by Subhuti from Pune
My big steel trunk was packed. Not very well. Not tidily. But good enough for its contents to survive yet another monsoon in storage.
My maroon robes, my white robes, and matching garments like pants, t-shirts, shawls, socks and jackets, had all been stuffed into large green garbage bags, newly purchased from the Mahalaxmi Store on North Main Road. Then I had pressed the bags down on top of each other, air hissing out from the applied pressure, until I could sit on the trunk’s lid and close it.
Really, to be effective, to avoid the inevitable smell of mould when being opened next season, each bag should be vacuum-packed, sucking out the air before being sealed, but I could not be bothered.
And so, there it was. A silver trunk, filled to the brim, with the name “Subhuti” painted in large black letters on all four sides. It would be hard to mistake it for someone else’s property. All that remained was for me to throw my travel clothes into my suitcase, book a taxi to the airport, then fly to Goa. There, I would spend a couple of days sipping fresh lime sodas in beach shacks, before taking an ultra-convenient, nonstop, Air India flight back to the UK.
However, at this point in my intended journey, I found that my activity had suddenly ceased. Why? Because I had encountered an unexpected problem: I didn’t want to go.
There was no urgent business awaiting me in Britain, where the weather was still rather cold and dismal, coming at the end of… well, yes… a rather cold and dismal winter.
True, there were signs of better weather ahead. Daffodils were pushing upwards through the soil, I was reliably informed, and, once in a while, a lovely Spring day would break through the clouds and drizzle. But weather charts don’t lie, and the thought of being immersed in a British climate that was currently ranging between 8 degrees Celsius at night and 13 degrees Celsius in the day, did not thrill me.
Whereas the local Pune reality of 20 degrees Celsius at night rising to 38 Celsius in the day promised to pleasantly warm my bones.
It may seem perverse, but I enjoy the feeling of walking out the door of my house into a solid wall of heat that threatens to overwhelm and consume me. I like the sensation of walking along the road, feeling the heat radiating from the pavement beneath my feet, and a hot breeze caressing my skin. I guess, if you’ve spent time in India in April or May, you know this feeling: you’re not just walking along a street, you’re walking through an invisible ocean of super-heated air. It’s tangible. It’s sensual. It’s like being underwater and yet still being able to breathe.
The birds seem to like the heat, especially the cuckoos. The hotter is gets, the more excited they become, crying “Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!” in the branches above my head. In Indian folk lore, it is the cuckoos that call the monsoon.
Male peacocks, strutting around inside the Osho Meditation Resort, are also affected by the rising warmth, growing their magnificent tail feathers and dancing to outdo each other.
By the time I’ve walked several hundred meters from my rented room to the resort, I’m sweating like crazy, but it’s not a problem. Sweating is important. Occasionally, I succumb to temptation and sip an ice-cold coke, together with slices of chilled watermelon, but the real way to cool off is by drinking a hot cup of chai or coffee.
It sounds paradoxical, I know. But that’s what raises my internal temperature and opens gazillions of pores all over my skin. That’s what cools me down as my body moisture evaporates. At least, that’s the way this body works.
Now, a decision has to be made. Well, it’s already been made, I guess.
Impulsively, I walk right through the resort, catch a rickshaw to German Bakery Lane, find a travel agent, and within a short time have successfully postponed my departure for one month – at surprisingly little cost. Tata have taken over Air India and these days the airline seems more user-friendly than before. If you call their office, they actually answer, and, even more remarkably, do what you ask.
Job done. Departure delayed for four weeks. By the end of April, I’m sure I will be ready to leave the Mystic East.
Of course, for me, a hot season in Pune would not be possible without the benefit and blessings of the resort’s expansive tree cover. It’s this wide, green canopy that keeps the resort tolerably cool while elsewhere in the city the mercury is hitting 42 degrees.
Even The Times of India is panicking its readers as temperatures “soar,” pavements “sizzle,” and hundreds of innocent citizens become “heatstroke cases,” while the Government’s Weather Department issues “heatwave warnings” right across the central and northern sectors of the country.
So much fuss? You would have thought the country had never experienced a hot season until now. “Stay indoors between 11 and 4 o’clock!” warns the newspaper. As if India’s huge workforce, labouring all day on construction sites and farms can afford such luxuries.
