By the end of September, as Maharashtra entered the post-monsoon season, the rain started to let up. Thanks to the change in my seva assignment, and skipping the evening chant, I was getting to bed earlier and waking up later, and I didn’t feel exhausted all the time.
Even though I was still lonely and homesick sometimes, I had gotten used to my simple routine in Ravipur. The only thing I missed about the Birchwood Falls ashram were the regular evening programs with Baba. Although Baba held darshan in the courtyard almost every day, he had only given a handful of talks since our arrival, and hadn’t come to a single chant. I prayed to the guru that this would soon change. I missed chanting with Baba and listening to him speak.
After the Guru Gita one morning, I questioned Akhandananda about the change.
The neckless swami chuckled. “Even a perfected master like Baba needs periods of rest. The guru’s not on tour right now. He’s home.”
“Yes, of course,” I said, scratching my head. “It’s just that—”
“—you never thought of the guru as having any needs before, did you?”
Akhandananda’s words stung. My cheeks burned and I felt pangs of guilt for having been so thoughtless. “I guess not.”
A kindly smile brightened the swami’s face and he tousled my hair with the palm of his hand. “Don’t worry, my boy. The realization that the guru has a human body with human needs is all part of maturing in your spiritual practice.”
I looked down. “I’m so ashamed of my selfishness—not thinking about what’s best for Baba.”
“Tut, tut, Deependra! Embarrassment is the purview of ego. An enlightened being knows neither pride nor shame.”
I looked up and smiled at the swami and suddenly felt lighter.
“By the way, your color is much better now. Are you feeling less tired?”
“Oh yes, Swamiji! Baba—”
“You see, my boy. It didn’t take long for you to adjust to the shakti here, now did it?”
I chose to remain silent, rather than disabuse the swami of his belief.
Baba must have heard my prayers, because later that day during darshan he asked for a microphone and gave an impromptu talk. Once again, I was astounded by Baba’s clairvoyance. Without a doubt, he knew exactly what was on my mind, and addressed what I’d been struggling with since coming to India.
“Many of you have left your friends, family, and the comforts of home for the sake of your spiritual development,” Baba said. He was looking in my direction. “But what do you do as soon as you arrive here? You search for new friends, for a husband or a wife, and sneak out of the ashram every chance you get to indulge in sense pleasures.”
I wanted to disappear into the floor. I knew Baba was talking to me. I wasn’t sneaking out like others, but I was constantly thinking of marrying Gopi.
“But if you continue in this way, you will attain nothing by studying with a guru. Your life will be a complete waste.”
I clasped my hands together in prayer. Please Baba, don’t let my life be for nothing!
“You must come to the ashram as an orphan, and become a lonely person who depends only on the guru. If you try to relieve your loneliness through idle conversation and superficial relationships, you will become distracted. To attain enlightenment, you must embrace loneliness. Only then will you know the supreme Self of all.”
It had been easy to avoid Prasad before I had to report there twice a day for my dish room shifts. Now, after only a week of seva there, the tantalizing sights and smells were becoming irresistible.
“A renunciant should avoid all pleasurable experiences, especially tasty food,” Baba had once said. “The dining hall food in Ravipur provides all the nutrition and sustenance an ashramite should need.” Knowing this was the guru’s view, I couldn’t help wondering why all the swamis and inner circle people ate at Prasad.
I also wondered why the dining hall food never felt like it was enough for me—literally. Since my arrival, I had lost a ton of weight. For the first time in my life, I was able to see my ribcage when I took off my shirt.
The food on offer at Prasad made my mouth water: for breakfast they had traditional Indian dosa crepes and idli sambar, and Western-style oatmeal, granola, yogurt, and fresh hot croissants and scones. They also had a big selection of fresh fruit, including bananas, oranges, mangoes, and papayas. But the café was not cheap—even by American standards.
One morning I finally broke down and ordered a Swiss cheese and avocado dosa, and got a papaya for dessert. I paid for my food, took my tray outside to the open-air pavilion, and looked for a place to sit down. It wasn’t easy. Unlike the dining hall, Prasad was crowded. Here ashramites sat at tables and ate off Western-style plates with forks and knives. Conversation was permitted and everyone seemed to be eating with their friends. I looked around the pavilion to see if I recognized anyone. Gopi was there, but she was with the other princesses. I couldn’t imagine fitting in with them. Poonish Davidson and Stephen Ames were eating together with some other darshan ushers I didn’t know, laughing their heads off. There was a free seat at their table, but I didn’t dare claim it. Swami Akhandananda was also there, but seemed to be in the middle of an important discussion with Gajendra Williams. I couldn’t sit with him either.
