“Un-interpreted truth is as useless as buried gold.”
~ The Statesman, March 12, 1982

Gadzookz had the answer. Why don't you try out Pune, he asked me one day. Pune is that place where they had the famous Osho Commune International and I had a couple of friends over there with whom I could chill out. So I set off for Thy Kingdom Come, without a care.

Leaving behind the steep of the hills and I understood it was all about my inner climb too. I couldn't have any qualms about walking away towards the lonelier path of non-involvement. But why? Even that was an illusion! Alright, one has to be prepared so as to avoid a faux pas, like thinking all this pseudo real to be the real. The question is, what is sanctioned? I'd rather consider myself dead or in a state of extreme inertia, so that whatever happens is simply a manifestation.

Going away from Shillong and its enchantment, which is a guise for the still slumbering, still unmade, where “nice guys get washed away like the snow and the rain and there's a lot of compromis'n on the road to their horiz'n, but they're gonna be where the lights 're shinin, just see!”¹ Is it any better, 100 kms away by the dusty banks of the Brahmaputra? Something is definitely happening there, hinting of some stray discoveries, fuelling the search in many more. Up in the midst of those hills however, it was still so cloudy.

An ethereal scene straight out of my many dreams in a surreal world, surrounded me. Was it then or now? A quaint river bank with boats lazily floating on the waters and throngs of people at a nearby fair I am unable to find my way then I know, and try again. I stumble along the muddy banks and suddenly an oldish woman comes along and removes the hurdles for me. “What you seek is often closer than you think. Inner peace lies within your heart,” read a nondescript poster featuring The Holy Mother of the Sahaja movement, stuck on the walls of a dilapidated building as I walked along the Pan Bazar road just beside the Brahmaputra.

The first thing that struck me about Mumbai (I didn't remember it to be so big, seen through fifteen year old eyes, before) was the sleaze. There was something disgustingly, sickeningly degenerate about the life that I sensed from the cab driver, to the lobby boy in a dingy hotel, to the waiter in a restaurant, to the hawkers on the pavements.

Life in a city is about movement alright. Reality being worked out in terms of the minimum enlightened and I struggled somewhat, to overlook the heat and dust, the lurking shadows of ignorance, victims of machinery everywhere. I was roaring angrily inside the cages of my circumstances. Breaking free was imminent.

I had a soulmate in Lajja. Listening to her chirpy voice in the morning on a roadside telephone while a strange city rushed to and fro in frenzied madness was a delight. I was soon rattling away, inside the compartment of Koyna Express, headed for Pune, watching an assortment of brown hued bottoms blissfully answering calls of nature.

Light hearted gladness and wonder with a quiet anticipation filled me while I wandered about the tree lined streets filled with fair Pune chicks. Maybe it was on Independence Day in Deccan, or between some heady sensations from guzzling beer with the Ghati² crowd or listening to the strains of the mohan veena on the moonlit grounds of F.C.College. One fine day, a voyeuristic Hemant and I, headed straight for Koregaon Park, into a strange tiny corner, a small haven of tranquility, called Osho Commune. Hemu got turned on by the blond armpit hairs of a phoren³girl, who was riding a moped while we chased by scooter. I felt I was probably there before... astrally, of course.

“On a sudden lane
down a strangely familiar road
The Osho Commune,
with trees, flowers and silence.
thronged with maroon robed women
and rough looking guys even,
whose hearts suddenly quivered
with a feeling they cannot describe.
Written on their faces
brightened with smiles,
words trying to capture
that elusive wonder
of a beautiful world.”

But before I submitted to blood testing for AIDS (unfortunately, they couldn't see the virginity of my aura) I had some last nagging doubts. I called up Gadzookz. He was nonplussed. “So what's the hurry? Why do you always get carried away by the impatient winds of lunacy? An event is always in the hands of favorable circumstances, and to make those connections, you have to be calm, calm enough so that when the circumstances are at hand, you can see them clearly.”

But Gadzookz will be Gadzookz. Always serene, as serene as the prostitutes by the alleys of Budhwar Peth i.e, if you hinted at the slightest interest, they would grab you, promising some moments of divine pleasure but only to make away with the contents of your bulging purse. Real slimy cad, this Gadzookz!

Taking that small step of entering the sunny portals of the Osho Commune, leaving behind the world of opinions in a heap required cogitation. To be or not to be? Now or after some time? So many decisions on the face of it all! I decided to sample the dish first. I frequented the commune and submerged myself in its strange music but I got the message in a graffiti, somewhere in Koregaon Park. It simply said: “Worship the Creator, not the created!”

