Guru Gem Scam: Part Three

As grating as those instances of involuntary bargaining were, three further episodes came to pass that linger even more potently in my mind. A little bit of background might be necessary for full context.

I am a sucker for all things occult. To remind ourselves of what precisely that words means, its entry from dictionary.com:

oc·cult [uh-kuhlt, ok-uhlt]
1. of or pertaining to magic, astrology, or any system claiming use or knowledge of secret or supernatural powers or agencies.
2. beyond the range of ordinary knowledge or understanding; mysterious.
3. secret; disclosed or communicated only to the initiated.
4. hidden from view.
5. a. not apparent on mere inspection but discoverable by experimentation.
b. of a nature not understood, as physical qualities.
c. dealing with such qualities; experimental: occult science.

Let me state now that while I am a sucker for this shit, I don't necessarily believe in its truth or live my life respecting any of its dark, sexy fruits. I'm merely open to hearing what astrologers, gurus, sages, seers, and charlatans have to say - because why not? At very least, it's worth a good chuckle.

India's kind of a gold mine for me in this sense - a treasure chest waiting to be opened. It's a place where religions collide and explode, splinter groups and cults take refuge, and where somehow, the zealous nuts of the world can shake hands, break bread, and contract equal-opportunity Delhi Belly. Hell, even the people I meet heading to India or simply drawn to its spicy allure are mildly insane. Just a few weeks ago I encountered a woman at the store who told me she would be traveling to Varanasi with a "very powerful energy worker." Ummm... okay. I'm game. So I asked her if she was talking about a Reiki master of some kind, and she said, "no. I don't know what Reiki is." Hmm. (On the other side of the crackpot spectrum: I was talking to Oren at our yoga studio a few days ago and got the filthiest look from some woman for saying the word "asshole" aloud. Really, lady? Is my potty mouth really disrupting your precious mental space that much?) All this to say that I knew Laura and I were in for a real treat and my heart cackled with glee at the inevitably bizarre possibilities that would present themselves.

Our first run-in with the esoteric actually came in Chiang Mai, Thailand our last day there. Laura and I were eating breakfast and minding out own business when we noticed that a very American looking woman next to us was gazing at us mournfully - the very look that always indicates someone is sad / homesick / wants to gab. Laura and I weren't biting. (After all, we're friendly, but only to each other.) This woman was not to be ignored, though, and struck up a conversation despite our blatant chilliness. To make a long story just a little shorter, she told us that she had come to Chiang Mai from Wisconsin (or was it Michigan?) to study Thai massage, but had hated her classes, and had somehow ended up at a Reiki school where she was getting her certification. When I expressed some curiosity in the subject, she told me she'd love to practice on me - for free - but alas, our schedules wouldn't allow it. Though I made motions to investigate her Reiki school to see about a healing session, it never panned out and Laura and I got foot massages instead. But the seed had been planted. Remember this.

Fast forward to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, Country of Kings!

Here's where I pull out my worn copy of Lonely Planet India.

Gem Scams - A Warning. If you believe any stories about buying anything in India to sell at a profit elsewhere, you'll simply be proving (once again) that old adage about separating fools from their money... The gems you buy will be worth only a fraction of what you pay. Often the scams involve showing you real stones and then packing up worthless glass beads to give you in their place... Tip: beware of anyone who wants to become your best friend in areas that see a lot of tourists (p 121).

Now we set the stage. Laura and I arrived in Jaipur after a 36 hour stint in Delhi and a three day stay in Agra, so while we weren't yet hardened to India's bamboozlement (a new word), we'd become a lot more cautious about many things. I think Delhi alone aged me about five years. Our hotel in Jaipur required a confirmation call and a pretty precise time of arrival, if I remember correctly. I cannot say that Indian rail requires or knows the same kind of timeliness, however, and we got into the city close to or even a bit after midnight, very much behind schedule. In our haste, we hired an auto-rickshaw driver who struck us as the least obnoxious, and liked him enough to hire him for the next day's sightseeing. It is my greatest regret that I don't have a picture of Raja or his "Ferrari" as memento of our love. Though tiny in stature and in the end, a total flake, Raja showered us with tales of his international friends, his Bollywood ambitions, and phrases he'd concocted on the job to impart Truth with a capital T.

 
He insisted on taking us to the "real" Jaipur - not the touristic one - and then promptly drove us to Lonely Planet's number one not-to-miss destination, a gigantic free standing minaret with glorious views of the sun-baked city. (The above photo was actually taken from the monkey temple the day after.) The day we spent being driven around while Raja blared his Bollywood tunes from exceptional speakers was actually a lot of fun, and he was nothing if not courteous, refreshingly talkative, and maybe even a little sincere. Like every driver we met - and every driver we didn't - he asked us if we were interested in shopping, and because I foolishly trusted him, I told him straight up that I wanted JEWELRY and TEXTILES. In CAPS LOCK. Raja took us to the best jeweler in town, (he claimed,) and told us that this man also happened to be "very powerful." When I asked him what that meant, he told me that Hindus and Muslims alike came to this man with their problems, and this guy fixed things. He knew things. He had power. And good deals for Raja's friends.