I was about to give up, when I noticed Namdev Loman seated by himself at the very back of the pavilion. I remembered that he had taken a vow of silence, but thought maybe we could exchange a few friendly glances. “Hey, Doug, have a seat!” he said, greeting me with his signature shit-eating grin. He gestured to the empty seat across from him. I glanced at his shirt. The “silence” badge was gone.
“You’re talking again?”
“I gave myself four months. My time is up.”
I sat down and started eating.
“So, how’s life treating you at the Ravipur ashram?” Namdev asked. “Is it everything you dreamed it’d be? I see they’ve got you cleaning toilets?”
I told him I felt like I’d died and gone to one of the celestial realms that Baba had written about in Divine Dance of Consciousness. I also explained I no longer went by Doug. “Baba gave me the spiritual name Deependra,” I said, hoping to impress him. “It means ‘lord of light.’”
Namdev was unimpressed. “Which dorm did they stick you in?” He spoke through a mouthful of cheese dosa. I couldn’t believe how fast he was devouring his food. I thought he might choke.
“Bhakti Shayanagrih.”
“You’re lucky,” he laughed. “I’m in Siddha Shayanagrih. It’s closer to the village. The noise sometimes keeps me up at night.”
“Noise? What noise?”
“Oh, not now,” he sneered. “But just you wait—during the month of May—if you make it here that long—there’s a fucking wedding every night.”
Namdev’s swearing made me uncomfortable. I glanced around the pavilion to see if anyone had heard him, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to us.
“The princesses have it the best here, you know,” he said, glancing in the direction of Gopi and her friends.
“How so?”
“If you’re a young and pretty girl, they put you in the Devi dorm. It’s connected to Baba’s house. He treats them like royalty. It’s not fair. They say the caste system doesn’t apply in the ashram, but that’s bullshit. You and me, my friend, are Raja Yoga Untouchables.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I was beginning to wish I had sat by myself.
“You don’t think so? Just look at where they sit at darshan and in the hall—right up front, at the guru’s feet. You and me have to sit at the back of the hall with the Indians.”
I thought about what Namdev said. I would’ve loved to sit up close to Baba and sleep in a dormitory adjacent to his private quarters. I also wondered why most of the Indian devotees were seated at the back. This seemed strange to me because, after all, we were in their country.
“The entire ashram is Baba’s house,” I said. “And we’re always close to the inner guru, no matter where we sit or sleep.”
“Oh yeah, how silly of me to forget,” he sneered. Then he shoveled the rest of his breakfast into his mouth.
As I watched my ill-mannered friend finish his food, I remembered when I had first met him back in Ithaca, and how eager he had been to go to India. But now that he lived here, he seemed as dissatisfied as ever. I wondered why he stayed.
“You’ve been here—what—a year already?” I asked. “Aren’t you happy?”
“Nine fucking months,” he said. “You’ll see—it’s not so easy to live in Ravipur. I don’t get to eat here often, you know. This is my first visit to Prasad in weeks. I can’t afford it.”
“What’s wrong with the food in the dining hall?”
Just then our conversation was interrupted.
“Namdev! Didn’t Baba tell you to stop swearing? This is an ashram, not a brothel!” I glanced over my shoulder to see Anjali Bhandary standing behind me, looking down her nose.
Namdev stared down at his empty tray and muttered something under his breath.
Anjali folded her arms and squinted. “What did you say?”
After a moment of reflection, Namdev responded so softly I could barely hear him: “Sorry.”
Anjali turned her attention to me and smiled warmly. “Ahh, Deependra! How are you?”
“Fine —great!”
“Happy in the ashram?”
“Very happy!” I chirped.
“You see, Namdev,” she said, jutting her chin out. “Some people are very happy in the ashram. You should try to develop right understanding like Deependra. He’s grateful to be here.”
Namdev angled his torso away from us and curled his shoulders over his chest. Anjali left us. Her next stop was at Gopi’s table for a friendly chat.
“I saw you cutting down a tree with a chainsaw a few days ago,” I said. “You were barefoot.”
Namdev lifted his head to look at me. A few strands of his long yellow hair were dangling in his face. “I lost my sandals. I think someone stole them.”
“Can’t you get new ones?”
“With what money? Anyway, I don’t need shoes.”