One has to have dollars and lots of them to be at the Osho Commune. The irony was it triggered my awareness that the whole world was already becoming an Osho Commune, and I was already a privileged member!! One just had to open one's eyes and look differently. The maroon robed members who roamed about aimlessly, lost in some kind of a trance, gave two hoots to what the world said about them. They would start making love on an open boulevard in full sight of gaping voyeurs if they felt like it. And so??

One needs just that kind of madness in order to strike at the core of Being. It is Free! Free! Free! And to bring that maverick spirit in everyday life, you only have to let your imagination run wild. Without censorship. Well, not the kind that makes secrecy rife. Like the fascination of the species with the pelvic Bermuda Triangle. That's where the truth is in this age according to some frustrated members. Who knows what will happen if it were let loose? So let's face it, say the Osho people.

A huge mental barrier was being lifted from my mind. Imagine a Muslim believing in re-incarnation! Surely Allah is busy preparing a vessel to boil me over an endless fire in the afterlife. He is going to stir me slowly, very slowly until I become quite malleable. And what then? Well, God only knows what Allah really had in mind. Born among the Bengali Muslims of Cachar who are not very famous for enterprise, attending a Christian school and muttering, twice everyday, in morning and afternoon assembly, “Our Father who art in Heaven” (Years later, after watching a provocative movie called “Stigmata” I wondered what happened to Our Heavenly Mother??) living in a Hindu land and harboring a secret wish to associate with placid Buddhist monks!!!

I guess this is about the Integration of Truth, a heliocentric vision and Physical Immortality. Sounds pie in the sky but most of the scientific truths that the men in white coats are so busy dabbling with, have not hit home yet. If they did, that pie would land straight on our dining tables!

An evolving world of human beings with a genetic code comprising the most impossible mixture of influences. The truer human beings, who are they? No, they are not craftily cubed egos. They are not known by their color or creed. Their lives are not their occupations. They are single names and complete by themselves. Each is a story of his own, a picture complete in herself. And their life may read like a fairy tale. Brave, defiant, unruly and yet so innocent! Joy is their being, harking the dawn of an eternal land. And here we are, de-programming our codes so as to incorporate a greater flexibility of operation. Once the new program is in place, the older version feels real stale…

The MBA crowd of Pune thoroughly disgusted me. They always had a grave look on their pale faces which read, “Job milah kya?” (Did you get a job?) The same could be true for all academically oriented minds, all those who embark on a program which is meant to serve as a passport to abundance. Silly oafs! True Abundance is Within! Within! Within! At the same time, I was swept away by an angel I met at a party. This angel wore mini skirts too, but before I could capitalize on the fluttering vibes that we shared, she flew away to her job with Singapore Airlines. Something was definitely stirring in the depths of my excited soul, I could feel it, hence the skirmishes of competing emotions.

“How would you feel
if you could be
close to me
while I searched
for the smile
that has left your lips?

Flickering in those eyes
that I could see
something more beyond,
doorway to an untouched part
of my mind.

Wonder why, wonder where
is the memory,
lost in the emptiness
of these words,
and the elusiveness
Of this moment...”

I was mighty pleased to see young couples on an after-office rendezvous spree at the precincts of Asiatic, opposite Churchgate station in Mumbai while I waited for Her. A certain guy came around and picked up a rose from the florist as I watched him pace up and down the pavement. Suddenly from my left, a girl comes up and spots him. I caught her chuckling to herself before they mingled and walked away together. We were soon seated at a corner of Sundance Café exchanging pleasantries and there was a kind of hush, all over the world.

She: “Why have we stopped believing in miracles?”
He: “Maybe because the bond between us has weakened.”
She: “How come?”
He: “We think we are all distinct separate beings, and have very little to do with each other. We always seek joy outside of us, failing to understand that it is the outcome of the joy within, the spilling over of an inner movement.”

She probably sensed my thoughts turning grave. “Now, now Pepsi where's your fizz?” One moment of thought and I said, “I am running out of soda, give me a kiss!” Back came that sunny smile, and sunshine filled up everywhere. Okay, okay, only that small corner of a restaurant but then, love always feels like exaggerating.

