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Conti now lives in Long Island and is trying to re-establish himself
as a jeweler. He looks back with bitterness on two decades of convincing himself that Ma was just a step below divinity. He says it is an
open secret among a handful of top advisers that Ma likes to gamble, perhaps to excess. But they rationalize by saying that, as a guru, she
lives by a set of rules they don't understand. He says one adviser told him that perhaps the money flowing through her hands was good
karma, and would bring prosperity to the ashram. Other followers, like Scott Carter, say they have heard about the gambling and simply
don't care, that Ma's good works are much more important.
Ma rarely gives interviews, and when she does, it is often in a formal setting: surrounded by a group of followers sitting in the lotus position.
She agreed to answer questions while traveling in her van, between visits to the Palm Beach home and several other health-care facilities.
But as soon as controversial subjects were introduced, one of her followers tried to intervene.
"Ask her about her work with the dying," said Yashoda, a follower who has been with Ma since her New York days. "Ask us about those
other things."
Ma waved her away. She insisted that she did not gamble away ashram money, as Conti charges. "If I had $30,000, I'd give it to the poor,"she said.
She also denied having surgery. "Just a face peel," she said, adding that she paid for it herself.
Asked what her salary is, she replied: "None of your business."
She refused, as she has throughout the years, to comment on Ram Dass's old accusations, reiterating something she has often said: "I love
Ram Dass, no matter what he says about me."
She said those who criticize her are angry because they wanted more attention than she was willing to give them. "People who want a personal goddess |
need to look somewhere else," she said. As the van pulled up at the next stop - a home for babies with AIDS - she tried
to be magnanimous about her accusers. "I will pray for the people who say these terrible things about me," she said.
But she couldn't let it go at that. "And I'll tell you something," she said, jabbing a finger as if toward some invisible opponent, speaking in the
same defiant tone she'd used when she was challenged by the young man in the rest home. "They always come back. The first time
something happens - somebody dies, they need help - they'll come back to Ma."
THERE IS A ROOM IN ONE OF THE lakeside houses of Kashi ashram that blends the architecture of a ski chalet with the decorating
scheme of a Hindu temple.
The ceiling is high and sharply angled. The pine-paneled walls are filled with pictures of famous East Indian gurus. In an alcove is a statue of
Kali, the Hindu goddess with whom Ma is closely associated, surely one of the most garish and exotic of all religious icons. Her skin is
blackened from absorbing the pain of the world. She wears a garland of severed heads - representing her ability to release people from their
selfishness.
Across from Kali, in an elevated area piled high with pillows, is the place where Ma sits when she meets with her followers.
On a recent Friday evening, the
students who began appearing in the room were purposeful, eager for the most fleeting moment of Ma's
attention. One of them asked a visitor to move from a spot on the floor so that he and his wife could sit in their accustomed place, explaining:"I want to make sure Ma can look out and see us here." |
A few moments later, a small girl appeared to lead a visitor into a small room where Ma receives special guests. The door was closed. The
girl knocked. And amid the exotic formality, a distinctive voice called out:
"YEAH? WHAT? C'MON IN!"
Inside, dressed in a multicolored sari, surrounded by favored students sitting in the lotus position, Ma was ensconced on an ornately-carved
wood chair. She had just a moment before going in to speak to her other students. She said she didn't want to talk about visions of God and
gurus. Nor would she answer questions about gambling or face lifts. She would only speak briefly about what, to her, are the real roots of
her spiritual inspiration.
"I've been like this since I was 6," she said. "I have never really changed since then. I always knew I wanted to serve people. And that is
what I will do as long as I have breath."
Soon afterward, Ma Jaya Sati Bhavagaviti swept out of the room to meet her followers. They were chanting Hindu hymns. Coney Island
was the furthest thing from their minds.
Brighton Beach. The boardwalk. The amusement park. Outside a bright, noisy blur, inside a place so sparsely furnished that her family found
themselves using orange crates for tables.
Coney Island was across the street from the basement apartment where she grew up. Her family had to get by on the salary of her mother, a
legal secretary, because her father could never quite hold a job. He was a street vendor, a sometimes entertainer. But mostly he liked to
gamble.
With her mother so overworked
and her father such a rover, what she remembers most about her childhood, as she has shared in writings and interviews over the years, is this: There never was one moment when she did not feel she was on her own.
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She would sneak out of the apartment late at night to walk the boardwalk and visit the homeless people who lived beneath it. They gave her Camel cigarettes - even at the age of 7 she was taking long, deep drags - and they worried about a girl her age being out on her own. They talked to her, fed her when they could. They had street names - Chews, Chicky, Big Henry. They taught her how to size up strangers, how to protect herself. On the street, they said, you've got nobody to count on but yourself. Sometimes, she likes to tell her students, they seemed like they were more her family than her own.
When she was 13, her mother died of cancer. She remembers standing at her deathbed, in an open, crowded ward. Her mother propped herself up as best she could, and commanded: "Don't ever feel sorry for yourself. Don't ever say: `Why me? Look at all these people. Go entertain them. Sing for them. Visit with them. Don't mope around feeling sorry for yourself.'"
That hospital room, and her mother's death, were the ending of Joyce Green's childhood. Soon afterward, she met Sal Fiore, marrying him at age 15.
Her childhood and its echoes say more about Ma Bhagavati than any Hindu myth. You can pick out the recurring themes: street smarts, gambling, deathbed scenes, a boardwalk of lost souls, a life of self- reliance and independence, answering to no one.
Or you can abide by what Ma considers the moral of the story: worry more about the cares of other people than your own. Befriend, in particular, those whom society would rather forget. "That is who I am," she says. "That is why I am here on Earth. To serve."
She could have left it at that. But of course, being Ma Bhagavati, the goddess from Brooklyn, she had to add:
"And you can take it or leave it." |
