Housekeeping was located in a small, stand-alone building located between the courtyard and Prasad. Rohini Brinkerhoff, the supervisor, was an older German woman with pale blue eyes, a full jaw, and closely-cropped silver hair. She was from Düsseldorf and spoke with a thick German accent which took me a few days to get used to.
Rohini took a step back and looked me over from head to toe, as though she weren’t sure if I were real or just a figment of her imagination. “Mein koodness! Only eighteen years old und you haffe already found zee guru! I did not meet Baba until I vas fifty!”
Rohini assigned me the task of scrubbing the men’s public restrooms, and showed me where to find the cleaning supplies.
“Do you have any rubber gloves?” I asked.
The German shook her head and laughed good-naturedly. “Welcome to India!”
In India, only Untouchables cleaned toilets, but the rules of the Hindu caste system didn’t apply to foreigners. Therefore, there was no reason why Western ashramites couldn’t do the job. I was horrified. Not only was I humiliated to have such a “lowly” seva, it was also the most disgusting.
How could I have sunk so low? I asked myself. What is Baba trying to teach me?
A young, pleasantly plump French woman was responsible for the women’s restrooms. She had cleaned some of the ashram’s VIP quarters, and told me that most of them were equipped with Western-style bathrooms. All the other restrooms in the ashram only had squat toilets. Scrubbing lavatories back in the States would have been bad enough, but here in India the job was much worse due to the fact that nobody seemed very particular about where they did their business. Making a direct deposit in the hole in the floor, it seemed, was purely optional. As a result, urine and excrement were everywhere. The only thing worse than this god-awful sight was the stench: a spicy, pungent fecal odor unlike anything I’d ever encountered back home. My job was to make the men’s rooms sparkle and smell clean and fresh.
Getting down on my hands and knees, I used a brush and a strong smelling disinfectant to wash the tiled floor. Before I even finished cleaning the first stall, I became nauseated and threw up.
Back in my room after an exhausting second day in the ashram, I set my alarm for two A.M. I needed to give myself enough time to bathe and meditate before reporting for courtyard-cleaning duty.
Sita Perkins had promised that my supervisor was a “sweetheart” and she was right. Vinod Desai was a disturbingly thin, dark-skinned Indian man with huge, bulging eyes. Despite my tremendous difficulty understanding him, I liked Vinod immediately. He was kinder than most of the Western seva supervisors. He didn’t talk down to me like I was beneath him. If anything, he looked up to me because I was American. Sometimes, however, he was too nice, and made me feel awkward. On the morning we first met, I didn’t know what to make of his odd behavior.
“You’re coming from America proper?” he asked, taking my hand in his.
“Uh, yes, I guess.” I eyed him uneasily. “I’m from the state of New York.”
The Indian wiggled his head from side to side, and smiled approvingly. “New York is too big city!” he said. His eyes stuck so far out of his head I thought they might pop.
Vinod stroked my hand affectionately. Is this guy coming on to me? I wanted to pull away, but didn’t dare. Maybe this is how men speak to each other in this country.
“New York City has many tall buildings,” I said. I was unable to think of anything more interesting to say.
“Bombay same, same,” he said with a frown and a dismissive wave of his hand.
“I beg your pardon?” I thought I might have offended him.
Vinod released my hand, and then looked down his nose at me. “Same, same.”
While I squeegeed the fallen mango leaves and debris from the courtyard, Vinod cleaned and tidied the area around Baba’s throne. Then he polished the pair of silver sandals that sat on a small table in front of it.
“What are those for?” I asked, pointing to the sandals.
Vinod creased his forehead and frowned. “Too many peoples Baba’s feet touching,” His eyes bulged out of his head again.
Clueless as to what he was talking about, I shrugged.
Vinod wiggled his head and flashed a toothy grin at me in response. Later, I saw what the sandals were for. In India, when approaching a holy man for his blessing, it was customary to touch his feet. During darshan, the silver sandals—called padukas—were put out in front of the guru’s throne and served as a surrogate for his feet. They spared Baba the indignity of having his physical body touched a thousand times a day, but conferred the same blessing.
