormitories. In addition, alcohol sprays were to be installed in every toilet, and in any area where food was prepared. We must all spray our hands with alcohol before, and after, using the toilet and before touching food. Every one of us was to be tested for AIDS. There would be new beads for our malas, Poonam told us; a blue bead for those not yet tested, a yellow bead for those tested and awaiting results, and a green bead for those who had tested negative. I guess there must have been a colour planned for positive, but in the event, no one at Medina had AIDS, so we never found out. Anyone who had sex with someone without a green bead would have their bead confiscated for three months.
Over the next few weeks in Medina, boxes of disposable plastic gloves and packets of condoms became as common as J-cloths and rye bread. Kids who sucked their thumbs at night were told to wear plastic gloves while they slept. There were condoms in every room. One of the girls got hold of a foot-square sheet of rubber, which she said was a ‘dental dam’. None of us knew what they were for, but these stolen rubber squares were in secret and bemused circulation among the kids for weeks. We all tried to get into the habit of spraying our hands every time we went to the toilet.
We knew all about these spray-guns, which, because sannyasins took such good care of their plants, already littered all the Medina buildings. We were masters of the nozzles on those sprays, which could be twisted one way to set the gun to spray a fine mist (great for watering plants), or twisted the other way for a long, thin jet of water (great for squirting people across the room). Now these sprays had a new use; they cropped up in every toilet and bathroom in the commune. We went around changing all the nozzles wherever we could find them, so that instead of a fine disinfectant mist, any adults spraying their hands would have alcohol running down their arms.
We were calling each other ‘AIDS’ for weeks. One afternoon the week after the announcement we were calling Purva ‘AIDS’, and she was giggling. I ran to the bathroom to grab the alcohol spray, ran back, and, forgetting all the fun we’d had twisting all these nozzles the wrong way, pointed the spray-gun at Purva’s face and pulled the trigger. A thin jet of pure alcohol shot straight out into her face. She screamed and sat down on a bunk scratching at her eyes. Gulab and Champak led her away to the bathroom, scowling, shaking their heads at me like they couldn’t believe what I had done. I was nearly as upset as she was. I knew she definitely wouldn’t fancy me now.
I knew it anyway: because I still wet my bed. Since the AIDS announcements, wetting the bed—an affliction about a quarter of the kids still suffered from—was a chance for everyone else to accuse you of spreading AIDS. Those of us who wet the bed regularly now had crackly sheets that broadcast our weakness to the world. Because of the risk of infection we had to change our sheets ourselves, put on plastic gloves, and throw them into a bin-bag. This was so humiliating that I stepped up my efforts to pretend it hadn’t happened. One of the other kids always noticed though, then ran to tell an adult, who dragged me out of bed.
The AIDS announcements seemed to increase the distance between the commune and the outside world. On the way back from an outing to the beach a few weeks after the introduction of the alcohol sprays, our minibus stopped at a motorway service station. We needed to use the toilet, but when we finished there was a problem. No alcohol sprays. We all stayed in the toilet while the teacher who was with us worked out the official line on this situation. In the end he announced he would rather not wash his hands than risk catching AIDS from the taps. We should just shake dry, he said. We all filed out. In a meeting the next day, each teacher was told to carry a small bottle of alcohol along on all future outings.
As we had done with all our nuclear terminology, we ran around repeating the words that made up AIDS, so we could say we knew what we were talking about. There were still some things about the alcohol, though, that I didn’t understand. I remember cornering a woman emptying the contaminated waste-bins and giving her a hard time.
‘Can’t you drink the alcohol and get drunk for free?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘No, it’s poisonous on its own.’
‘Not even if you drink a little bit?’
She looked around for help. ‘No, even a little bit would be very bad for you.’
‘Is that why people with AIDS can’t just drink the alcohol to get rid of the AIDS?’ I asked. She nodded, squeezing past me on the stairs. ‘I mean,’ I went on, ‘surely it’s just a matter of how much you drink? Just enough to kill the AIDS, but not enough to kill the person? After all, the AIDS is much smaller than the person.’
She went into the kitchen, closing the door behind her.