“That’s true. You never wore them in Ithaca either.”
“Yeah, anyway. Cutting shit down is only one of my sevas.” Namdev explained that Sita had sent him to work in the ashram generator plant to monitor the mains voltage, promising it’d be a temporary position. “Someone always has to be there to shut the generator down if the voltage gets too high, or the whole thing will blow up.”
“That sounds like a good seva to me,” I said. As far as I was concerned, it definitely beat cleaning toilets.
“Good seva, my ass. Have you seen that rat-infested hellhole? The walls surrounding the plant are covered with broken glass bottles. It looks like a prison.”
Annoyed at Namdev’s attitude, I set down my fork and knife. “You’re free to leave the ashram anytime you want, you know.”
“Free to leave? I just spent my last fucking rupee on this dosa. I’m on staff now, so I don’t have to pay rent anymore, but unlike some people—” he gestured toward Gopi’s table “—I get no stipend at all. At this point, I wouldn’t even have enough money to get to the airport, if and when I ever decided to use my open-ended ticket.”
“That’s rough,” I said, but I couldn’t help wondering why he hadn’t saved any money or planned better before coming all the way to India.
Namdev stood up abruptly. “Yep, I’m probably going to die in this place.” Then he marched out of Prasad, leaving his dirty dishes on the table.
*
Washing dishes in Prasad was hot, wet, sticky work, but it was a welcome change. Part of my job was to bus dishes from the dining area in the pavilion to the dish room, which was on the second floor of the café building. The Prasad in Ravipur was equipped with a dumbwaiter that made the life of everybody who worked in the dish room easier. It was used to lift tubs of dirty dishes upstairs, and to bring clean dishes back down. The only drawback to this system was that the elevator in which the tubs of dishes sat didn’t have a front or back. As a result, plates and utensils were always falling out and getting stuck between the shaft wall and the elevator. Whenever this happened, any time the machine saved was wasted trying to get it unblocked. Sometimes I thought we’d be better off just carrying the dishes up and down the stairs ourselves.
Working in the Prasad dish room gave me the opportunity to get to know some of the Indian devotees who visited regularly from Bombay, and I struck up a friendship with an adolescent boy named Ganesh Doodhwala. Small for his age by Western standards, Ganesh was a bright, happy-go-lucky twelve-year-old with dark skin, straight black hair, and curious big brown eyes.
“Babaji has given you this name, Deependra?” Ganesh asked. He was drying some plastic trays that had just come out of the industrial dishwasher.
“Yes, of course,” I answered, loading a rack of clean dishes into the dumbwaiter.
“Aacha, aacha! Very auspicious! The name means lord of light.”
“I know.” I looked down at the floor and rubbed my forearm. I didn’t want to appear too proud of the fact. I wanted to impress Ganesh with my humility.
“And do you know who is Ganesh?”
“Yes, Ganesh is the elephant headed god, the son of Shiva and Parvati.”
“Precisely, my friend! I am thinking you are knowing all of our Hindu deities too well!”
I shrugged, and then lifted another tray of clean dishes to load into the dumbwaiter. “They’re my gods too, you know.”
An enormous grin erupted on the boy’s face. “And don’t forget,” he said, bouncing on his toes. “Ganesh is also number one remover of obstacles! This is why I am experted at unblocking this machine!”
Everybody in the dish room laughed, including the boy’s father. It was true. Ganesh was quite skilled at climbing into the shaft and removing the various objects that got stuck between the dumbwaiter and the shaft wall. The dumbwaiter had built-in safety features, of course, but it always made me nervous to see little Ganesh practically disappear into the wall. I would’ve gladly gone in his place, but he was the only one small enough to fit into the shaft. During the week, when Ganesh wasn’t around, we sometimes had to wait hours before maintenance got around to fixing the blockage.
Later that day, I found a note on my bed from the manager’s office saying that they were holding mail for me. When I went to pick it up, Indira St. John told me that Gajendra was irritated that I didn’t stop by the office more often to check. “It’s a waste of Baba’s time when we have to go to the trouble of writing you a note and bringing it all the way to your dorm room,” she said, blinking rapidly and holding a notebook up in front of her chest.
I hadn’t gotten any mail before, so it was my first offense. I nevertheless apologized for being thoughtless. Back to my room, I saw I had a letter from Melanie, a postcard from Jeremy, and an invitation to my cousin Scott’s wedding. How sweet, I thought, tearing up the invitation. Two deluded souls joining together in miserable ignorance of the ultimate nature of reality. How pathetic! I won’t dignify their invitation with a response.
