VIMALANANDA’S INTEREST IN his spiritual children’ had been corrod ing for some time, for they were proving to be no more dedicated than Shan karacharya’s ‘sons. It waned yet further on the morning that he had a visitation from Doshi’s wife. She and Doshi had come to Poona that weekend to accompany us for some homa nearby, and were staying in the hotel room that was next door to Vimalananda’s. Apparently these two, conniving per haps with some of the other children, had decided that it was time for Vima lananda to part with some of his Tantric sexual knowledge. Mrs. Doshi had therefore knocked at Vimalananda’s door braless, her sari barely covering her sagging middle-aged bosoms, to beseech this expert for a Vajroli practicum, or at the very least a how-to course in Lata Mudra. It was very difficult for me to see how the evidently dissolute Mrs. Doshi could have any chance to suc ceed at Lata Mudra, a practice in which two sexual partners invoke Lord Shiva and his Grand Consort Parvati into their bodies before they dally together. How then could she even dream of Vajroli, in which you use your genitals to suck up your partner’s secretions during intercourse?
As I remembered Vimalananda’s often-repeated advice“Just slow down and refinement occurs automatically, especially in sex”-it became obvious that the contrapositive must be equally true: “Just speed up and coarseness will overtake you, especially in sex.” I was racking my brain for some worthy comment to offer my offended mentor when Vimalananda spat out, “Who does she think she is? Does she think I’ll see her naked boobs and lose con trol? I’ve seen much better than hers, and I’m still in control!”
Calming him down with sweet words being now quite out of the question I decied to try discharge the rest of his repugnance at her wasteful haste by first intensifying it: “Maybe,” I said, “she thinks she’s become some great Bhairavi,”a Bhairavi being the female in a Lata Mudra partnership, to which
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he replied, “Bhairavi, my foot! Can you be a Bhairavi if you are completely lacking in niyama? To succeed at any sort of sadhana you first have to learn to say NO to the things that are preventing you from making progress. Roshni has been able to make some progress in her sadhana because she’s learned the three stages of‘no.”"
“The three stages of’no’?”.
“Yes. The first stage is n-o-no. No! If that doesn’t work, move up to g-0 go. Go! Get lost! That will usually work, but if it doesn’t, then you have to get tough, and you say F.O.! F.O. is bound to do the trick."
The Doshi incident multiplied Vimalananda’s ire with my recently inaugu rated semi-romantic liaison with one of my fellow Ayurvedic students. He was unhappy that I spent time with this girl that I could have spent meditat ing or studying instead; he was concerned that some indiscretion of ours might be seized upon by my enemies at the college and used to attack me; he was wary of having the girl’s reputation ruined, particularly if we became physically intimate (which she and I both realized would be highly unwise); he did not care much for the girl herself.
It was in this rather vitiated climate that, not long after the Balam Bhat Faram-Shankaracharya discourse, he sat me down and said to me, “Your Sade Sati is about to begin."
His tone of voice alarmed me, though the words themselves were not overly sinister; sade sati means ‘seven and a half’ in Hindi. I tried to sound plucky: “The’seven-and-a-half??”
“Yes. The Sade Sati is the seven-and-a-half year period during which Sat urn will afflict the Moon in your horoscope.” This was sounding less and less pleasant. “In Jyotish we respect the Sun as the planet of light, but we regard its effects as harsh; its light burns’ you. The Moon’s light, however, cools and nourishes you, which makes the Moon the most important planet in Jyo tish-after Saturn. When Saturn, the planet of dryness, constriction and dis appointment, transits the Moon it pinches off the flow of life’s juice and promotes desolation."
Not a very attractive prospect. I tried to keep my gorge from rising.
“How is Saturn,” I asked slowly, to throttle down my racing mind,“going to affect me?”
“It will affect you in the same way that all the other planets affect you: by its subtle gravity. The planets you see in the sky are gross, physical structures that have a minor effect on us. But each of these gross planets is the physical reflection of a subtle planet whose gravity affects us strongly. Saturn’s subtle gravity spares no one: not his fellow planets, not his fellow devas, not even his father the Sun. Even the Rishis are affected. By nourishing the Sun the Rishis
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are able to direct the influence of the Sun on themselves and on the world in general. One of the many benefits they gain thereby is some control over Sat urn. But only some, for even they sometimes fall under Saturn’s shadow. As long as they exist on the earth even the Rishis have to be concerned about Saturn. Think of Parashara; even he did not escape, in spite of being an ex pert in astrology.”
