“What’s your name?”
“Jaidev”, the American replied,
“Oh, you have an Indian name?”, Ola, the Polish climbing machine said,
“Yeah, it was given to me a few days ago by the Amar. It means ‘Mighty Victorious Soul’. I guess it’s a name you kind of grow into, ha-ha”,
A statement loaded with strangeness, yet delivered with a conflicting ‘matter-of-factness’. This was just the start, but all I’ll say for now is these are the kinds of things you hear from peoples’ mouths on a fairly regular basis in India.
“What was your previous name?” Ola asked,
“Steve”.
“What’s wrong with your real name that your parents gave you?” is what I wanted to ask at this point, but I didn’t.
The three of us were walking through the immaculate boulder fields in Hampi to a particular area we had in mind. Once there, we would pit our wits and muscle against some of the finest granite boulders the world has to offer, in amongst some of the most beautiful scenery and settings I’m ever likely to witness. Warm evening light bathing our backs as we choose exciting and inspiring routes by which to ascend these monoliths of hidden joys.
As we’re strolling along, Jaidev suddenly and unexplicably drops to his knees and bends forward with his arms in front of him, touches his head to the ground, stands back up again and carries on walking.
“What was that?” I ask,
“Acknowledging the Goddess” (this Goddess had a name but I can’t recall it), “we have a special relationship”.
Pointing towards a temple on a hillside that’s just come into view, he chuckles as if in an attempt to normalise the situation. ‘I’m chuckling because I just made a funny comment, there’s nothing strange going on here, but really there is’, is what I think is really going on in his head.
Once we get to the bouldering area we meet up with a couple more friends and have a great time bouldering around and having fun. There was no more strangeness from Jaidev during this time. I still haven’t made my mind up if he just had no desire to preach to us during this time or if he was just biding his time until he had a captive audience…
Once it got dark we were all chilling out on the bouldering mats (these crashpads double as wonderful mattresses to relax on). After a while most folk went on their way and Ola, Jaidev and I remained to linger and enjoy the starlit night, the quiet and the perfect temperatures. I pointed out a satellite racing across the sky and a couple of shooting stars. Ola talked about China, the culture and her time there and we had a conversation about good places to live in the world. Steve was joining in too, albeit in a slightly loud and dominating fashion that was at odds with the sublime, peaceful surroundings. I attempted to counter this mild assault with a gentle steering of the conversation towards China and other parts of the world that Steve wasn’t so familar with. It was working, but then Jaidev inevitably piped-up…
“I’m a kind of spiritual adventurer”
“Uh-huh”
He launched into a sustained account of how he found a spiritual group in L.A. that met every Saturday, banged drums and did yoga together. He then met a ‘guru’ at one of these events who was regarded as a ‘realised soul’. As a young man this guru had travelled across Europe and all the way into India, hung out with some Krishna chaps and eventually became a ‘guru’ and, seemingly, ‘top-dog’ in a kind of temple in Mumbai.
“I was invited to come to his temple and stay a while”
“How much did he say it would cost?”, I wanted to ask, but didn’t. After all, any question, however innocent or controversial, would only prolong this sermon. In amongst these wonderful boulders, silouhetted against the night-sky that, to me, represented freedom, fun and excitement, we were now trapped. Short of abruptly making our excuses, or being brutally honest and leaving, we were forced to wait this one out.
He described how he went to this temple and ‘stayed a while’, getting up early and meditating with chanting for a couple of hours, then doing some kind of yoga.
“I mean, these guys are now my brothers.”
“Oh c’mon man…” I wanted to say, but didn’t.
Describing an ‘audience’ with the guru, “if you’re a westerner and have stayed there a while, they sit you next to him, which is considered a great honour”,
“How much did it cost to stay at this temple?”, I wanted to ask, but didn’t.
Now, I’m sure there are many spiritual communities you can stay with in India that have some genuinely wise ‘gurus’ and don’t try to fleece you for every penny you’ve got, to line their pockets, but I’m sure there are many that are nothing but brain-washing factories, or a bit of a con, or both. Which category this one fell into, I don’t know.
