Arrival in India

Arrival in India 

We landed in India at the  Calcutta airport.  It was a very indecorous   entry into India , certainly would not have been allowed in post 2001 air travel.   I was dropped off on the tarmac with my bags   and my friends flew off on to their own destinations.   As I stepped out of the plane, a new level of olfactory sensation was evoked within me .  At  that time I could not identify  the content,  though as the years have gone by, I can list the ingredients that my brain identifies  as the smell of India:  I think it includes,  centuries of dust, cow manure, human feces, cumin, chillies, turmeric, coriander, and other spices  whose names I  had yet to learn, sandalwood  incense, unbelievably fragrant flowers, and a  generous mix of human spirit in the face of suffering.    India is an assault on one’s senses.  The moment I land in India  my senses became hyperactive and I feel extraordinarily alive.

 I made my way into the airport,  passed through immigrations and caught a taxi into the heart of Calcutta.  I found a cheap tourist guest house and then made my way down to the street.  This was the time of Bangladesh war, l970 and the streets of Calcutta were filled with refugees.   Raised in Boise Idaho sheltered  from any other culture than white middle class  American, I had never experienced poverty and squalor.  I was horrified when I saw how children lived, when I walked down the street children and hideously crippled beggars pulled at my clothes begging for money for food.  When the hands were held out, I put money into them, and the number of hands increased immediately, I was besieged by hungry, grasping urchins.  I felt dizzy.   All I could think of was how I had lived such a self indulgent life for years, concerned about this pair of designer shoes or buying designer scarves for hundreds of dollars. The contrast between my self indulgent  life and what I was inundated with here was so confronting, and distressing,  that I wanted to just give away all of my money and return to a place where I would be more comfortable and not have to confront my own value system in the face of such abject poverty and suffering.

Ones usual defenses are unreliable in India.  we can attempt to hide in the security of our materialism in 5 star hotels or up market restaurants, but still India’s seething life force with all its accompanying sounds, smells and images intrudes.  Intrusion is the issue, space between creatures and individuals  is precious in its scarcity.  Proximity brings comfort when there is a relationship and anxiety at its peak on the roads. India has its own energy in the ruthless interdependence, in its many languages, cultures, religious and social and class structures and religious tolerances, its unity in diversity gives choreography to its chaos.

Prior to leaving San Francisco, a woman had asked me to carry some nutritional supplements to a friend of hers in Delhi. I agreed to do so, and so after arriving in Calcutta, I thought I would go on to Delhi and deliver these items.  When I contacted the woman it turned out she was a devotee of Swami Muktananda and informed me that he was at that moment in Delhi.  I found the house and went there, Baba remembered meeting me and greeted me.  He was staying in the house of some devotees, and then travelling around the country before returning to his ashram. I decided to go on up to Hardwar and Rishikish to visit the headquarters of the swami who I had learned Hatha Yoga from, at the Sivananda Divine Life society.  I stayed there a few days, just settling into life in India. One evening some of the residents were going to visit a local saint, Ananda Mai Ma who was resident in Hardwar.  We went in to see her and she was quite curious about me as a western woman travelling on my own.  She seemed to not be in good health and was lying on a kind of cot covered in a quilt.  She asked me various questions, and then we just sat there with her quietly. I felt a profound energy envelop me, it had a distinctly female maternal quality to it.  I felt bathed in it , felt safe and loved.  It was a very moving experience.

 When I enquired with other westerners who were there and seemed to be her students they related how difficult it was to live around her as her people observed very strict caste rules and as foreigners they were seen as outcastes and not allowed to stay or eat in the ashram, but had to stay and arrange their own food outside.    

I made my way down  to Bombay and the ashram which was a train travel from Bombay.  When I arrived in the ashram I was given a guest room in the  garden.  I put my bags down, washed away the grime from the train and taxi ride  and strolled into the garden .  It was pristine, with beautiful exotic fruits and flowers that I had never seen before.  The vivid  meditational experience I had had while lying on the floor of our yoga studio in San Francisco flashed into my mind like some other dimension of consciousness. It wasn’t exactly memory – it had been completely real at the time, and here it was exactly as I had experienced it.   The  garden complete with mangoes hanging from the trees, and fragrant frangipani trees.