“Great! So now I’m finished. What is going to happen to me? Should I make out my will?”
“No, but I may need to. One of the main effects of the Sade Sati is Chatra Bhanga.”
“‘The Breaking of the Umbrella?”
“Exactly. An umbrella is a very useful thing, right? It keeps the sun and rain off your head; it protects you from the elements, from the outside world. The parents and grandparents of a small child form its umbrella. Sade Sati tends to cause those relatives to be ‘broken—to disappear from the scene somehow.”
“By dying, for example?"
“Yes, or going to jail, being kidnaped, or simply running away. Roshni’s Sade Sati begins when yours does, because her Moon occupies the same con stellation that yours does. You and Roshni both treat me as a father, which makes me doubt that the effect on me is going to be very good. Your parents and Roshni’s mother will probably also be affected.” Prescient words these: Vimalananda died midway through this Sade Sati, my mother came very close to death a few months therefater, and a few months after that Roshni’s mother died, well before the period ended for the two of us.
“Is there anything at all good about the Sade Sati?”
“Well, the best time for you to perform any sadhana is when Saturn turns his ‘gaze’ on you, when the influence of Saturn predominates in your horo scope. If you cooperate Saturn can make you experience great spiritual heights. You should always respect Saturn, but never be afraid of him. Ortho dox people are afraid of Saturn; they treat him like the Devil incarnate. But if they really are so pure why should they be worried about Saturn?”
“What should I do?"
“One approach to problem planets is to wear gems and perform rituals to placate them. Another approach is to have full faith in your deity and request Him or Her to take care of everything. I prefer the latter approach, except that when it comes to Saturn you really have to have absolute faith in your personal deity if you want to be protected. If your faith is not total Saturn will still be able to affect you. You may therefore want to diminish Saturn’s ef fects–not eliminate them, which is not possible, but at least reduce them. To
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do this you can either worship Saturn, or you can worship Shiva, especially in his incarnation as Anjaneya.
“Look at that photo of Anjaneya there on the wall. Do you see the mace he holds on his shoulder?”
“Yes,” I replied with unnecessary peevishiness.
“I have told you before that Anjaneya’s mace controls all the planets ex cept Saturn, who is controlled by His tail. But what does that mean? ‘Hanu man’s mace’ is the name of a mudra, a hand gesture, which is nothing but a part of nyasa. Nyasa is a way to place the deity you are worshipping into your subtle body so that your deity can pervade your being. A sadhaka makes his internal temple sacred by means of nyasa so that his beloved deity will find it inviting to enter him. When you can properly perform ‘Hanu man’s mace’ and you use it with the appropriate mantra Anjaneya can enter you. Then He can do the work of controlling the planets instead of you. Un til you have realized Hanuman in yourself this mudra will give only minor results. Once Anjaneya performs that mudra through you, though, the con trol will be perfect.”
“I have not yet realized Anjaneya in myself.” I said with real contrition. “I will continue to worship Anjaneya, but the results I will obtain are bound to continue to be limited. Is there anything I can do in addition?"
“Yes, there is. You should read the Shani Mahatmya (‘The Greatness of Sat urn°4); that will help you too.”
Impressed by Vimalananda’s seriousness I went out straightway to get my self a copy of The Greatness of Saturn and began to read it. As if by way of re inforcement-Nature confirming the rightness of this act—Saturn popped up for me on my very next trip to the race track.
“You see that old fellow over there in the Maharashtrian dhoti, vest and hat?" said Vimalananda, pointing downwards between races. “That is Desh pande, from Poona. One year he bought a foal that had something wrong with its palate. Whenever it tried to eat it would regurgitate some of its food. Every vet who inspected it said it was incurable without a complicated operation. All of us, including me, thought Deshpande was a fool for wast ing his money on it. But he knows some Ayurveda and worked wonders on that horse, I tell you, wonders. He named it Akhlakh, and it won races for him.”