“There’s a guru in India who sits all day and looks at the sun directly from sunrise to sunset. Normally, this would burn your retinas, but nothing happens to this guy because his meditation has reached such a level that he really has become one with nature.”
“I don’t believe that for one second”, I wanted to say and I did. To be fair to Jaidev, he didn’t react adversely to my comment, but simply moved on.
Eventually, about 15 minutes later, Jaidev’s sermon came to an end and, not wanting to risk an extension to this, I simply remained silent, looking up at the night sky and listening to the music Ola had put on mid-sermon to give herself something to focus on that wasn’t Jaidev’s voice.
After a few slightly uncomfortable moments, Ola broke the silence,
“Yeah, I like the religions in India. They do not seem so oppressive.”
She immediately followed up with a comment about Hinduism and skillfully steered the conversation onto something else. Not long after this, Steve made a move and headed off, leaving Ola and myself alone under the nightsky where we whiled away an enjoyable hour or so talking and listening to music in the still Indian night.
Once back down to ‘civilisation’, if you can call a couple of guesthouses in the middle of the Indian countryside that, we met up with some of our earlier companions for a meal in a restaurant. I selected myself a space and took a seat on the thin mattresses on the floor next to one of the low tables. Feeling relaxed and happy after an enjoyable time in the dark amongst the boulders I engaged in conversation with the people around me. Almost immediately, however, I was disappointed to hear Jaidev’s voice pipe up loud and true from only a few feet to my right.
“Their doors are open to anyone all the time. You can just turn up and stay a while, but they do prefer it if you let them know you’re coming.”
“How much does it cost?”, I wanted to say, but I didn’t.
And so it went on. He’d apparently cornered a German girl sat opposite him. She looked bored but she was asking him the occasional question in the rare momentary gaps in his loud and well-enunciated speech.
I found myself becoming intensely irritated by his incessant, what I considered to be, ‘loud bullshit’. I even moved to my left a couple of feet in an attempt to decrease the volume of his voice on my right eardrum. It didn’t really work.
“Relax Andy, it’s not that bad. Why do you find it so annoying?”, Ola asked.
“He never shuts up”, I replied.
When Jaidev eventually left we were all talking and Ola brought up my irritation with Jaidev, as she thought it was quite funny, but also slightly puzzling.
The German girl he had ‘cornered’, it turned out, wasn’t particularly bored by Jaidev and was actually a little interested in what he had to say. Personally, I couldn’t identify with this and it was clear that I was the one person in the group who had found him the most irritating. Indeed, the others didn’t seem find him irritating at all or, if they did, kept it well hidden.
We had a funny conversation about this and then played cards and that was it. But I couldn’t help but reflect a little on why I found Jaidev’s recollections of his spiritual journey so annoying. Perhaps it seemed to me that he was preaching to people and was wearing his spiritual ‘realisations’ as a badge to show off. Whenever I get a whiff of this kind of thing I almost invariably switch off to that person immediately.
I also find it irritating when people make sweeping statements of the nature of reality, or similar, in a manner that says, ‘this is fact’. In my opinion, no-one knows the nature of reality, or God (if there is such a thing).
If someone makes a statement you know to be bullshit, or disagree with strongly, such as ‘Peugeots are the best cars in the world’, most people would voice their disagreement at least sometimes, if not often. However, if it is about religion or spiritualism, or meditation, or yoga, or a guru or spiritual leader, or anything else along these lines, people usually keep quiet.
Whether or not we should pipe up is a matter of debate and, in the end, ‘it just depends’ doesn’t it? However, I got the feeling that Steve had, knowingly or not, discovered that if he talked about his spiritual journey, people listened and rarely interrupted or challenged him, so that’s pretty-much all he talked about. That, or he was promoting these particular gurus and temples because he’d been encouraged to by his ‘guru’, or he felt he should, like a kind of ‘missionary’.
I would reach some sort of thought-provoking conclusion if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m now distracted by a loud, slightly intoxicated girl in a white loose fitting sort of dress, with flowers in her hair, twirling round and round in the middle of the restaurant.
