My Life in Orange

“My mother was working twelve hours a day in the Magdalena kitchens, she told me. After work she barely had time to see Bhagwan appear in Rajneesh Mandir before crawling exhausted into bed.”

“My mother worked in Magdalena, cleaning pots and pans. This mountainous task was the only job in the kitchens which wasn't arbitrarily decided. The scrubbing of the hundreds of huge pans used to feed Rajneeshpuram was so arduous that no one was given the task for more than a week. On Sheela's orders, my mother did it for thirty days.”

“At the same time as Bhagwan's arrest, Sheela, Puja, and Shanti Bhadra, three of the biggest of the Big Mammas, were arrested in a Black Forest hotel by West German police and extradited to the USA to face charges of attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and first-degree assault. Sheela, it transpired, had formed a hit squad to carry out attacks, including the murder of District Attorney Charles Turney, Laxmi, Vivek, and an Oregonian reporter.”

“The court heard that Sheela had instigated The Dalles salmonella poisonings. A team of sannyasins had been sent out with orders to smear salmonella from rubber gloves onto the salad bars of eight different restaurants. The court heard how the poisonings and murder plots were looked on lightly by some of the conspirators; after all, death was just another part of the journey.”

“Bhagwan and the others were eventually arrested for fraud, but most of his followers were too zonked to care.”