Apurva’s first meeting with Osho
Chris and I arrive in India after six weeks on the road. We go straight to McLeod Ganj in Himachal Pradesh. We rent a room with a charcoal stove, close to the monastery. Behind us are the mountains and we are surrounded by lush greenery. Wafting down from the monastery comes the sound of the monks chanting, and colourful prayer flags flutter in the wind. The Tibetan people living in exile greet us with ‘Tashi Delek’. They make full eye contact and their smiling eyes convey the meaning, May many good things come to you.
While walking down the main street of the town, we see a number of small grocery shops and chai places. A central feature of the main street is a big prayer wheel, which people are turning constantly. Lots of monks, clad in red robes, wander along, busy with their prayer beads.
Then the snow starts, and the snow monkeys, who are about the size of small humans, arrive. Wearing everything we have, we just can’t keep warm, even with the stove blazing. It’s time to leave.
Chris is obsessed with going to Poona to the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. He had met somebody called Maneesha in Scotland at Samye Ling, a Buddhist retreat, a few weeks before we left. She took him outside to do a meditation called ‘Dynamic’, which seemed to involve crazy emotional outpouring. I decided then that this was both bizarre and dangerous. I am determined never to go to Poona. So Chris leaves without me.
I have a brief stay in lower Dharamashala, where I rent a room from the man who runs the only café in town with a coffee machine. I go with him to weddings and try to help by getting the machine to work. Then tragedy strikes: bereft at the death of his lover, he commits suicide by taking rat poison. So, time to move on…
Now I decide to study the Dharma. A friend has taken me in and I’m staying in a hut. It’s brick with a corrugated iron roof and a cow-dung floor. There is just enough room for two mattresses and my friend’s easel is in the corner of the room. Outside is a smaller hut where we have our kerosene stove for cooking.
It’s in a small village just below McLeod Ganj. From my front door the Kangra Valley, green and fertile, stretches out for miles. The sanitation is basic. Everyone does their ablutions by the river. This is a challenging experience for us Westerners. Pee is therefore collected in bottles and disposed of later, and pooh must wait for a daily visit to the Tibetan library, which has the only flush toilet around. Wonderful! The bungalow is just below the Tibetan library, where my host, a friend, is studying thangka painting with the Tibetan State Artist and I have lessons with a Rinpoche on the Dharma.
I think that maybe this will be my path. I’m also interested in Tibetan medicine. It is herbal and every set of remedies looks like rabbit pooh. I hear from one of the Westerners that the Tibetan contraceptive pill doesn’t work, but there is a pill to help people who are travelling from the mountains to the plains, to cope with the change of altitude. It contains marijuana. I decide to get some before I leave. It seems that it must have a very small quantity of this as I feel very little effect.
Monsoon starts and the rain pours down. The roof over my mattress is leaking so I suspend my tent to catch the drips and empty it in the morning. The matches are stored in a tin so that we can light the kerosene stove. There are rivers running past the front door. Always wet feet and my clothes are always damp. Life is now really becoming unpleasant.
The Rinpoches teaching me the Dharma are beautiful people, but it seems to me that the Westerners in my class are as judgmental as the evangelical Christians of my past. I am seeking a new way of looking at life and this isn’t it.
I haven’t seen Chris for two months and I’m missing him. The only way to see him is to go to Poona – and that’s something I am determined I will never do. I meet a woman in orange who, much to my disgust, is wearing a picture of Bhagwan around her neck. She says she’s ‘taken sannyas’, whatever that means. This reminds me of my days as an evangelical Christian when I wore a Turn to Christ brooch in an effort to convert others. The friend with whom I am staying has become interested in going to Poona too, so it looks like I will have to go, just to see Chris and save him from getting sucked in. The three of us – my friend, the woman in orange and I – are setting off tomorrow.
Arriving in Bombay, we book tickets to Poona on the Deccan Queen Express. As we don’t get tickets for that day and the ladies’ waiting room is full we end up spending the night on the station floor. It’s important to get up in the morning quickly and go for a chai before they start spraying DDT all over the station, including on the people waiting for their trains – to kill the cockroaches.
This is a new train, and has a Ladies Only compartment, where we settle ourselves down. In the compartment are two Indian ladies, one wearing a gorgeous pink-and-blue sari, the other a beautifully-patterned salwar kameez in black and red. They regard our friend in orange as some kind of holy person and, as her companions, we are all offered delicious snacks. The air conditioning, the smell and taste of the homemade food, and the comfort of the carriage, are a fantastic reward for the night on the station floor.
As we leave Bombay station, a man dressed in a white kurta pyjama and carrying a briefcase tries to get into the Ladies Only compartment. He is clinging to the handle on the outside of the door. The women shout at him angrily and refuse to let him in. He is clinging on, desperately clutching the handle, as we leave the station.
Everyone’s shouting, and as the train builds up speed, he is begging them to open the door – but they won’t. We’ve gone quite a few miles when suddenly he disappears. He must have fallen off in a tunnel. My friend and I grab the alarm cord, expecting it to work. We keep on pulling but nothing happens. We rush along the corridor to try and find the conductor, who doesn’t seem interested. He won’t even tell us where he thinks the tunnel might be so that the police in that area can be notified. Maybe he doesn’t know. It is 185 kilometres to Poona with not many stops. The Indian women have no sympathy for the poor man. They say it was his own fault. We assume he must be dead or injured. It isn’t easy as Westerners to accept that there is nothing we can do. We settle down for the rest of the journey.
We arrive in Poona. At the Café Bund we make inquiries about the whereabouts of Chris, and possible rooms to rent. After finding rooms in a road behind the ashram we set off to find the main entrance. The first thing we see is the meditation hall, which is a large covered area with a sound system at the side.
Chris is working in the ashram, so is easy to find and, to my dismay, he is wearing orange and a mala. He seems to have ‘taken sannyas’, and he has the picture of Bhagwan around his neck. Well, what can I say? This will never be me!
My friend and I throw ourselves into the meditations as a 10–day meditation camp is on. I do five meditations a day and I really enjoy it all, especially the Dynamic, which is a surprise. In the morning when the Dynamic is over, the sun is rising and the birds are singing. It is so beautiful here!
After Dynamic and some breakfast, I walk through the garden and up the stairs to a large room for discourse. I find I have to lie down as soon as Bhagwan starts talking, and then come back as soon as he finishes. I never remember anything that has been said but I feel good.
After about six weeks, I decide it’s time to move on. One of Bhagwan’s closest disciples, Mukta, asks me for the second time, “Are you ready for sannyas yet?” To which I reply “No!” I would never bow to this man. He’s a man, and I can never treat him as a God. My journey as an evangelical Christian has left me with no wish to get involved in any more organisations.
I head to darshan (a meeting with Bhagwan). I am allowed to see him, but I don’t bow down to him and can’t even remember what happened when I leave his presence.
So, rucksack on my back, I say goodbye to Chris, now Swami Prem Christo, and my friend Lin, now Ma Prem Puneeta. What a mouthful!
It’s time to journey on…
Featured image credit to Flickr.com/CanadaGood
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