I have no desire to stay indoors. At eleven o’clock, I am in the resort and filling a one-litre bottle with water, then adding a whole packet of Electral rehydration salts. This has replaced my morning coffee, or rather, they sit simultaneously on my plaza table, under a convenient sunshade. I can’t finish the coffee, but the water bottle is empty within half an hour, and it gives a noticeable boost to my energy levels.
Dancing at midday in Buddha Grove has become slightly different. I stand about two metres away from a huge fan, the size of an aircraft propeller, sitting in a black box, that blows a fierce jet of hot air all over me, pushing my robe back against my body. Most dancers hug the shade provided by the trees that surround the grove, or stand in a gyrating bunch in front of the noisily whirring fan. The music seems to come out of the propeller.
High above us, a fabulous gulmohar tree has responded to the heat by bursting out in flame-red flowers, while the golden shower of a laburnum tree adds a yellow crest nearby.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the grove, a team of gardeners are pulling huge dead bamboos out of a big cluster next to the podium. In the plaza, another team of workers gently prises up the paving stones, in order to flatten the ground beneath, and then carefully places them back again. It’s all indicative that the resort is being well maintained and, with luck, will still be here for us to enjoy during the next winter season.
But maybe that’s not the real issue.
“Maybe the real question is whether we will still be here to enjoy the resort!” jokes a friend of mine. Like her, I am hitting 80 this year, and we both know the body doesn’t last forever. How much longer will I be able to travel halfway around the globe, and back again?
I have several ailments, none of them currently fatal. The latest is a diagnosis of AMD, or Age-Related Macular Degeneration, meaning that, at any moment, my retinas will burn out and brown blobs will permanently obstruct my central vision.
“Not now, but soon,” counsels the optician. Thanks, mate, for your doom-laden warning.
Meanwhile, to delay the inevitable, I have invested in a new pair of sunglasses. My Ray-Bans were dark and effective, but without prescription lenses, so everything was blurry.
Not to worry. A visit to the K. K. Eye Institute, just across the road from the resort, rewards me with new, gold-rimmed sunglasses with sharp definition, all for fifty bucks.
Lunch happens at the resort, or at Raga, my all-time favourite thali place, and either way, mango lassi is on the menu. I cannot resist the taste of this amazing fruit. It reminds me of Osho’s comment about how Eve tempted Adam with an apple in the Garden of Eden.
Osho disagreed with the biblical version. “The apple is such a poor fruit, no temptation is possible. It must have been a mango!” he once declared.
The time for the Evening Meeting comes around and as we wait outside the Osho Auditorium there is a faint rumbling sound in the sky. A few days ago, at this time, there was a spectacular thunderstorm, complete with dazzling flashes of lightning, that brought a heavy downpour of rain, washing dust off the trees and dropping the temperature by at least 10-15 degrees.
Tonight, nothing comes of the rumbling, so it will still be warm when we exit the building.
Inside the pyramid chamber, Osho is on the video screen, recalling his days in prison in the USA, and I’m impressed by how casually he speaks of it. I mean, most people would probably feel embarrassed when admitting they spent time inside a jail, but not him.
Osho describes the moment he is being escorted into a prison in Portland, Oregon, a brand new, ultra-modern, high-tech jail that had been open for just three months. It had three huge doors, all remote controlled, making escape virtually impossible. Osho commented:
When I entered for the first time, I told the jailer, “Perhaps you don’t know, but you have managed a perfect symbol.”
He said, “Symbol of what?”
I said, “This is the situation of man: the body is the first door, the mind the second, and the heart is the third. And then behind these three doors is the poor soul.” *
No prizes for guessing which door Osho considers to be the biggest obstacle preventing the soul from escaping.
Yep, you got it. The second door. The mind.
Fortunately for Osho, the next day he was released on bail, and left America shortly thereafter. As a symbol of escape, let that be an inspiration to us all.
We may not be free from the mind, but, once in a while, we can enjoy being out on bail.
Happy hot season!
* Quote from Om Many Padme Hum, Ch 2, Q 2
Previously published as a Facebook post, reprinted here with the author’s permission
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