Kul remembers a funny encounter on his birthday.
from left Punam, Rashma, Carol, Kul
As my birthday present, my Osho friend Punam invited my wife Rashma and I to dinner at the Sheraton. On reaching there, as soon as we settled at our table, a young English lady in black, sitting alone across our table, started staring at us. Soon she complimented Punam on her dress, its colour, the jewellery, et al. Punam acknowledged the compliments graciously answering where she had gotten it from and so on.
After some time, she again started to make conversation with us about India and so we invited her to join our table as she had finished her dinner and was having tea. In a second she sat at our table and we got going. She said that she comes to Delhi often and is interested in Indian jewellery. Then the talk turned to our lives and she said she believes in dates as in birthdays when she saw my birthday cake with ‘Live Love Laugh’ organised by our friend. As I began to cut it, the band started to play ‘Happy Birthday’ and everyone clapped!
She told us her name was Carol after we introduced ourselves and works as part of a cabin crew for an airline; when we told her that my wife and I had lived in Nairobi for over 40 years, she said she had visited there too. Then she started telling us about her family and asked what brought us together. I said, “Our Guru”. From then on, it was ‘guru talk’ as she related how she had come across a female guru, Mataji, at London Airport and that something had stirred deep in her; later, when she had sat in the car to go home, she had burst into tears.
So what do you do? We meditate. How does meditation help you? We gave her a long answer. Who is your guru? Osho. It did not register with her.
We kept on talking about gurus and meditating until midnight but then Carol had to go because she needed to be at the airport by 5 am.
As she was leaving, I showed her Osho’s photo on my mobile and told her, “This is my guru.”
Her eyes widened and lit up in surprise, “Osho, I call him Osho the Posho – because he is so posh!”
I looked at my wife in silent understanding as in Kenya, ‘Posho’ in Swahili means a porridge made from ugali – maize meal. But we did not spell this out.
She said, “I have many books by him.”
She hugged and kissed goodbyes. Unlike the stiff upper lip Britons she was very emotional!
“Will I be able to sleep…” she said in parting.
After she left, we could not get over meeting this woman.
Next morning, in response to my “Thank You” note, Punam replied, “I am still reeling!”
Kul Bhushan, Osho News
Comments are closed.