Samskara Sam Archive

MARch 1995 to August 1996

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The BBQ and Beyond
by Atmadeva

100% Dogma Free

Gender Balanced

Low Level Spirituality and Sentient Language

In the previous instalment, our cult-busting operative was put on the tail of J.R. Rasagoullafella Jnr. treasured son of Incense magnate J.R. Rasagoullafella Snr. Fully utilising his Manomaya Kosa, Samskara Sam located the youngster at the Sydney Jagriti. However, just when he was about to bag the cult-napped junior, his endeavours were foiled by a mysterious and invisible force known only as ‘TRG’. Dizzy and humiliated, but at least drip dry, Samskara Sam was unpegged from the Hills Hoist by a washer-woman and fled the Jagriti compound. Our humble narrator continues the story:

Running until I felt the pull of the Jagriti’s psycho-spiritual whirlpool diminish somewhat, I hurriedly phoned my superior, Rajaguna Roy on his hotline. Still out of breath, my experiences of the last twenty four hours were relayed. I did my best to ad some bravado and Himalayan mysticism to what was in fact a debacle.

Not really being into mysticism, my superior instantly saw through the window dressing.

‘Get your Muladhara Cakra down here on the double!’ he bellowed. The receiver became so hot I dropped it.

Nervously I made tracks to HQ, feeling as though I was plummeting towards a localised version of Hell. One in which there was a backyard BBQ, sizzling the sausages of my own Samskaras, whetting the appetite of a higher authority.

The high-rise offices of Cult-Bust Inc. (South Pacific Branch) were situated on a new maximum security island in Sydney Harbour. As the ferry approached, they appeared to tower over me like a very, very un-benevolent dictator, about to wreak vengeance on an incompetent subject. Not even a vanilla ectoplasm smoothie would have laid to rest the butterfly’s in my stomach.

Powerless, the in-humanly sized object sucked me up, all the way to the 135th floor. All the way to red-faced Rajaguna Roy’s office, where, from behind a huge wobbly desk he was peeling and eating raw onions. Out the window, a sweltering city oscillated at our feet. It was hot in here too, despite the air conditioning, and the temperature rose exponentially as the de-briefing progressed. Every layer of my being sweated profusely and I sensed mushrooms growing ominously in dark places.

Then, Boiling point. I was swamped in a huge red wave of anger:

‘You stupid, vacuous, egotistical, nonsense nutshell!’

He had a point. I was a stupid, vacuous, egotistical, nonsense nutshell. Samskara number twelve for the day sizzled away.

‘How would you like an appearance before the CEO herself!?’

Before I had a chance to express my preference, two thugs in business suits and reeking of Calvin Klein hippopotamus scent, bundled me into a black ‘space outfit. With all the subtlety and grace of two drunken night club bouncers they propelled me down a descending, curving corridor. Then, After a few loops, I was jettisoned into a large, bright oval shaped space. It was over three storeys high and lined entirely with glass bricks, Hauntingly, our point of entry seemed to have disappeared. In the centre of the room was an apparatus consisting of a pedestal and several rings forming a sphere about three metres in diameter. It vaguely reminded me of something I’d seen at Luna Park.

One of my escorts instilled in me a childish sense of anticipation:

‘How would you like a modern day crucifixion kiddo?-the digitised version!... ha ha ha’. His sadistic laughter splintered several of the glass bricks.

Holy Hiranyamaya Kosa!, I was about to be strung up on a virtual reality machine.

The hippo duo strapped me into this high-tech rat race. My hands and feet were stuffed into ‘sense-boots’ and ‘sense-gloves’. Earphones and goggles completed my sensory imprisonment.

Then the show began. It was so real! I was airborne, floating high over a city at night. Rivers of red and white lights sat grid locked in the canyons way below. A few landmarks jolted my memory and realised I was actually in New York City!

This floating feeling was something like swimming in the air. Effortlessly, I changed course and paddled out to the Statue of Liberty. A subliminal magnetic force seemed to draw me there, an urge for the ‘freedom to shop’ perhaps. But then all of a sudden we were on collision course! I was about to smack into the statue’s stony temple. Bang! But it wasn’t like hitting stone. Rather, it was more like an electric shock and the sense of being propelled into a space. A large space. There was shag pile carpet on the floor. Head spinning, I got to my feet and came face to face with the CEO herself, or at least a digitised version of her.

