Page 63 of The Love Position

The swami’s eyes travelled around the room. Sophia turned away before they reached her, rolling up her mat as an excuse not to look at him.

Jessica dashed to her side. ‘What’s he doing here?’ she murmured as she passed Sophia her water bottle.

‘No clue,’ she whispered back.

‘Is everyone present?’ Swami Vishnu asked Miriam.

Miriam nodded and took her seat.

‘Very well.’ He opened his arms and smiled benevolently at everyone. ‘It’s been a while since I taught a TTC. However, as I’m here, I wanted to lend a hand, starting with today’s lecture on the chakras.’

Sophia opened her manual to the right page. She’d been a student for years and a lecturer for nearly as long. She knew all the tricks to avoid interaction with the teacher, and number one was assuming the role of the most diligent pupil. Someone who wrote copious notes with their eyes firmly down.

Swami Vishnu spoke genially about energy centres, vibrations and nadis, as if he were describing the hall where they were, rather than things beyond the scope of most people’s comprehension.

Whenever Sophia glanced up, his attention seemed drawn to her, so she dipped her head back to her notebook.

This was the man who’d caused her no end of trouble with the other people on her course by changing her karma yoga. The man who thought Isaac’s feelings for her would pass like a morning mist. Maybe they would? But that didn’t give him the right to push the two of them together and make Sophia’s life even harder than it already was.

Guilt nagged at her. Swami Vishnu headed up the entire Devanandara organisation, and Isaac, along with everyone else, it seemed, worshipped him. She knew she should be similarly obsequious, but just couldn’t summon the feelings.

All her life she’d been the model student, never putting a foot wrong. When Marcus had singled her out in her first year at uni, she’d been so blinded by his light it never crossed her mind to question his behaviour.

But now she saw Marcus for who he truly was: someone who’d taken advantage of a vulnerable and virginal eighteen-year-old, then continued his pattern of predatory behaviour with other students throughout their ten-year relationship.

Swami Vishnu wasn’t a predator, but there was something about him that made Sophia uncomfortable. Maybe it was the way people fussed around him like worker bees attending to their queen. In that way, he was all too similar to Marcus. A few years ago, she would have been as adoring of Swami Vishnu as Isaac was, but now she just saw him as a man at the centre of a web, pulling on people’s strings as he saw fit.

‘Let us look now at Manipura, the solar plexus chakra, located just below the diaphragm,’ Swami Vishnu said. He gestured at Paisley in the front row. ‘Would you like to come and help me?’

Paisley sprang up faster than a Jack-in-the-box, her head nodding and her cheeks pinking at the perceived honour. Her t-shirt was still tied up underneath her breasts, showing off the entirety of her abdomen.

‘What is your given name, child?’

‘Paisley, Swami Vishnu.’

‘You may call me Guruji,’ he said with a smile. ‘Swami Vishnu sometimes feels so formal, don’t you think?’

He turned his head, spreading his smile around the group to make sure everyone knew he was making a joke. Most people were deferentially compliant, providing the requisite amount of laughter, however Sophia and Jessica stayed silent.

Swami Vishnu held out a hand. ‘Come closer, Paisley, so I can show people the correct location of Manipura.’

She did, and he placed his palm on her stomach, just above her pierced belly button.

‘This is where the fire element is. The colour is yellow and the bija mantra is “ram”. Place your hand on your body now, everyone, and close your eyes… Repeat ram, ram, ram, over in your mind, bringing your awareness to this region… By balancing this chakra, we are more confident and focused. We have more energy and freedom from disease.’

Sophia kept her eyes open. Paisley had an expression of bliss on her face, as if she was achieving enlightenment through the power of Swami Vishnu’s touch alone.

‘Very good,’ he continued. ‘Thank you, Paisley. Can I have another volunteer for Anahata, the heart chakra?’

Twenty-nine hands shot up.

‘Such sattvic students!’ he cried. ‘This is wonderful.’

He beckoned to Tyger, who’d also modified her t-shirt, so it framed her breasts and displayed acres of toned skin.

‘What is your name, child?’

‘Tyger. With a Y.’

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