I helped Gajendra unload the shipping container from one of the ashram pickup trucks that had followed us down to the airport. Gajendra told me to check it under my own name. It contained “essential supplies” for the Ravipur ashram that were unavailable in India.
“Won’t the airline people be suspicious that I’m taking so much stuff to India? What do I tell them?”
“They probably won’t ask you anything,” he said, closing the tailgate with a loud clank. “If they do, just say personal effects. You’ll tell customs the same thing when you get to Bombay.”
I began to sweat. I didn’t like the idea of lying, and doubted Baba would approve of it. “Wouldn’t it be better if you checked it in under your name?”
“Me?” Gajendra said, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “I’m already taking as much as I can, believe me.”
I felt a tingling in my limbs. I should never have agreed to this, I thought.
“Listen, kid. Everybody’s carrying an extra suitcase for Baba. We do this all the time.”
A suitcase was one thing; a shipping container was another. I couldn’t help wondering: Why me? But I was afraid to ask.
Baba’s Indian disciples—Suresh, Anjali Bhandary, and Baba’s attendant, Rashmi Varma—rode together in a private car. The rest of us had been shuttled down to JFK in a rented motor coach. By the time we reached the international terminal, Baba and the others had already checked in and were waiting in a VIP lounge.
Within the confines of the ashram, I had never felt self-conscious around Baba’s swamis. But here at the airport, I couldn’t help seeing myself through the eyes of the public. To them, the American swamis in our group, with their shaved heads and orange robes, were probably indistinguishable from members of the Hare Krishna sect. They drew more than a few disapproving stares and raised eyebrows. I was afraid we looked like members of a cult—the furthest thing from the truth! I wished that everybody could know we were followers of a true guru.
While our fellow travelers might have thought we were a bunch of weirdos, the Air India reps treated us like royalty. They were Indian and must have known who Baba was.
Flying to India with Baba felt like accompanying a superior being from an alien civilization back to his home planet. The guru and his two Indian disciples sat in first class. The only times I got to see Baba were during boarding, as I passed him in the aisle on the way to my seat, and when he made a brief appearance in the economy section to talk to Avadhoot Plotnick. I wished I could understand them, but they were speaking in an Indian language. Whatever Avadhoot was saying, he sure knew how to make the guru laugh.
Baba didn’t so much as glance in my direction the entire journey, but I didn’t mind. I knew the only reason I was on this flight was due to the fact that the guru valued me as a disciple. I was filled with gratitude because of this and vowed not to disappoint him. Yet despite feeling closer to Baba than ever, on another level I felt lonely. This was because, from what I observed, the people traveling with him laughed and joked like they had known each other for years. Nearly all of them were members of Baba’s personal staff. I was the only newcomer, and I felt like an outsider.
In the row in front of me were a couple of young men around my age. One of them was Poonish Davidson, the drummer who worked in the Birchwood Falls kitchen. Despite the fact that Poonish wasn’t Indian, he was considered one of the best tabla players in Raja Yoga, second only to Suresh. From what I had heard, Poonish came from a middle-class family in Wisconsin. His parents weren’t devotees. He had left home at the age of fifteen and had lived in Baba’s ashrams ever since. Although he wasn’t an official member of Baba’s entourage, everyone on the flight seemed to know him and accept him as one of their own.
The young man seated next to him was Stephen Ames. He was even taller and more handsome than Poonish, but his pale complexion and widow’s peak gave him the look of a youthful vampire. His parents, I was told, were wealthy devotees from Massachusetts. He and his siblings had grown up in the ashram around Baba. He was an official member of the tour, and responsible for setting up Baba’s microphones. During Baba’s talks, he always sat up front, behind a mixing board, as he was in charge of audio.
I was familiar with other people on the flight. Swami Akhandananda and Sita Perkins were coming to India, too. I had assumed Sita was a permanent staffer in Birchwood Falls, but apparently she traveled with Baba all the time. She had been in Birchwood Falls as part of an advance team. Gopi was also traveling home with the guru. She was sitting several rows ahead of me with the other darshan girls, but she may as well have been seated a million miles away. I would’ve given anything to sit next to her during the seemingly endless flights.
The food on the plane was delicious, and I looked forward to eating nothing but Indian cuisine during my long stay in Ravipur. After the meal service, the flight attendants pulled down a screen and projected an Indian movie. It was a musical with extravagant dance numbers and a cast of thousands. Although I couldn’t understand the dialogue, I could tell it was a love story. I found it amusing that whenever the leading man and his love interest were about to kiss, the scene would cut away to footage of beautiful rolling hills, or close-ups of bees pollinating flowers.
A couple of hours into the first leg of our journey, Anjali appeared from behind the curtain separating first class from economy. After speaking to Gopi for some time, she gradually made her way down the aisle toward the back of the plane, stopping a few times to chat with other members of our party, including Poonish and Stephen. Then, much to my surprise, she spoke to me: “Ahhh, Deependra, how are you?”