Melanie wanted to know how much longer I was planning on staying in India, and if I had given any more thought to going back to school. “If you apply now,” she had written, “you might be able to attend TC3 in the spring.” TC3 was short for Tompkins Cortland Community College, a few miles northeast of Ithaca.
Her suggestion enraged me. I made a mental note to not write to her again for several months. Silence will be my answer, I thought. I would show her. Maybe then she’d finally get the message that Raja Yoga was my life.
All Jeremy had written on his postcard was the news that he’d been accepted for a residency at Long Island Jewish Hospital. He also asked how I liked the food in India. No comment about the sublime spiritual experiences I’d described to him in my letter, and not a word about how much he missed Baba. He obviously lacked devotion to the guru. Worse, he was uninterested in me. It was then I decided my family was dead to me. Even my brother and his wife.
That night I dreamed I was kissing Gopi, touching her beneath her clothing and underwear, while she moaned with pleasure. I woke up highly aroused, but deeply ashamed. I was angry with myself for having made so little progress in purifying my subconscious mind. I laid awake in bed for a long time, tossing and turning, burning with lust, my erection not going away. Unable to sleep, I went to the bathroom and dumped a bucket of ice-cold water over my head. It did nothing to make me less horny. I went back to my room and checked my watch. It was almost midnight. With no hope of falling asleep again without “relieving” myself, I decided to go for a walk.
With nowhere else to go at this hour, I headed for the courtyard. As I drew nearer, I heard an unfamiliar chant. I entered the square and saw no one in the hall. At first I couldn’t figure out where the singing was coming from. Listening more carefully, I realized the guru himself was leading it. Looking up at the building that housed Baba’s private quarters and the “princess dormitory,” I noticed a light on. The chant was taking place in Baba’s house. Why in the middle of the night? I wondered. And why in private?
Taking a seat on one of the planters, I listened for a while. Baba sounded ecstatic. I wondered who was lucky enough to be invited to this secret rite. I listened more carefully. The voices accompanying him were mostly feminine. Then it hit me: Baba was chanting with the darshan girls! Anger flared up inside of me. Why do those spoiled brats get so much attention from Baba? It’s not fair!
As bitterness spread through my body, I tried to take control of my mind, as I had learned to do in meditation. I replaced negative thoughts with ones that reflected right understanding: The guru has divinely inspired reasons for everything he does, even if I’m unable to understand them with my unenlightened mind. I should be grateful to be in his ashram at all. Things could be worse: I could be trapped in a mundane existence and a slave to my career, like Jeremy. Negative emotions like jealousy are my worst enemy.
The chanting went on for another quarter of an hour. When it was over I could hear the distinctive sound of Baba’s voice intermixed with bits and pieces of Anjali’s translation, and feminine laughter. This was followed by silence, and then the light went off in the room where they’d been chanting. A few seconds later, the door next to Baba’s throne swung open, startling me. Avadhoot Plotnick stepped out with a tall, lean Mediterranean-looking man I’d never seen before. Avadhoot was dressed in his usual Ravipur ashram attire—kurta, lungi, and cowboy hat. But the other man looked like he was dressed for a night out on the town. He wore a chic white linen shirt and an elegant pair of gray linen slacks that fit him perfectly. His hair was dark and wavy, and his face was long and angular. Although the courtyard was dimly lit, he noticed me immediately and appeared to be scowling. Then he said something to Avadhoot while gesturing in my direction. He spoke too softly for me to hear, but if I had to guess it would be something along the lines of: “What is that piece of shit doing here?”
Now both men were glaring at me.
“Tell him,” I heard the well-dressed man say to Avadhoot. Then, with an air of confidence and authority, the man crossed the courtyard and disappeared into the entrance of the VIP dormitory.
“What are you doing here at this hour?” Avadhoot demanded. “Why aren’t you in bed?”
“I couldn’t sleep.” Have I done something wrong?
“Lights out is at ten,” he barked, towering over me. “No exceptions!”
With my head hung low, I apologized to Avadhoot for breaking the rules, and then went back to my room. My roommate Claus was sleeping soundly, snoring his head off. I was still upset. I didn’t see what the big deal was. Despite the reprimand from Avadhoot, and the awful feeling that I had somehow angered the guru, I was still intrigued to have overheard the secret ritual in Baba’s quarters. I prayed that one day I could be part of it.