From the corporate throne I was commanded in no uncertain terms to take a seat. Groggily I slumped into a very uncomfortable designer chair. For the next five minutes I was ear-bashed with Cult-Bust Inc’s Mission Statement.

‘We are the warriors of the psychic realm. We will stop at nothing to fend off those propagating non-material lifestyles. Cult-Bust Inc. will keep the populous inculcated with the principle of selfish pleasure’.

Then with all the suaveness of a game show host she said

‘We’ll be right back... after this break’.

Indeed there was an ad break. But it wasn’t an advertisement in which you were a passive observer. Rather you were actually in it! Here I was in some dusty Texan one-horse town, with virtual dust getting up my nostrils. I was an oldster on the porch, watching over the youngsters: a male and female ostrich in blue denim performing a mating ritual around a red sports car. Then everything went blue except for a slogan a Levi’s logo.

‘Welcome back’ said the CEO. The show continued, interview style.

I was questioned in great detail about my personal contact with ‘TRG’.

Then she summed up: ‘It would appear we have come across a highly sophisticated outfit with psycho-dare I say-’spiritual’ technologies well in advance of our own. It is imperative that we re-infiltrate them and learn all we can, before our competitors do.

‘What about poor little J.R. Rasagoullafella Jnr.’ I pleaded, somewhat surprised by the level of sentiment that had developed for the junior jiiva.

‘ Ultimately he will be recovered. But first we must gather intelligence, we must know our enemy, we must acquire their methods. Agent 86, you are to re-infiltrate the ‘Jagriti’ cult, working in tandem with agent 99, ‘Samskara Samantha’. Your more immediate superiors will brief you on this mission. Now go!

There was some theme music from the ‘Thunderbirds’ and then a hurricane force wind blew up out of nowhere. I was vacuumed from the plush office. The Statue of Liberty spat me from her lips as though the spirit of freedom herself was disgusted with my toxic presence. Once expelled , there was no New York City, only the glass brick chamber from which my journey had originated. I was spinning rapidly around it’s upper periphery and slowly descended, rotating to a stop.

Presently, the goggles were ripped from my face. Real Reality. It was agent 99, Samskara Samantha.

I was just about to wax lyrical about my trip to the Big Apple, but she was not in the mood for a travelogue.

‘Get down from that thing and meet me in the operations room A.S.A.P!’ she ordered curtly. Without ‘duo hippo-help’ it took me some time to disentangle myself from the virtual reality device.

The operations room was somewhat like backstage at a theatre. Make-up, wigs, fussy performers: that kind of stuff. It was here that assistants in white coats readied operatives for... you guessed it... operations. In order that the ‘Jagriti cult’ would not recognise me this time around, I was fitted with a bushy false moustache and multi-functional, hi-tech glasses (which I’ll tell you more about later). My sidekick, Samskara Samantha got the glasses, but not the moustache.

Red faced Rajaguna Roy briefed us on the forthcoming mission. Perched on top of the Coca Cola machine that sat in the corner of his office, he guzzled the holy liquid from a silver chalice.

‘OK, 86 and 99, you are to get one last chance! This is the plan. You are to infiltrate the ‘Jagriti cult’ via their ‘Master Unit’ on the North Coast. Your Primary objective is to collect all possible data on the ‘TRG’ phenomenon. Secondarily you are to recover J.R Rasagoullafella Jnr. and your tertiary objective is to bring me back some of their ‘wicked’ Prasad. Is that clear?

‘Affirmative’ the two Samskaras said in unison.

Operation ‘Liberation’ was go! From the props department on the Sydney mainland we were given our vehicle: something that would not look conspicuous when moving amongst Jagriti culture. It was a three wheeled auto-rickshaw, a beat-up veteran of the Calcutta Taxi service. Top speed 36 miles per hour. ETA Lismore: five days eleven hours and thirty six minutes.

