Chapter 6 - The Himalayas, India,1966.

B rises at 4am from his bed beneath a sprawling Banyan tree and immediately proceeds to the river. He splashes glacier cold water all over himself with a grimace that he just can't suppress. This done, he wraps up his matted dreads into a huge pile upon his head and hobbles back to the tree in the chilly morning darkness.

This is the hour of Brahma, the hour of Creation. All across the subcontinent, sadhus, renunciates and yogis are awaking to cleanse themselves for their meditation practice. Peace of mind must be grasped before the psychic babble of civilisation arises to cough up and spit out the collected mucous of the night: Residue mustard oil and ghee.

From his blanket bundle D takes out his deer skin to protect him from the creeping dampness of the ground and sits upon it lotus style, despite the protests of his creaking knees. He begins with an hour of alternate nostril breathing. With a stiff, straight spine, he goes on to empty his mind of all the night's unconscious imaginings, clearing out the cobwebs by the force of the holy syllable of Om. His throat vibrates with the timeless hum that resonates through every cell and auric layer, purifying and pacifying all the woes of a sentient being born into a world of transience and illusion.

He strikes an impressive figure with a back that could teach integrity to the trunk of the Banyan behind him. Under the force of his rumbling chant the Earth beneath him begins to waken and sentinel songbirds announce the whisper of light in the East. O-mmmm. The perfect sound a question and answer in one, expressing eternal truth beyond all rationality. This young man immersed in the tranquillity of this blessed mantra: The hum beginning in the depths of the abdomen and rising on octave wings to Heaven that shake open each of his charkas. It pulsates in the throat with a shimmering sound that rises higher yet in a buzz of holy intensity miraculously beyond the capacity of his voice box:

"Fuck it!" D snarls, swatting the mosquito away from his ears with exasperated swipes, his concentration shattered. Pity that the flying parasites should share his love for the sounds and smells of running water - Did Herman Hesse ever have this trouble?

His meditative mood punctured by a creature weighing less than a gram, D proceeds to his morning asanas. He contorts himself in a hundred different directions, stretching muscles and tendons most people don't know they have. If nothing else his yoga will be of use for the next time he must jam himself any which way into a bus full of two hundred Indians; half of whom will be moving house or carrying livestock to market.

By the time the sun is rousing the snow peaks D is walking down the road with his few possessions wrapped up in his blanket, three rupees in his pocket. Already he feels a long way from the indulgences of Goa. In six weeks of hanging around under palm tree shade cooking rice with local heads, he hadn't gotten laid once. He became so sick of people asking him how long he'd been in India on the basis of his waist-length hair (which gave him away as being one of the first) that he bundled it all up under a head-scarf and left them to guess. Jesus, not once! And there were girls who were giving themselves to everyone - How had he managed to miss his fair share? He shakes his head in disbelief and walks into the village.

He is looking for a guru. He's heard great things about Neem Karoli Baba who is named after the station where he allegedly brought a train to a halt by virtue of his psychic powers - It was retribution for having been thrown off the train for being without a ticket.

After haggling over the price of a cup of curd in a chai shop, the proprietor conceding the point after D displayed his pukkah Hindi, he climbs the hill to the ashram of the illustrious sage. He meets cows mooching down the road and they pause to desiccate the fresh, pink blooms of Spring that brighten the roadside. Women carrying water and washing also pass with smudged red puja on their foreheads. One or two lewd winks are thrown in B's direction but he has been in India long enough not to take them seriously.

He pushes on until he reaches the summit of the steady dirt incline and blinks as he beholds the celebrated ashram basking in the return of sunshine. The glowing sight is well beyond any of B's imaginings. It looks like a concrete bomb shelter. Prize architects from coal-mining towns could not have exceeded the talent with which this ghastly lump of a building has been erected.

Defying the authentic beauty of traditional wood, clay and cow shit Himalayan homes, the wealthy patrons of Neem Karoli's cause have favoured the modern, stream-lined look of dynamic 2oth Century success - This is after all, the 1960's. And these times of sophistication call for concrete palaces that will be unbelievably hot in the summer and unbearably cold in the winter. Aren't renunciates and yogis supposed to relish such challenges?

