by Sachin Garg
‘Your puffy eye bags and the unleashed beard that grows fertile as a result of pain, would scare the living hell out of any onlooker,’ Saloni continued, ‘Your unwashed denims don’t look cool anymore and they are begging a hem around your ankles.’
I was silent. I looked into her still, no-nonsense eyes and that was the epiphany.
Realizations come to you when you are least expecting them. It can hit you while walking on the road, when you are slapped by a close friend, or when you are listening to Led Zeppelin. This realization was worse than getting an existential crisis during the act of sex, where you suddenly feel the futility of those mechanical and repetitive movements.
I had hit my low today.
And it did explain a lot of things. It explained why absolutely everyone looked at me with ‘pity’. I was stunned. Saloni had spread the cards on the table, and my escapism refused to come to my rescue this time.
And I had no answers. I had hypnotized myself into believing that I was okay. And suddenly, Saloni lifted the veil. But this was the moment of realization that I desperately needed.
‘What should I do Saloni? What do you think I should do?’
‘Before that, we need to talk.’
‘I am listening,’ I said.
‘Tell me Samar, which is the lowest point of this whole affair that you can remember?’
I thought about it. And honestly, only one moment came to my mind. I didn’t know why it was the lowest because it did not induce sadness. It was plain negative and disturbing.
I was standing on the terrace of my college building, where Kanika and I had spent infinite hours, I felt an intense urge to speak to her to call her, drop an sms or at least leave a goofy wall post on her Facebook wall. The sheer impossibility of any of these settled in me. Accepting that she wouldn’t ever come from behind and surprise me, living with the added guilt that I was responsible for it to some extent: Christ, it was the most unsettling thought ever. I stared at the crowd going about their own business nonchalantly. I would be faking my headstrongness if I say that it wasn’t tempted to take a step forward and end it all there and then.
Saloni’s eyes widened with unmistakable bewilderment. It was only when I looked into her eyes that I realized the intensity of what I had said. A suicidal thought is no small deal.
‘Suicidal thoughts come to many of us in the heat of the moment. But the fact that you were contemplating it while you were in your senses is alarming. Your heart and mind are not at rest Samar. You need to breathe. You need to relax. You need to make peace with yourself.’
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘I mean you need to attain . . . inner peace. You need to be calmer, more shant! That is what you need, which I don’t think you can get here. You need to get out of here.’
‘Hmm,’ I said, introspecting.
‘Can you take care of your Industrial Training if you’re not in Delhi?’ she asked.
‘Yes, that won’t be a problem. Half the batch fakes papers for the Internship.’
‘Where is Roy interning?’
‘Tanroxy in Manesar.’
‘And how long is your internship supposed to be?’
‘Two months. Starts on 1st of June and ends on 31st July.’
Saloni processed the information. Thought for a few seconds, looked up to relax her neck and then said, ‘What if you extend your vacation by a month and don’t come back to college?’
‘The placements are scheduled in the beginning of our fourth year . . . I have to be back on 1st August.’
Saloni smiled just a little, and said, ‘So you want to attain peace but you have to do it quickly. You are running against time too.’
‘Yeah. I don’t have all day,’ I smiled.
‘I will arrange something for you. I think I know where you need to go.’
I looked at her blankly. I had no idea that the biggest adventure of my life was about to begin.
Saloni gave me a bus ticket from Kashmere Gate ISBT. The bus was dated for the same evening. And she gave me some more papers about the place she wanted me to spend the summer in. I looked at her and she seemed very sure of what she was recommending. It was the thirty first of May.
I let her make the decision on my behalf, because I trusted her and because I felt half as efficient of taking charge of my life at that point. The plan might work out or it might fall flat. There was only one way to find out, by making the journey she was asking me to make. I didn’t like the idea of sitting at home for two months anyway, so I had nothing to lose.
I reached ISBT, got greeted by the empty bus. The conductor’s frown suggested that he had taken an immediate dislike of me. He checked my ticket and got busy with other passengers filing inside the bus. I cancelled the noise by plugging in music. A cute girl took the seat beside me and gave a gleaming smile. It was strange how, much to the chagrin of Kanika, I used to notice women earlier. The ‘checking-out’ would be as innocuous and as inevitable as it gets with humans and for obvious reasons, the girlfriends get annoyed. But now, I was surprised as to how disinterested I had become when Kanika wasn’t around. I closed my eyes. There was only one person whose thoughts crossed my mind. Kanika.
I looked at her. Kanika. Her face partially hid by those bescattered tresses, she was wearing a gorgeous blue dress as we met at the South Ex that day. Her vivacious aura made her look even more irresistible.
‘Listen,’ I said in her ear.
‘Yes?’ she replied.
‘I need to kiss you right now,’ I said softly.
‘Here, in the middle of the market?’ she replied and moved her head away. ‘It’s India y’know? You don’t want to scandalize these people, I’m sure’.
I looked at her and then my eyes fell on something. A vendor was selling walking sticks nearby. I went and bought one for a hundred bucks.
‘Come,’ I said to her, as I walked into a Benetton store. I was limping now, using the walking stick. Kanika looked on, thoroughly confused as to what was I doing.