Despite Vinod’s strangeness and the sleep I was missing, I was grateful to the guru for what my seva in the courtyard taught me about detachment and letting go. As soon as I finished clearing all the mud and leaves, the ashramites would track in new dirt and more leaves would fall. I got satisfaction out of getting the marble squeaky clean before the first meditators arrived, and then again an hour later before the recitation of the Guru Gita. For me, the Sisyphean task was a form of worship.
Later that day I took an auto rickshaw to village so I could pick up my order at the tailor’s. The tailor greeted me with a warm smile and a cup of chai, but no clothes.
“My shirts and trousers?” I asked after a while. “Where are they?”
The tailor grinned broadly and wiggled his head. “Tomorrow only.”
I was fuming, but hesitated to show it. I was in desperate need of cooler clothes.
“Tomorrow only?” I repeated.
“Yes, yes.”
I went back to the tailor every day for three days in a row. On each occasion I was promised I could pick up my order “tomorrow only.” But when I returned the next day, nothing was ready.
When I complained about the situation to Rohini Brinkerhoff, she explained that the communication problem was cultural: “Indians have a more flexible concept of truth than we do in the west.” In other words, what she meant was that when the tailor said my clothes would be ready “tomorrow,” he really meant at some unspecified point in the future. It was then I realized I had a lot to learn about India.
Finally, a week after they were originally promised, my clothes were waiting for me. Eager to try them on, I hurried back to the ashram. But I cringed when I tried them on and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like a clown. The kurtas were not a complete disaster, but the trousers were ridiculously baggy. Instead of getting depressed about it, I reminded myself that I hadn’t come all the way to India to win any fashion contests. I thought of Mahatma Gandhi in his simple homespun cotton. I convinced myself that dressing this way would be a profound act of renunciation.
The high point of every day at the Ravipur ashram was darshan in the courtyard with Baba. In Birchwood Falls, darshan almost always followed the evening program, and involved long lines. In Ravipur, darshan was less formal. There was never a long wait, except on weekends when hordes of visitors flocked to the ashram from Bombay. Baba might appear at any time of day, sitting for hours on his velvet throne under the shade of a mango tree, greeting devotees in the stifling heat. Whenever I had a free moment, I’d sit and gaze upon his divine form.
In India, darshan was a time when Baba took care of ashram business. Sometimes he’d receive special visitors, or converse with his swamis and close disciples. Other times, he’d sit for hours in a silent state of blissful absorption, without saying a word to anyone. He radiated a love and serenity so profound, it permeated the courtyard and spread throughout the entire ashram. Whenever I sat in his presence, I’d spontaneously enter into a state of meditation, identifying with my innermost Self.
When Baba went outdoors in India, he almost always wore dark sunglasses. This made it hard to tell exactly where he was looking, and I often had the impression that he was staring directly at me. At moments like these, I could feel him reading my thoughts, looking deeply into my soul. This experience was unnerving at times, but it was also comforting to know that the guru knew everything about me—even my deepest secrets. Thanks to these abilities, Baba was able to diagnose exactly what was holding his disciples back from attaining enlightenment, and prescribe the perfect remedy.
I felt good about my seva cleaning the courtyard, but my Housekeeping work would take me longer to get used to. For weeks I struggled with my aversion to cleaning up shit. To make matters worse, because of the constant rain during the last days of monsoon and the exposure to God-knows-what in the men’s toilets, I developed a nasty fungal infection between my toes. Believing it would disappear on its own, I neglected the problem for as long as possible. Eventually Rohini noticed my feet and convinced me to visit the ashram infirmary for treatment.
The ashram doctor was a Western swami by the name of Nirmalananda. He was a tall, spindly man with cold, joyless eyes and pale lips.
When I showed Nirmalananda my feet he blamed me for the condition, and admonished me for letting it get so bad. “You need to keep your feet clean and dry at all times,” he said. But he never offered any suggestions on how to do this. Virtually everyone in the ashram wore the same Birkenstock sandals as I did. I wondered why more ashramites weren’t afflicted.
The swami doctor gave me an antifungal ointment and a red substance called “mercurochrome” to apply between my toes. This had the effect of making my feet look as though they were constantly oozing blood—a shocking sight to some of the Western newcomers, who gasped when they saw my feet for the first time.
