The Guru

Chapter 7

Handle explained the problem as best he could to Hans Luden. He told Luden he had a funny feeling about this Bawa since day one and felt his son was being taken advantage of. He hoped Luden could use his connections and research powers to discover something about the Indian. Handle had found nothing.

Luden told him he would see what he could find out, and he was motivated to help his colleague out of friendship and growing anger as he listened to the story. When he returned to his lab, he called Chen over, and the two got to work.

Searches of a man named Bawa reaped no results. He then ran a picture of the guru through Boston police files and later those in Mumbai and New Delhi. Using M.I.T.’s high-speed supercomputer, he didn’t have to wait long before information came across his desk.

There was no Bawa but a man named Kabir Kumar from Mumbai. Was he a spiritual man? Had he been in jail for protesting something, that might have spoken well of the man, but such was not the case. He had been arrested as a young man for theft, burglary, and rape. Later, he had been suspected of operating a car scam in which customers bought defective cars, but he had never been brought to trial. His trail disappeared for several years, and the authorities thought he might have gone to Bangladesh. He came back to India and disappeared again.

Leslie Poll was ecstatic but worried at the same time. She was happy because she saw herself, her future child, and Guru Bawa together forever, living a purposeful, exciting life. Why was she anxious? She wasn’t sure how Bawa would react to the news that she was pregnant. She felt he would be pleased, but she didn’t know the spiritual man well enough to predict his reaction.

After a night of passionate lovemaking, Leslie turned and faced Bawa; she said,

My love, I have something important to tell you.

to be continued

for Gary Vernon