I picked a pair of jeans, kept it on my shoulder and limped my way the changing room, as Kanika stood outside. I entered the changing room and exactly thirty second after entering, I concocted a crashing sound. Now I was the guy with a broken leg who had fallen in the changing room.
‘Kanika, can you please come in,’ I shouted from inside.
Kanika gave an apologetic look to the salesman and entered the changing room, as I opened it just enough for her to enter. And the moment she entered, my lips touched hers. And we kissed till our lips turned swollen. There might have been a couple of more crashing sounds thereafter, but it didn’t matter.
I’d Be One Of Them
A full, loud laugh woke me up. The girl who was sitting beside me was now replaced by a woman. She seemed in her late thirties, had a rather fair complexion and a conspicuous nose ring. She sat there, talking on the phone and simultaneously wiping her forehead sweat.
‘What are you saying?’ she said in heavy Punjabi accent, in a rather obnoxious way to somebody on the phone.
I changed my track; from ‘Yellow’ to ‘Highway to Hell’ and pressed the headphones a little harder to shut her out. But she was way too loud and close.
‘If I were in your place, I would have pulled his shorts down and spanked him so hard that he would have gotten piles,’ she shouted into the phone and once again, laughed even louder than the last time.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I pulled my earphones out and confronted her.
‘Excuse me ma’am, can you please speak a little softly?’
She shrugged her shoulders, apologized offhandedly and went back to her phone. But I could sense that her volume was increasing back again and a few minutes later, she was back to her screeching high tone. I couldn’t stand her annoying laughter and her incredibly loud volume. I needed to scoot my ass from there. I put the headphones in my pocket and asked her to let me go out.
‘What for?’ she asked me.
&n
bsp; I was furious now. Who was she to ask me, what for!
‘I am not answering that. Will you please let me go out,’ I said, a little indignantly. She was wearing a white kurta with a long ugly blue skirt. If she were a close friend of mine, I would have pulled her leg calling it a petticoat. For a middle aged lady, she didn’t fit any stereotype of her age. And I definitely didn’t like her smell. I don’t know what it was. Probably a cheap hair oil, coupled with her intermittent and irritating coughing.
‘But where do you want to go? It’s a bus, it doesn’t even have a washroom,’ she said.
I was fuming now.
‘I need a seat change, and I need it now!’ I said, firmly.
‘Aww. I am sorry. I think I’ve been disturbing you,’ the lady suddenly became softer, but not less annoying. ‘Don’t bother the conductor with the seat change. I will keep my phone off now, ok?’
I looked at the conductor and I wasn’t very hopeful of getting another seat in this full bus anyway.
‘Please let me catch some sleep,’ I said to the woman.
‘See, I’ve turned my phone off,’ she put her phone in front of my face. She was seriously obnoxious.
I kept my handkerchief on my nose, to block the oil smell and tried to bring my angry heartbeat to normal.
Around half an hour later, she was talking to the guy sitting on the opposite side of her.
‘This bus stops at ten in the night at Dushyant dhaba. They have the best bread pakoda you can get in the whole of Uttarakhand,’ she said, rather loudly.
I knew there was no point asking her to shut up and decided to suffer through the night. When the bus stopped for dinner, I made sure I sat on the farthest table from her, as she devoured those oily bread pakode.
As soon as I was done with dinner, I went to the conductor and slipped a hundred rupee note into his palm and traded seats with him. His uncomfortable conductor seat was definitely much more blissful than my original seat.
‘We are in Rishikesh,’ I heard the voice, as the conductor shook me to wake me up. ‘We will stop for half an hour for breakfast here.’
I got off the bus and the same woman was sitting on a chair in front of me. I took a seat and ordered some tea and bread. I had gotten used to eating alone. In fact, I wouldn’t know what to say if someone was to join me for breakfast.
We reached our destination at ten in the morning. I looked at the print out in my hand, which had the address of my destination. There was more greenery that my eyes beheld in that one look than I would find in a year in a city. People seemed rather aimless, probably because most of them were on holiday. Some kids were giggling, adding onto the happy environment. Standing there, staring at the woods over the cliffs, I expressed gratitude to Saloni in my head.
I took a rickshaw and headed to the place which was to reform my soul.
The quaint pink look of The Ashram was heavenly. The Ganges flowed right next to it. The wind ruffled my hair and at that very moment, standing there, I knew this was going to be a good summer. I had no idea what people did in this place but Saloni told me that they would give me a place to stay and food.
The Ashram that I was sent to is a not very famous one. Saloni had heard about it from her grandmother and she thought it was a good place for me. In the time that I spent there, I understood their preference to anonymity; popularity attracts the wrong kind of people and wrong kind of headaches. They are happy with what they get and want to keep it that way.
I entered the gate and looked around. There was a white small temple on my right. Right beside the temple, there was an open area, the lawns, followed by the halls of learning. This accommodation block and the small admin block flanked the academic block. On the backside of these buildings was an unimposing mess.
When I went inside the main building, the receptionist had been expecting me. He made me fill some forms and gave me an oral manual on the protocols observed in The Ashram.