In order for me to have enough time to bathe, meditate for at least an hour, and arrive on time for my courtyard-cleaning shift, I needed to wake up every morning at two, even earlier than I originally thought. This would not have been a problem if I had been going to sleep at night by six or seven, but this wasn’t the case. Determined to attend all the meditation sessions, chants, and rituals, I never got to bed until after the Shiva Mahimna Stotram—the last chant of the evening—which ended at nine. At most, I got only four or five hours of sleep at night.
I felt exhausted all the time, and would nod off in the middle of the chants and seva like a narcoleptic. Despite my renewed positive attitude about seva, I was angry with myself for needing so much rest. I had read that some yogis never slept—the profound states of meditation they had attained provided more than enough repose for their thought-free minds. According to Baba, this allowed them to dedicate every second of their lives to seva. Why should I be any different? I asked myself. It never occurred to me that it might take me a few more years of sadhana before I too could serve the guru twenty-four seven.
Remembering that Swami Akhandananda had once practiced medicine, I spoke to him about my problem.
“The fatigue is nothing to be concerned about, my boy,” said Akhandananda. “Once you’ve adjusted to the incredibly high levels of shakti in Ravipur, you’ll be full of energy all the time.”
The difficulty of my seva hours, the strangeness of my new surroundings, the problems with my feet, and the constant exhaustion were beginning to get me down. In moments of desperation, I even had thoughts about leaving the ashram and going home to Ithaca. I didn’t dare tell anyone about these feelings, however. I knew I just had to work through them. I did my best to keep in mind that whatever happened to me in the ashram was the will of the guru. Baba’s shakti was working to purge me of both attachment and aversion. I had to let go of wanting a particular kind of seva and accept my new situation.
I was experiencing the first of what I had heard other devotees refer to as a “mental kriya.” Through these kriyas the guru’s grace would eventually cleanse me of all my petty hang-ups and help free me from the shackles of ego. Everything is equally a manifestation of divine consciousness, I reminded myself. From Gopi’s mesmerizing emerald and sapphire eyes to the foul smelling shit on the floor of the public restrooms. The more I strove to cultivate an attitude of gratitude, rather than one of self-pity, the cleaner I felt on the inside. Who knew how many lifetimes of evil karma I was washing away through this process?
Before long, my feelings of wanting to leave the ashram and return to what I now idealized as my carefree existence in Ithaca began to subside. They were soon replaced by an even greater spiritual zeal and a commitment to the practice of surrendering to the guru’s will. This, combined with all the meditation and chanting I was doing, gave rise to feelings of euphoria. This is it! I told myself as it was happening. I’m swimming in an ocean of bliss just as Baba promised! I actually believed I was on the cusp of enlightenment.
But the ecstasy didn’t last, and before long I was coming down from my mania-induced high.
Around this time, Baba gave his first public talk since my arrival in India. It was held in the open-air hall that opened onto the courtyard, where we chanted the Guru Gita. The theme was “delusion”—how easy it was to deceive oneself into thinking that one had already attained God-realization after a “minor mystical experience.” As he spoke, the guru seemed to be looking directly at me, and I convinced myself that I was the intended recipient of his message.
“As long as there is a you attaining something,” Baba said, “it is delusion you are experiencing, not realization. The ego is extremely subtle in its efforts to outsmart us and keep us from becoming truly free, like the guru.”
I reflected on Baba’s words: If there is no I attaining enlightenment, then who attains the goal? If the ego just disappears, how is that different from death and eternal oblivion? I struggled with these questions until I drifted off to sleep that night. In the morning, as I cleaned the courtyard, I reminded myself that this question could not be answered by the conceptual mind. I had faith, however, that through a combination of my effort and grace from the guru, the ultimate nature of reality would be eventually revealed to me.
Despite my constant fatigue, I felt good about my spiritual practice and believed that I had arrived at right understanding regarding my seva. I no longer wished I had a “more important” job in the ashram that would bring me into closer daily contact with Baba. I began to relate more and more to my inner guru. I let go of the idea that it was necessary to have a personal relationship with the guru in order to make progress.
