Monsoon Festival 2024

Ageh Bharti reports from the summer festival at the Osho Int. Meditation Resort, Pune, 11-15 August 2024

I am now past my 90th year, but my son Sw Raghavendra Bharti, my daughter Ma Kiran Bharti and her husband Sw Govind Bharti made it possible for me to attend the miraculous Monsoon Festival this year by accompanying me.

The Festival felt to me nothing less than being in paradise. The gathering of sannyasins was around 1,500, arriving from every corner of the world. My eyes are wet thinking that when Osho was in his body he was in a way limited to being in his room, but now he is spread all over the Osho International Meditation Resort.

Everyone’s face looked bright and magically cheerful.

The trees, not only the ones in the Meditation Resort itself, but also in Osho Teerth Park, and actually, in the whole of Koregaon Park, have grown to such heights that they could become the subject of a research if someone wanted to claim that nowhere else the same breed of trees grow to such heights. One day I roamed around for two hours looking at the trees and wept as if I was seeing Osho. They are so full of Osho’s drunken energy that they are growing taller and taller…

I have not counted the rooms in the Guest House of the Meditation Resort. I just know that it has four storeys and each storey seems to have 15 or so beautiful rooms. They were all full.

The Osho Auditorium was full during White Robe Brotherhood. I am sure that next year the management will have to arrange some place where this fantastic meeting can be relayed, in order to facilitate that the remaining friends can also participate.

At around 11 am Buddha Grove was full with sannyasins dancing to ecstatic music. And there were two kinds of Silent Sitting Meditations in Chuang Tzu, one lasting 30 minutes and the other one hour.

More than three dozen western sannyasins attended the event. I recognized several and we expressed our love for each other, but I only remember by name Maneesha, who has authored several books on Osho, and Satyam, the musician and editor.

After White Robe Brotherhood, there was dinner from 8 to 9 pm, and afterwards, from 9 till 11 pm, a cultural programme in the Plaza. The most fascinating event was the singer of international fame, Shri Anoop Jalota. He appeared in a maroon robe. His songs thrilled the audience so such an extent that they started dancing madly. I too could not sit still and had to get up and dance like a young man.

At the end I asked Jalota ji if he would listen to something I had to say: “In my whole life of 91 years, I have never heard such a grand singer, nor such smart musicians who played on various instruments, nor such an audience either.” At this there was clapping from all sides.