“I live in your silences
the thoughts you don't know
so much joy springs inside of me
in moments together when
you speak and you smile
filling me with wonder how
you make me happy, then
as our laughter dies away
in the silence I remember,
the lonely roads I walked
those storms I had to face
those rainy empty days,
ignorant who I was
and what I was doing
with a worthless me,
spending all my time for
people who pretend so well
You were the lost one I found
to discover Someone so like me
Half lonely, half happy,
Half hopeful, half scared,
Half knowing, half growing,
And then all that fuss...
Looking back
at the selfish years
of a desperate life
the ways to love unknown,
A pensive quest ending
in a plunging free fall
into the waves of love,
Lost in You
and the unfolding universe
Within.”

Something keeps changing in the depths. It is not reflected in the old people that we leave behind, every now and then, but in the freshness of an ideal that we see in every new face that we meet.

It is so much more difficult to be an authentic person connected to the True Self than to get caught up in a wave of ugly thoughts perpetrated by forces working in our midst through unconscious people. It is therefore more difficult to be joyous in a simple way than to be busy and important. Perhaps more difficult to love for simple reasons than search for companionship with complicated minds.

Newspapers scream the headlines written in bold, snatched by eager minds on early mornings while the crisp air, touched by the rays of dawn go by, un-noticed, un-enjoyed. Is it me or is it the world? Can I break away and live a truly joyous life or will I too go the dusty crowded way? Can I brave the flight and soar on the wings within or get trampled by the rush of fearsome beliefs? Do we simplify or complicate? And then, do we simplify in a complicated way or complicate in a simple manner? Life can get so disgusting in this 21st century life, on Earth No.17, in Galaxy No. what???

But Something unique is happening. Something quite beyond the established manner of understanding, something beyond the scope of human knowledge and experience.

“There is Someone you would like to Be
An unknown person you would like to Know
There is Something you would like to See
An unknown place you would like to Go
Maybe it is Here.. Maybe it is Now !!!”

What do I call you, enigma of my heart? You have smiled at me from so many faces, troubled me with so many disguises, that I am fed up. I want to rip them off and find you forever but then, I know you are there so you cannot elude me, although you will never stop surprising me.

I'll never find you in one SINGLE person, that much I almost believe. You are the sum total of ALL my lovers and each of them must be there, somewhere, playing their elusive role, unsure what they feel, lacking the courage to express their longing.

The clouds have dissolved and my sky is so blue, fresh smelling meadows full of smiling flowers. To hold you in my arms and feel us merge into ONE, surprised that the seasons of longing now seem like a dream. This scene before my eyes, this chapter opened to my life is not one that has been written before, I am writing it now and You are its enigmatic counterpart too, trying to fit the jig-saw pieces of this gigantic mystery.

Life is connected, Love is spontaneous and each time we find it, we make love that wasn't there before, laying it on wounds that have not yet healed, exploring a part of Paradise not seen before.

The Other..

“No, not the fragrance of your perfume,
but the familiar smell of you.
No, not the beauty of your dresses,
but beauty enhanced in you.
No, not the color on your fingernails,
but the exquisite pattern of your hands.
No, not the dangling things on your ears,
but the tenderness when you listen.
No, not the hinting excitement of your eyes,
but the elusive weakness when you smile.
No, not your sensuous innerwear,
but the mystic aura inside you.
No, not your wishes to go somewhere,
but dreams of the inner landscape.
No, not your memories of shattered relationships,
but the omnipresence in relations.
No, not our plans,
but the plan that we are.
No, not You, I and The Universe,
but The Universe between us.”

We are initially carried away by the beauty of knowing that deep warm feeling of connection. When we sit down to chat, we realize it is the same story. Trying to make ends meet, trying to make sense of life. The ultimate pleasure beckons, and at first we are thrilled in its discovery but slowly it becomes a little too familiar. New things always become old and corny. We keep trying to live a new day everyday but it is the same life anyway. Where is that awareness that makes everything old seem new? But there is NOTHING new! Everything just changes its appearance and form but the content is always the same!! The same atoms and molecules disintegrating only to integrate themselves in increasingly imaginative ways. Everyone is just a reflection of what we ourselves once were or will be. And whatever we do, it is to arrive at this wonderful answer to a seemingly endless riddle!!!

So we choose to ignore the drudgery of everyday life doing all the trivial things. Days which only serve as links between those special moments of enchantment, when we suddenly become aware that in the hidden layers of our yesterdays, todays and tomorrows, behind all that clatter of our possessions and thoughts and feelings and memories and hopes, lies Something that binds everything and we are a tiny precious part of it... that somehow we are significant and our being here makes a little difference, whatever that difference may be.

(.*_*.)

1. Glen Campbell, Like a Rhinestone Cowboy.
2. Ghati, from the Western Ghats of India
3. Phoren, another twist of the Indian tongue for “foreign.”