On the other hand, it wasn’t always so easy to maintain a positive attitude. I sometimes got discouraged when I saw some of the guru’s closest people not living up to what I imagined were Baba’s standards of the “perfect disciple.” Avadhoot Plotnick was a good example of this. His main seva at the moment was not at the guru’s side or taking pictures, but taking care of Baba’s elephant. In his white kurta, lungi, and cowboy hat, Avadhoot looked like even more of a freak than he had back in Birchwood Falls. On my way to clean the public restrooms on the far side of the ashram grounds, I’d often see him in the fenced-in area next to the elephant house, beating Baba’s beloved pet with a stick and swearing at it like a sailor.
Once I saw him arguing with one of Baba’s Indian swamis about his treatment of the animal.
“Mr. Avadhoot, you are not to be striking Baba’s elephant in this manner.”
The New Yorker’s eyes bulged and his mouth fell open in indignation. “He started it! He keeps swatting me with his tail!”
“You must be patient and treat Raju with loving kindness,” the swami admonished, wagging a finger in Avadhoot’s face. “This is what Baba is teaching.”
If Baba had ever taught about “loving kindness,” it must have been before I arrived in the ashram, because I hadn’t heard him mention it. In any case, Avadhoot didn’t strike me as a particularly nice or caring person. As I cleaned the men’s room behind the mandap pavilion, I thought about what I had witnessed at the elephant house: Perhaps Baba has given Avadhoot this seva to teach him something about patience in the same way Baba gave me the seva of cleaning toilets to learn how to surrender.
Although I was striving to lead the life of a chaste renunciant—practicing for the day when I would become one of Baba’s swamis—I was never able to stop thinking about Gopi. She wasn’t the only female distraction, of course. There were a lot of other pretty young “princesses” around Baba. Dressed in the finest silk saris, adorned with elegant gold jewelry and pearls, they were always at the guru’s feet during darshan, and up front at all of his public talks.
Yet as beautiful and alluring as these other princesses were, the only one I was incapable of getting completely out of my mind was Gopi. If I let my guard down for a second, my head filled with romantic fantasies and impure thoughts about her. Despite all my hard work to rid myself of desire, I was still its slave.
Sometimes during darshan, Gopi would notice me in line and our eyes would meet. Whenever this happened, she would usually look away, but every once in a while she’d flash me an enormous smile. When she did, my mind would fly away to fantasyland: Maybe instead of becoming a swami, Baba will command me to marry the angel. She and I will complete our sadhana together, as one. Our marriage will not be based on selfish motives, like ordinary relationships. Ours will be an ideal love. We will only have sex for the selfless purpose of bringing more highly evolved beings into the world to do Baba’s work.
Other times her behavior confused me. We passed each other in the courtyard or somewhere else in the ashram, and she completely ignored me. When this happened I fell into a funk. I chastised myself for allowing my mind to be led astray by desire.
Nonetheless, I believed I was leading the life of a true disciple: I had thrown myself wholeheartedly into the ashram routine, overcome my aversion to cleaning toilets, kept mostly to myself, and given up the hope of ever being close to the guru. Spiritually, I was on the right track. Yet I often found myself wondering: If I’m such a good disciple, why am I so lonely and nostalgic about my miserable old life back in Ithaca? I missed Mike and my other friends. I even thought fondly of Melanie and Lucy sometimes. And, although I had found the perfect parent in Baba, I still missed my mother.
I wished I could call home to check in with my family, but the ashram had no phone—only a telex machine that was for Mission business only. To make an international call, I’d have to go to the post office in Bombay and wait for hours for an available line.
“Ach! No one makes telephone calls in India,” explained Rohini Brinkerhoff. “Much too expensive! We send aerogrammes instead.” Aerogrammes were the cheapest way to send a letter. Rohini said I could buy them at the post office in the village. I wrote and told Melanie about my life at the ashram, how hard I worked, and how little sleep I needed. I also sent an aerogramme to Jeremy, describing my daily routine and the amazing mystical experiences I had been having in Baba’s presence.
But writing home did little to help me overcome my loneliness. It might have even made it worse. What I needed was a friend. To fill that need, the first person that came to mind was Namdev Loman. He was around my age and we were both from Ithaca. On my way to and from seva, I’d often see him working in the field behind the mandap pavilion, barefoot and covered with sweat and sawdust, and operating a chainsaw. When I saw him taking risks like this, I thought he might be insane. No, I couldn’t be friends with such a freak.