“Feeling very blessed to be on this flight with Baba,” I answered, too shy to look her in the eye. Something about her intimidated me, but she sure was beautiful: she had a big smile and the deepest brown eyes I’d ever seen. When she looked in my direction, I was certain that she, like the guru, could see into the deepest recesses of my soul and knew all of my deepest secrets.
“I understand your mother recently passed away,” she said, tilting her head to one side and furrowing her brow.
“Yes. She died of cancer almost two years ago.”
The plane lurched and began to shake as it entered a patch of mild turbulence. Anjali held onto the back of Poonish’s seat to steady herself. “Gajendra tells me you’re a good worker, and that you come to all the chants.” I wondered how Gajendra could know that I went to all of the chants, considering that I almost never saw him at any of them. “We need more sincere seekers like you in the ashram. We’ll be very happy to have you with us in Ravipur.” She smiled so broadly that a dimple formed in her right cheek. Then she mussed up my hair with her fingers and made her way back up the aisle toward first class.
After changing planes at Heathrow, we made another stop in Dubai. While nearly everybody else in our party visited the duty free shops, I stayed behind and silently repeated the mantra to myself, hoping to demonstrate to Baba that I was uninterested in material things—a true renunciant. When we were in the air again, Suresh made the rounds of the economy section with a box of Godiva chocolate. I accepted a piece from him as prasad from the guru himself, with my right hand cupped over my left in the traditional manner. This prompted a fit of laughter from Poonish and Stephen. I couldn’t understand what was so funny about my heartfelt display of devotion.
After yet another stop in New Delhi, and nearly twenty-four hours after taking off from New York, our plane finally touched down in Bombay. As the plane taxied toward the terminal, a torrent of rain beat against the windows. I peered out into the pitch darkness. The captain informed us that the local time was 11:55 P.M. and the outside temperature was eighty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.
I’d been unable to sleep more than an hour or two during the entire voyage. I was tired and had a massive headache. As I inched my way up the aisle toward the open door of the aircraft, my sense of smell was assaulted by a powerful, pungent odor—a nauseating mixture of exhaust fumes, woodsmoke, and putrefying garbage.
Inside the terminal building, under the flickering light of fluorescent ceiling fixtures, we followed hand-painted wooden signs to Passport Control. There we found a uniformed immigration official asleep in a glass cabin. Suresh had to rap on the window to wake him up.
As I waited my turn to be interviewed, I dreaded being asked about the container.
“Why India coming?” the officer asked, studying my passport.
“Religious studies at Shree Brahmananda Ashram in Ravipur,” I answered, remembering what Gajendra had told me to say. The officer tilted his head slightly, wobbling it from side to side. Then he stamped my passport, handed it back to me, and motioned for me to pass with a supercilious wave of his hand.
After what seemed like an endless wait in front of the luggage carousel, I spotted my duffel bag and grabbed it. Fifteen minutes later, however, there was still no sign of the shipping container.
“Deependra!” I turned to see Avadhoot glaring at me. “What the fuck are you still doing here? You need to claim the container!”
I was embarrassed and confused. I thought that was what I was trying to do. I followed Avadhoot to another section of the baggage claim area where the shipping container was waiting.
“What is inside, inside?” barked a customs agent, striking the side of the container with a bamboo stick.
I swallowed hard then answered: “Personal effects.” The agent eyed me suspiciously, and called for assistance. Two uniformed officers joined him and together they opened the container. Inside they found a large reel-to-reel tape deck, and other professional-looking sound equipment. The logo on the deck said “TEAC.” My heart shot up into my throat, and my already aching head throbbed with pain. I prayed to the guru. Please Baba, I don’t want to go to jail!
The customs agent shook his head disapprovingly. “What is this? What is this?”
I started sweating. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I didn’t want to let Baba down.
The customs agent struck the side of the container again with his stick, making me jump. “Yes, please!”
I glanced over at Avadhoot, who was talking to another agent with Poonish Davidson. They were going through the contents of Poonish’s suitcase. At least I wasn’t the only one carrying questionable items. I caught Avadhoot’s eye. He must have understood from my pained expression that something was wrong, because he rushed over to me and confronted the agent. He spoke a mixture of Hindi and English. A moment later Stephen Ames joined him. Together they spoke to the airport official in his native language. I imagined what it would be like to serve time in an Indian prison. I had heard stories about the infamous lice-infested Arthur Road jail in Bombay, where prisoners were routinely beaten and forced to eat maggots. The thought of spending even one night there filled me terror. I could hardly breathe.
At first Avadhoot and Stephen seemed to be arguing with the man. Before long, however, the agent was smiling.
“Not to worry,” Avadhoot said in a fake Indian accent. “He will be returning it to America when he goes home only.”
“And he will revert back to you,” Stephen said with a goofy smile and in the same fake accent.
I couldn’t be sure, but I had the strong impression that Avadhoot and Stephen were mocking the man by imitating the way he spoke. But if they were, the agent took no notice of it.