B enters the gates to the sleepy suspicion of the guard on duty and heads straight for the main building. He passes through landscaped gardens with tidy flowerbeds and pruned bushes. There are also many trees that are thinking about coming back to life after the murderous winter and, one a bench beneath an apple tree, are sat three Western disciples: Two guys in robes of orange and a girl all in white.

"Na ma ste, baba" The light female voice calls and D veers off the gravel path to join them. She has long, blonde hair and beady green eyes that make her quite pretty. She sits in between two guys with the roughshod, fuzzy beard look running up to the dark, oiled hair that tries to reach their shoulders. Their robes are immaculately clean and all three are wearing issue sandals.

"I haven't seen you before - Have you just arrived to join us?" The girl asks with a definite Germanic accent. Her two friends appear a little miffed at the new competition for her attention. They try to hide their displeasure under humble and beatific smiles.

"I've just arrived, yes, but I'm not sure about joining." D says as he squats before them. The girl closes her eyes in rapture.

"Oh but you surely will when you meet the saint himself!" She gives him a searing gaze. "Never before or again will you meet one as radiant as Neem Karoli Baba! He-"

"That's right!" The guy on the left interrupts with a New York twang, "When I first came I had no intention of bowing down to some Buddha, let alone touch his feet - Why, the idea made me nauseous, actually! But then I saw him," He looks up with the inspirational memory, "And well, I just couldn't help but start crying! Just like a baby, you know? And before I knew what I was doing - There I was. Clinging onto the Saint's feet for dear life."

"And Neem Karoli Baba is nothing short of miraculous!" The other guy, also American, pipes in. "I mean, when I first met him he looked me in the eye and asked me what I was running from. I mean he knew, he instantly clicked that I was dodging the draft in the States. It was then I knew I'd met someone really special." The other two nod sagely as they rack their brains for a story that might demonstrate their particular intimacy with the Master himself.

Before they can do so, D says farewell and wheels back onto the path and over to the main doors. The three in robes watch him depart in his saffron lungi and piled-up hair. "Man," One of the guys concludes, "That guy is really hung-up on his seeker's trip, huh?"

"Yes," The girl agrees with a sad shake of the head, "He who has no ears to listen will surely never hear." The Americans exchange doubtful glances behind her but then remember that much can be forgiven by way of personality in this area of the world, where white women are few and far between.

B enters the ashram to the sounds of devotional chanting. Dhoop incense is in the air. Nearly everyone inside is in robes of one colour or another and all of more impressive quality than his own single-note attire. Westerners make up about a quarter of the devotees and judging by the crowd that jostles in the corner, he guesses that Neem Karoli can be found there.

The necks of brown and white finally hush and seat themselves upon the red carpet, revealing the reclining figure of the saint upon his couch. All expectations of a master with a face as mighty as the mountains and a voluminous beard of wisdom fall away at once. Neem Karoli is pudgy, short and bald with fat rippling out of the loose sections in the checked blanket that covers about half of him. He begins to speak:

"Love is the strongest medicine. It is more powerful than electricity." He speaks in a rolling, sonorous Hindi which the translator then renders to English.
"I have no powers. I don't know anything. This world is all attachment. Yet you get worried because you are attached If you desire a mango at the moment of death, you'll be born an insect. If you even desire the next breath, you will take birth again. Total truth is necessary. You must live by what you say."
He continues to speak in this vain, his message unpretentious and charming. D perceives a radiance in this sagging lump of flesh and cloth and wonders if he should stay, after all.

But then he looks around again at the audience who smirk and croon at each word, each trying to be more unique than the rest. It seems as though they're inching closer and closer to the Great Man all the time, perhaps hoping to catch the scent of Nirvana when he breaks wind. It seems that these adulators have descended upon this sage like a band of vultures and that he is now captive to their audience. He seems condemned to be a guru and to have his each and every word taken literally, memorised, analysed and swallowed as mantras. The stream of disciples and new converts is never-ending. They arrive at his bedside by the thousands, many seeking to protect themselves from the awful freedom of trying to understand the world by themselves.

Years later, B's suspicions are confirmed as on his deathbed in the ashram, Neem Karolis last words were reported to be:

"Leaving central prison at last!" A wink and then he died, leaving his disciples wishing that their guru couldn't perhaps have shown a little more respect for the occasion.