One by one, we all had our AIDS tests. I couldn’t see how I could have caught AIDS anyway since I had never had sex. Then someone had told me it might be transmitted in saliva, which meant I could even have caught it from my mum giving me a kiss on the cheek.
I remember walking on my own down the aisle of cherry trees, my heart in my mouth, on my way to Hadiqua’a to get my results. Anyone who tested positive, we were told, would have to live in a separate part of Medina. They would be cared for by the other sannyasins. That didn’t sound so bad to me, except of course you’d die with your hair falling out and your skin falling off, like the people in The Day After.
At Hadiqua’a they gave me my result. I was negative. When they handed me my green bead I ran, barefoot and elated, from the Kids’ Hut to the Main House to tell someone. It was the first time being negative had ever been good news.
12
That summer, as the Third Annual World Celebration approached, a rumour spread through sannyasin communes worldwide. If there was not 100 per cent emotional positivity this year, Bhagwan might ‘drop his body’ in July during the Master’s Day festival in Oregon. Bhagwan had always said his death was to be the biggest sannyasin celebration yet; no disciple would want to miss the greatest event of his lifetime. Bookings for the celebration quadrupled.
From the Rajneesh Times:
Message to all sannyasins, friends and lovers of Bhagwan.
PLEASE NOTE
It is very important to make your travel arrangements to Rajneeshpuram for the Third Annual World Celebration immediately, as Master’s Day, 6 July, coincides with the Olympic Games in Los Angeles and with the 4 July weekend (a US national holiday). Many flights are already fully booked. Also, get your visas early and be sure to let us know if you encounter any problems.
We were gathered together in the Kids’ Hut playroom and told that this year we were to have a special treat. We were all to be flown out to Rajneeshpuram, the sannyasin city where Bhagwan now lived, for a ten-day holiday paid for by the commune. We were thrilled. I quickly made it clear to the other kids that Oregon was near California, where I had been before, as my unparalleled ‘Centipede’ breakdance moves proved.
All the Medina kids flew out together (most of our parents had flown out the week before). We stopped over in Minneapolis-St paul, ‘The Twin Cities’, a name which left me with confused images of apples and cathedrals and people joined at the hip. The whole airport felt cool, like the air from an open refrigerator. The older girls kept whistling the chorus to ‘We’re the Kids in America (whoah-oh)’. The younger children held hands as we waited to board the flight. The second plane landed in Seattle, Washington. We made the drive to portland, Oregon, in a white-painted Rajneeshpuram minibus, two birds wheeling against a maroon sun painted on either side. The evening was dark and cool. I remember the air blowing in through the open quarter-light window. We may have stopped off at the Rajneesh Hotel in Antelope, the nearest town to Rajneeshpuram: I remember a stop at a bus shelter, the crunching of gravel. I awoke again when we rea
ched the long bumpy road at the edge of the Ranch. Out the window I could see huts with men wearing sunglasses, who waved us through. Then we were there, at the Ranch, and I was somewhere, asleep.
The next morning all of the Medina kids were gathered together in an L-shaped room in Sheela’s own residence, inside Jesus Grove—one of the most exclusive areas of the Ranch. The floor was covered in Oriental rugs, the patterns dark red and maroon. In between the rugs you could see patches of the rush matting that also ran around the edge of the room. We were sitting on the cushions that were already laid out across the floor. Some of the Medina adults were lined up against the wall behind us. In front of us, perched high on the arm of a sofa lined up against the long window, in a red jean-jacket and red velour trousers, her legs crossed but not quite reaching the ground, was Sheela. By the way we had all been ushered in we could tell she was important; I’d never seen her before. All I knew was her name. Sheela rolled up her sleeves, played with the silver bangles that ran up each arm to the elbow, and smiled prettily, waiting for us to be quiet.
Behind Sheela, through long windows that made up one wall of the room, huge hills were visible against the bright blue of the sky. The hills looked to me like the round tips of distant, dusty mountains. I was wondering how big this place really was, whether those clouds over there by the hills were still over the Ranch, or the sea, or California, or England. I thought they must be really far away, much farther than anyone might think. Then Sheela spoke. The first thing we should know, she said, was that we weren’t going back to England in ten days’ time. In fact, Medina was no longer to be our home.