“Okay, no problem,” the agent said, wobbling his head from side to side. He wrote something down in my passport. The other two uniformed men put the tape deck back in the container and closed it up. My breathing slowly returned to normal. Avadhoot sent Stephen in search of a luggage cart, and then returned to Poonish, who appeared to be still in negotiations with another official.
The agent stamped my passport and handed it back to me. It was a huge relief. Once I was outside the terminal, under the shelter of an overhang, I opened my passport to the page with my Indian visa. The official had written the brand of the tape deck “TEAC,” along with its model and serial number. Underneath, the words “To be returned” were stamped.
“Are you okay, man?” Stephen asked, grinning widely and resting a hand on my shoulder.
“Fine,” I lied. Something about his wide grin made me doubt his sincerity. “I thought I was going to be carrying supplies for the ashram. What do you need that thing for anyway?”
“The TEAC? We need it to record Baba’s talks and chants.” Stephen searched my face, and smiled again. “Hey, don’t worry about it. We bring equipment like that over here all the time. It’s nothing a little baksheesh can’t take care of.”
I did worry about it. Lying had always made me feel uncomfortable, even when I had avoided telling the truth to Melanie about school. In this case, I’d just given false information to a representative of the Indian government. I wondered what the penalty would be if they found out that the reel-to-reel tape deck wasn’t really mine.
As we waited for our transportation to the ashram to arrive, it occurred to me that I had just been tested by the guru. I resolved to face bravely any punishment that befell me. I remembered Baba’s story about the disciple who selflessly sucked what he thought was lethal poison out of his guru’s knee, and decided that if I did go to jail, I would view it as a blessing. As an opportunity to demonstrate my devotion. This is right understanding, I told myself, and I knew that the inner guru was pleased.
Despite my exhaustion and throbbing head, I was still intrigued by my new surroundings. The women were dressed in colorful saris or pajama-like pantsuits. Men wore polyester camp shirts and the kind of bell-bottom trousers that had gone out of style a decade earlier back in the States. Most of the automobiles were outdated, too. With the exception of a few luxury cars, they looked as though they were from the 1950s.
An Arab sheik and two women cloaked in burqas exited the terminal. A moment later they were picked up in a large, black Mercedes-Benz. I thought of the guru. “Where’s Baba?” I asked Stephen. “How’s he getting to Ravipur?”
“Baba was picked up a while ago. We’ll see him later at the ashram.”
A few minutes later, a trio of minibuses pulled up. Several dark-skinned Indian boys jumped out, and together they worked to stow our suitcases into the baggage compartments. They strapped some of the larger items to the roofs. The boys were so skinny and tiny, they looked like children. They handled our luggage roughly, and I was glad I had nothing fragile in my duffel bag. I wondered if the TEAC would make it to the ashram in one piece.
The ashram was located north of Bombay, in the Thane district of Maharashtra state. Since it was only fifty miles away, I assumed the journey would take one or two hours maximum. I was wrong. The trip from the airport to Ravipur took four long, grueling hours, and I drifted in and out of sleep the whole way there. The farther from the city we got, the bumpier the ride.
When we reached the countryside, I noticed the trunks of the trees lining the roads had been marked with broad bands of red and white paint, just above the roots. I wondered why the trees had been defaced in such a hideous manner. Perhaps the practice helped to repel insects? Maybe the paint acted as a reflector to mark the sides of the road at night. I couldn’t imagine anyone doing such a thing in the States. It seemed like such a violation of nature.
I dozed off for what must have been an hour or two. When I awoke, the sky was beginning to lighten. Soon I was able to make out rolling hills, palm trees, and lush green fields of rice paddies dotted by black water buffalos. My head was still killing me, but I couldn’t stop staring out the window at the alien landscape. At one point, we passed a man carrying at least a dozen mattresses on his head. We could have used his help in Birchwood Falls! I laughed inwardly. A bit later, our bus was overtaken by a small minivan with only three wheels. It was driven by a bearded man in an orange turban, and was carrying what looked like a large family, crammed into it like circus performers in a clown car. The road narrowed and we passed huge stacks of bricks from which plumes of gray smoke billowed. As the sun moved higher into the sky, the sights became more vivid: flocks of sari-clad women with heavy metal jewelry hanging from their noses, carrying impossibly large burdens on their heads; naked toddlers covered in mud, darting in and out of straw huts; and an old man squatting on the side of the road taking a dump. It occurred to me that these people were just as stuck in the illusion of the world as the people back home. What was special about India? How had it given birth to the most advanced system of philosophy and produced the greatest spiritual masters in the world?
I drifted off to sleep again, and when I awoke we were on the outskirts of a village. In the distance I saw what looked like a majestic palace. The building was pale yellow, with orange flags flying from its spires. I recognized the structure from the many photos I’d seen of it in Raja Path magazine. The beauty and serenity of the place left me in a state of awe and wonder. My headache was gone.
Our convoy pulled up alongside the palace, in front of a large circular gate. A colorful sign above it read “Shree Brahmananda Ashram.”
I had at last reached the Promised Land.