‘Because you are new here, you will be provided with a mentor,’ the receptionist told me. ‘The mentor will be someone who is well versed with the ways of this place and hence he/she will help you adjust quickly.’
I nodded in affirmation. The receptionist had the feel of a monk. He was calm and serene. He gave me my room keys, bed sheet and a blanket.
‘Your mentor will come to your room in an hour. Freshen up by then,’ he said and flashed another welcome smile. I started feeling at home already.
The room, as I’d expected, had an ascetic aura to it: A simple bed, an ostensibly hard mattress, with no superfluous furniture and a small bathroom on one side. I opened the small wooden cupboard and found a yoga-mat rolled in a corner. I unpacked my stuff and went for a shower.
I let my thoughts run in the shower. It was respite to feel that constant buzz dying down a little in my head. I liked the new environment and the fresh air. And in these thoughts, I lost track of time. And only around an hour later I realized I was late to see my mentor. I wrapped my towel around myself and came out.
What I saw was the biggest shock in recent times. The annoying lady from the bus was sitting on my bed. She was now wearing a slightly ill-fitted white salwar kameez and was reading a book.
‘Excuse me?’ I said.
‘Oh, hi Samar,’ she said, getting up and extending an arm to shake my hand, as if she had noticed neither my half naked, half wet body, nor the fact that I had treated her badly in the bus. Although she was trying extremely hard to look neutral, that disapproving look did betray her. She said she’d wait outside. With knitted eyebrows, she was mumbling something under her breadth as she turned back to make her way towards the door; doesn’t take rocket science to figure out the essence of her fudged words.
‘Are you my mentor?’ I shouted as I looked for my kurta.
‘Seems like!’ she shouted back, which was followed by her cough bout.
I wore the white kurta which was kept in my cupboard. I presumed it was some sort of a dress code or uniform for this place.
Once I was done, I came out and saw the lady again. She now had a calm and welcoming smile on her face.
‘We started on the wrong foot. This is not how two yogis meet each other,’ she said.
I was a little taken aback. I was so sceptical of this woman that this sweetness seemed a prank. Also, I had never been called a yogi. But I liked the sound of it.
‘Namaste,’ she continued, and bent her head. ‘I am Vandana Manchanda. You can call me Vandana behen like everyone else here does. Or just Vandana, if you like. I am your mentor in this place and I want to introduce The Ashram to you today,’ she said, with a composed smile which really didn’t suit her. She was more of the lady who talked loudly on the phone in a bus.
‘Namaste,’ I replied. ‘My name is Samar. I am from Delhi and I am here to look for inner peace.’
She seemed impressed. ‘I thought you were a young guy looking for some adventure. But it seems you have an actual purpose behind coming here.’
‘You can say that,’ I said, and shoved it away.
‘Come, let me take you around The Ashram,’ she said and she gave me a guided tour. She showed me the white temple, and told me this was where the evening arti took place. She showed me the lecture halls and told me the sort of things we were going to be taught. She took me around the kitchen area. And then she showed me a house made of thatch.
‘This is where Swamiji lives,’ she said.
‘Swamiji?’
‘Yes, the Founder of this Ashram. We don’t see him much now because he lives the life of an ascetic. He is renowned for his wisdom and clairvoyance. To be accepted as his disciple is the biggest achievement one can achieve in this Ashram.’
‘Has anyone ever done it?’ I asked.
‘Some have. But even then, odds are against us.’
‘What does he seek in someone to make his disciple?’
‘Well, that’s the peculiar part. There is no pattern in his selection of disciples. Some of them were extremely methodica
l and focussed, while others were notorious for their instability and waywardness. Come, let me show you the most important part of this Ashram.’
She took me to a big hall with absolutely no ornamentation on the wall but just a carpet on the floor. There was a separate rug in front which must have been for the instructor, the guru.
‘This is where the evening meditation takes place. Let me tell you, you can sleep through your lectures, not indulge in the arti, and not apply stuff they teach you here, but, don’t take the meditation lightly. If you get that right, it will change your life and it will change the way you look at everything. We are all trying to master it. That’s the basic purpose of this Ashram. That is how this Ashram changes lives.’
I nodded, trying to agree with what she was saying. I had to try it for myself before believing it.
Thereafter, Vandana took me around to introduce me to all the other yogis in The Ashram. There were people from all over the world and all age groups.
The Ashram didn’t require any educational qualification or nationality. They welcomed as many people as their accommodation allowed. Some people came for a few weeks, some came for a few months and others had been there for years.
Everyone had the same motive. To make peace with themselves. To achieve shanti.
As Vandana explained to me how my daily routine is going to be. I was only thinking that from the next morning, I’d be one of them.
What If Fate Doesn’t
Let You Choose
Our day used to begin at five in the morning. We were supposed to have a cup in our hands and stand outside our rooms. A man came and poured a small quantity of herbal tea in our cups. Yoga is supposed to be done empty stomach, so we are supposed to have only herbal tea before the morning yoga.
It takes a while to develop a taste for herbal tea, but later on, as I got used to it, I couldn’t go back to normal tea. Even today, I drink only herbal tea because of the habit I developed at The Ashram.