We were ushered into a totally dark shop (they took a few seconds to turn on the lights,) and I noticed immediately that it was a bit... higher end than I'd anticipated. One wall was inset case after case of fine gemstone jewelry, and the other had a lower long table-like case of silver and gold goods. Two men came up to greet us and the one with unusually black, thick hair introduced himself as the owner. His English was accented but perfect. I told him I was looking for two things - a nose ring and silver anklets. Everything he had was pretty tame, much to my disappointment, but the theories he spouted were not. At one point I asked "the good doctor" (since he told us he was one) about why Indian women wear so much jewelry and in so many specific locations, and he told us that it all had to do with the body's pressure points. He claims that anklets, bracelets, and necklaces all stimulate points that coordinate with energy meridians when the wearer moves. And then things got weirder, and he told us that women pierce themselves because [we] are not naturally very sensitive to sexual pleasure. I shit you not, friends. A complete stranger told us this to our faces without so much as batting an eye. Because of the female insensitivity, [we] pierce ourselves before our wedding night so that we might "feel more." Because pain equals pleasure...??? Uhhhh... are you for real?

Needless to say, I felt very, very sad for his wife.

I left his shop with a demure nose stud and three anklets in tow, feeling slightly violated and incredibly uncomfortable. Luckily, a warehouse of textiles was just around the corner to distract me.

 After our shopping concluded and Raja made a pit stop at his favorite Hindu temple, he drove us back to our hotel and then invited us to join him for dinner. Neither of us could think of a way to get out of it, so we very reluctantly agreed and then spent the next two hours imagining excuses to give him. None of them stuck, however, and we nervously got back into his rickshaw and found ourselves on the rooftop terrace of a swanky hotel where we were prodded into ordering an expensive but delicious dinner. Raja got chai that he noticeably didn't have to pay for. There was a puppet show somewhere in there, an oily friend of Raja who appeared, and then probably the most awkward half an hour of my life in which Raja told me he wanted some "vanilla" in his chocolatey life and it didn't matter that I had a [pretend] boyfriend. Thank the stars Laura was there. I did my best to gently rebuff his advances, and he dropped us back off at our hotel with the promise that he'd be back the next day.


Perhaps because he'd gotten no "vanilla" the night before, Raja sent one of his friends to our hotel to take us around. Sameer was just as short, but much less quick to proclaim his world views and sadly, had no fancy stereo system to bump his Bollywood tunes.

After he took us to the monkey temple, we sat in his rickshaw and tried to decide what to see next. A great thought occurred to him and he asked us if we'd be interested in meeting his - and I quote - "guru." He whipped out his phone to show us just how overweight he'd been in years previous and then gushed about how much this "great" and "powerful man" had helped him overcome the troubles in his life. It took a few minutes to put the pieces together, but Laura and I discovered that this "chakra reader" was in fact the jeweler from the day before. Sameer really wanted us to meet him so he could "help" us for free.

Now, as my mother's daughter, I've been taught that if the universe calls to me with a message, it is my obligation to listen. Two separate rickshaw drivers had both extolled the virtues of the same guru on two separate occasions. I felt like it would be foolish of me not to at least investigate, even though this "guru" had made me so uncomfortable the day before. Laura was game, so off we went.

The Doctor greeted us warmly enough, and told us that we had been clients the day before, but now we were guests. He explained that he sold jewelry to fund his "great works" for the people of Jaipur. He didn't care about religion or caste - he was put on this earth to help his fellow man. He told me with the jewelry case between us that he could see yesterday just how dangerously imbalanced my chakras were, and would now help me rectify the problem. To do so, he guided me and Laura into his office (where just the day before I'd taken out my credit card and paid for my jewelry), but this time covered his desk with a white cloth and whipped out some crystals. He told me to rub my hands together, place them on on the desk, and he put a large white crystal in my palms. I was to hold it and breathe. When I had done enough holding and breathing, he took the crystal from me to absorb its/my energy. He then told me that a) he knew more about me than I did, and b) I probably didn't know what chakras were, but luckily he was an expert.

I do know what chakras are AND I know where they are, and I told him so. He seemed mildly impressed. For a moment. He told me my aura was largely blue, except for a violet band around my  third (neck) chakra, which has apparently been a problem since birth. He elaborated that I was born with my third eye closed because someone had stolen energy from my mother while she was pregnant with me. Apparently, the lower half of my body is very weak as a result of this, and pregnancy will be very difficult in the future if I don't balance myself. Also, I'm incapable of having long term relationships because sex is a problem...? I don't have the concentration for yoga or meditation, and I have a very difficult time expressing myself and communicating with others. I'm a creative person, but my creativity has been blocked for three years now. If I don't address the chakra imbalance now, I'll end up in the hospital. Oh, and my liver isn't working.

"This sounds very serious," I said. I knew if I looked at Laura I would burst out laughing. "How do I fix this imbalance?" I tried to be candid and open. I really did. I asked if there were certain yoga asanas or foods that might help (because I do have a tiny bit of concentration for yoga, despite what he said), but he brushed these off and told me that there was only solution for my troubles. And it was minerals.

Gems, in other words.
Yes.
Gems.
(See above quotation from Lonely Planet.)

Gems to wear as a necklace against the blocked chakra. Our book AND Raja had warned us against gem scams, but I had no idea it would come in the form of a fucking fake guru. I couldn't help but think about Kumare and his ideal self, Vikram Gandhi - how the gurus and sadhus in his film kept trying to out-guru each other. Maybe some of them were involved in the gem trade, too. Wrangling in my cynicism, I tried to be as courteous and respectful towards this man as I could. I was, after all, a guest in a foreign land. But come the fuck on. When I told him that I would have to think about this, because to be honest, I had my reservations, he told me that if I waited until I got so sick that a visit to the hospital became necessary, Western doctors wouldn't know how to treat me. I had to act now. I asked him what minerals he was talking about specifically, and he dismissed my question. I tried again - saying that I would like to know for the future so I could help myself - but he told me only he could provide these gems and if I didn't want to acquire them now, he couldn't do anything for me. I smiled and thanked him for his time, knowledge, and information. We walked out, no stones in hand.

Guru. Gem. Scam. 
Really, India?