Of all the men around my age in the ashram, I liked and admired Suresh Bhandary the most. He was the friendliest member of Baba’s inner circle and one of the only Indians. But despite my high opinion of him, I didn’t always approve of his behavior. Often during my three A.M. cleaning shifts in the courtyard, I’d see him stroll in through the ashram gates with one or two other young Indian men. At first, I thought that they had just gotten out of bed and were on their way to the cave for meditation. But from the way they were laughing and joking, I soon realized that they were just returning from somewhere outside the ashram, and had probably been out partying all night.
One morning, I couldn’t hide my disappointment when Suresh and his pals sauntered into the courtyard, clearly drunk off their asses.
“Hey, Deependra!” Suresh called too loudly. “Good morning!”
He stopped to chat with me. His friends continued on their way, leaving us alone together. “Is this your regular shift?” he asked. He was slurring his words.
I nodded.
“I see you every night at the Shiva Mahimna. When do you sleep?”
“Well, right afterwards,” I said proudly.
Suresh grimaced in disbelief, and then took the stairs up to his room in the VIP dormitory. On his way out, he took special care not step where I had already squeegeed.
I was confused. Suresh had seemed to imply I wasn’t getting enough sleep. For the rest of the morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about his question: “When do you sleep?” Could my constant fatigue and drowsiness simply be the result of sleep deprivation? To my naive, eighteen-year-old self, this was hard to believe, but I decided I couldn’t rule it out. As soon as possible, I’d work up the courage to ask Baba about it directly.
Later that day at darshan, I got in line to greet Baba, but when it was my turn to bow down to him, I lost the nerve to say anything. When I stood up, Suresh was speaking to Baba in Hindi, and I had the impression they were talking about me. Baba looked at me and frowned. Suresh nodded his head encouragingly, and gestured toward the guru with a flick of his chin.
“Babaji,” I began timidly. “I’m tired all the time, but I don’t know why.”
Baba turned to Suresh and the two again spoke together in Hindi. By the way Suresh kept looking in my direction, I was now certain they were talking about me.
Suresh translated the guru’s words: “How many hours of sleep are you getting at night?”
“About four, Baba.”
The guru’s eyes blazed and his face tightened in anger. He turned to Anjali and spoke to her for a while.
“Sit, Deependra,” Anjali said, motioning for me to take a seat next to Suresh. Then she turned to Gopi. “Go fetch Sita. She’s in the seva office.”
This was the first time I’d ever sat so close to the guru. I kept my back as straight as possible and tried to clear my mind of mundane thoughts. As we waited for Gopi to return with Sita, I watched Baba greet dozens of devotees and curiosity seekers who had come for his blessing. The strange circular motions of his hands and the way he kept pointing with his index finger in seemingly random directions fascinated me.
A few minutes later, Gopi returned with a sweaty and out-of-breath Sita Perkins. Even before she had a chance to bow down, Baba began to scold her.
“Why do you give this boy so much work that he has no time to sleep?” Baba asked through Anjali. The guru’s nostrils flared and his eyes glared down at the seva coordinator, who was now kneeling and trembling.
“I don’t know, Babaji,” Sita croaked, her eyes welling with tears.
“I don’t know!” Baba bellowed, speaking in English now. Turning to Anjali, he said something else in Hindi, which she then translated: “This boy is up every morning at two o’clock so that he can meditate and be at his seva to clean the courtyard on time. Give him a different job to do.”
Just then Suresh, who was sitting next to me, tapped me on the knee. I turned to look at him and he winked, and then smiled mischievously.
I was grateful to Suresh for his concern, but couldn’t help wondering why Baba, who was omniscient, hadn’t known something was wrong and said something to me about it weeks ago. The ways of the guru are mysterious indeed, I reminded myself.
Later that afternoon, as I rested in bed, staring at the ceiling with the overhead fan on full blast, Sita appeared at the screen door to my dorm room. “Deependra? Are you decent?”
I sat up. “Yes, come in.”
Hours after Baba had scolded her, she was still shaking. “I’ve given your courtyard cleaning seva to somebody else. You’ll be washing dishes in Prasad after breakfast and dinner instead.”
When I pointed out to Sita that working the evening dish room shift would make it impossible for me to get to the Shiva Mahimna on time, her temper returned.
“Don’t be ridiculous! Nobody goes to all the chants!”