 How could it be that I had actually been present in this garden while lying on the floor of our yoga studio?  What  incomprehensible power could cause such an extraordinary thing to occur?  My very sense of self, and my reality itself  was being stretched  to incorporate things that had no logical explanation.   But, inexplicably  this  seemed to be more real than the previous 29 years of my life which were already fading away like a dream.

As I got my bearings I found   that  the environment  in the ashram seemed to be pervaded by a kind of energy that  was  bright and shiny.  Swami Muktananda or Baba (meaning dear father) as everyone called him remembered coming to our yoga studio in San Francisco and welcomed me to stay as long as I liked.   

Just after my arrival it was Baba’s sixty second  birthday celebrations.  And boy can the Indians celebrate!!  None of the accoutrements that we deem necessary for celebration:  champagne, beer, etc.  Think of a Bollywood extravaganza. Color, music, intoxicating  fragrances. And the Indians  turn on the food.  For these big events, devotees from Bombay loved to come and offer the food in what was called a bhandara, a feast for all to enjoy.  The Indians have a real belief in offering food, feeding people as a meritorious act.  And decorations!!  Beautiful garlands brought by people (in the Indian tradition, one never comes empty-handed to meet a holy man. Devotees came laden with  offerings of flower garlands and  fruit laden  straw baskets.   Those garlands began to  appear all around the central marble courtyard hanging from  a couple of trees below which were seats where the devotees sat awaiting their opportunity to pay respects to Baba.  In the corner was a  raised platform which lead into Baba’s quarters.  We would hear a click, and Baba would appear out the little trap door, take his seat, with a characteristic “Hung......”  and people would manifest from all corners, converging forward with their offerings of garlands, fruit, and money that was all put into the basket at Baba’s feet.   He greeted everyone with unconditional  warmth and affection.  His greeting,  “Sabka hridik swargat.” translated into  “I welcome you all with all my heart.””

And what a big heart it seemed to be!  So many people came, poor villagers,  some walking from nearby villages,  some coming in buses,  a community of devotees with all  the women wearing the same sari, and men wearing matching headdresses. Sometimes they would offer amazing chants in the temple,  each person resonating with deep pitched cymbals accentuating the rhythm along with sharp drums.    The Bombay wallah’s would arrive on Saturday evening by a bus, the ashram would fill with people, bustle and a frantic carrying of baskets of food, vegetables, sugar cane, bags of rice all taken into the kitchen.  Baba greeted each one with seeming familiarity,  asking personal  questions about their health, family.  His own family of devotees seemed to be huge, and that was most evident on weekends, but particularly on the celebration days.

 The highlight   of  Muktananda’s  birthday celebrations  was the placement of a statue of his Guru Swami Nityananda.  Nityananda was known as a naked avadhoot, one of the yogis who did not seem to care for convention, who was reputed to dwell always in a vast meditative state, rarely spoke, just grunted in recognition of people. He had lived in the village of Ganeshpuri nearby and had offered the small piece of land  to his student  Muktananda, that the original ashram had been built on.  The statue was larger than life size, cast in bronze, seated in a simple cross legged posture.  It was installed  into a newly constructed temple in the very front of the ashram, adjacent to the chanting hall where we chanted Sanskrit chants morning and evening. The temple was decorated with beautiful mandalas of colored cut glass. 

Hindu priests installed the statue with a very special ceremony called prana pratishta   which was to enliven the statue with the very life force (prana) of Bhagawan Nityananda himself.  That mysterious ritual was conducted, and the statue was then revealed so that we could see it for the first time.

I felt an indescribable thrill in my heart.....this was the very yogi I had “seen” in my mysterious experience in my yoga studio in San Francisco some months before.  The familiarity of the energy that seemed to emanate from this enlivened   statue  subjugated  any questions that threatened  to arise in my logical conscious mind.  This was someone that I knew and had been somehow touched by, yet I had never met nor even  seen a photo of  Bhagawan Nityananda  prior to coming to this ashram in Ganeshpuri.