As a footnote, and whilst on the subject of vehicles, I would like to point out that in the short time that I left my 626 unattended, two junior operatives decided to take it for a spin. A hundred yards down the road they rolled it into a ditch and wrote the damn thing off.

It was with this sad fact still prominent in my mind that we began the Long Drive. At least the 2cc Bajaj auto-rickshaw was fitted with a gender balance device (GBD). It beeped occasionally and ensured that male and female components of the operations team did an equal share of the driving. Heading up the Pacific Highway we practiced our Namaskars on passing lamp posts. One of the intelligence officers at Cult-Bust had given us a crash course in cult culture, idioms, slang etc. On the second day we fine tuned our ‘Keartan’. On the third day it was Prabhat Samgiit class. On the forth day ‘Ananda Sutram’. On the fifth day ‘Jadosphota’.

The highway was littered with the Theme Parks of our fracturing human society. ‘Neo-Nazi World’, ‘KKK World’, ‘Hezboullah World’, ‘Militia World’, ‘Aum Supreme Truth World’, ‘Gangster Rap World’, and finally the one we’d been waiting for: ‘Margii World’.

Our three wheeler puttered up the Freeway exit and onto a dirt track. A large Billboard boasted ‘You Have Just Missed the Third Coming. Better Luck Next Lifetime’. A little further along the way a convoy of at least a dozen white Rover sedans passed us going in the opposite direction. (Later we learnt this was the ‘mini Babas’ taking their morning field walk). In the ensuing cloud of dust we lost the track and only regained it as we reached the outskirts of ‘Margii World’.

By now our vehicle was in some distress, seemingly on the verge of Jadosphota. By dint of a few lucky Samskaras we might just limp home. The horizon was dominated by a huge concrete sarcophagus and the trees around us seemed to be holding their noses. Apparently the local bio-gas plant had had a meltdown.

The two units of bottled up energy (namely Mr & Ms Sam Skara) went past at top speed, pushing their hapless inanimate object. Somewhat relieved we reached the metropolitan area proper and took in the sights: TV factory No. 13 (looking strangely two-dimensional), the Incense factory, the famous Prasad Works, the infamous Tongue Cleaner Works, the Langotta Mills. Then, sonorous harmonies emanated from the world’s first Animal Polytechnic where chimpanzees were taking their Prabhat Samgiit class. However all was not rosy. A traffic snarl had occured at the drive-thru DSS (Department of Social Security)and those waiting appeared to be killing time, leafing through copies of the Yellow Pages.

Downtown we parked amongst a profusion of three-wheelers and white Rovers. We were warmly welcomed. Happy to have their first visitors in years, twelve people in succession asked ‘have you eaten?’ [Conduct rule 37]. This was despite the fact that it was fasting day. Our hosts took us to our respective quarters. I stayed in my bedroom and looked at cookbooks.

The next morning the two hungry operatives-cum-potential WT’s were served breakfast at the ‘LFT’ mess or LFT Physical Pabula Intake Centre, as it was called .The bowls could only be described as ‘portable lakes’. We ate small portions and staggered out, to walk off the excess. Before long we came across an interesting chap: a forgetful, itchy, perennially hungry gymnast going by the name of the ‘Kamamaya Kid’.

Everyone here had these ‘Wild West’ type of names. Indeed it struck us that ‘Margii World’ was a sort of lawless frontier outpost at the threshold of humanity’s burgeoning psycho-(dare I say) spiritual landscape. Trail-blazing humanity’s progress, the inhabitants of ‘Margii World’ were the Cowboys and Cowgirls of the cimmerian darkness... or as they would like to think, the crimson dawn.

By dint of this insight, I lost adjustment with the material plane and tripped on a man hole cover, dislodging it slightly. As the three of us stooped to replace it, my high-tech glasses started beeping and the moustache (which I guess must have been high-tech too), started curling at the ends. And no wonder! Engraved in the drop-forged metal were the letters ‘TRG’.

Could this small hole in the ground lead our two noble Sams to their primary objective? Will the Kamamaya Kid come onside? What weird smoothie will be consumed next? Keep reading ‘Pranam’ for the next thrilling episode of ‘the Adventures of Samskara Sam’.

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