“Akhlakh!” I said loudly. “That’s the name of the horse from The Greatness of Saturn, the one that carried King Vikramaditya away into the sky when he sat down on its back!”
- The Greatness of Saturn, English translation of the Shani Mahatmya, published 1997 by
Sadhana Publications.
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“Very good! Now why Deshpande would name his horse Akhlakh is com pletely beyond me, unless he thought that somehow that name was going to make it fly down the track.”
“Maybe he thought it would make Saturn happy.” “Maybe. If only it were so easy to satisfy Saturn.”
Saturn was still much on my mind as I prepared at Vimalananda’s behest to leave for the United States and begin to lecture on Ayurveda. He had al ready forced me to write one little book which Dr. Martanda had volunteered to publish. He had also arranged for a dinner meeting in Poona to introduce me to various newspaper reporters who reciprocated for the good food and copious drink they were served by dutifully writing glowing accounts of my genius. I had no desire to leave Vimalananda to go to work in the West, but he kept reminding me of the rnas to my parents and my homeland which re mained outstanding, rnas which I would do better to pay off now rather than later. “And besides," he would say, “think how happy it will make your parents feel for you to make a success of yourself! Don’t you think they must be wor ried about whether or not you’ll be properly set up in life before they die? Don’t you want to take that load of their minds?”
One day when he was going on in this vein I interrupted him with, “But I’m going to a country filled with asuras, where the food will be totally im pregnated with commercial gravity. I’m no saint; how am I ever going to save myself from being ruined?"
“Don’t worry, my boy,” he said compassionately, “I will always be there with you. Whenever you are troubled remember Anjaneya. With Anjaneya’s help you will never get bogged down in the quicksand.” Then he added, as if in afterthought, “If only all those monkeys over in America would worship Anjaneya they might save themselves from being stuck also."
He had compared Westerners to monkeys before, but I took this reference to heart, and testily asked him, “Aren’t people in India monkeys too?"
“I know what I am saying," he replied serenely. “Listen now to why I say it. Though Ramachandra, the seventh of Vishnu’s Avataras, has long since left Earth His dedicated devotee, the immortal Anjaneya, remains. So do the blessings that Lord Rama gave while He walked on Earth, blessings whose ef fects can be felt even today. I take my mind back to the Dvapara Yuga, per haps a million years ago, when Rama made three promises. The first was to Jatayu, the eagle who tried to rescue Sita from Ravana without even knowing who She was. Rama promised Jatayu that in Kali Yuga he would be wor shipped and adored as perfectly humane, even though a bird. By tempera ment eagles are killers, but Lord Rama gave Jatayu the powers of sympathy and compassion, to shelter all under his wings. Rama even took Jatayu’s head
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in His lap when the old bird died, which is something He did not even do for His own father Dasharatha.
“Whose symbol is the eagle? America’s. America is the first country to help anywhere in the world in time of famine, flood or other disaster. Americans are generous by nature and love to give to others who don’t have enough. And they do it just for the sake of doing it. Not for gain, but because it is to be done, just as Jatayu did for Sita. Some say that in Kali Yuga the giving of gifts is the highest form of religious merit. As Americans have given a great deal they have collected considerable spiritual benefit. Yes, they have also made mis takes, like Vietnam, but they have still done more good than anyone else has. So, America is Lord Rama’s blessing to this Earth through the eagle Jatayu.
“Rama’s second promise was to the monkeys who built the bridge to Lanka. They were blessed that in Kali Yuga they would become great inven tors and innovators and would rule the world. This also refers to America. The Americans are ruling the world and are responsible for most of the great inventions that have so radically changed the world. I call your fellow coun trymen monkeys because they are descended from monkeys. Even they be lieve that they are descended from monkeys! But now they have forgotten their ancestry and are experimenting on monkeys. The curses they are re ceiving from their monkey brethren are rapidly eroding this blessing that Lord Rama gave them.
“The third promise was to Sita, that women will come forward in Kali Yuga. And America is the leader in making women the absolute equals of men. This is why I say that America has been triply blessed. I am so fond of America because of these blessings, not because of its riches or power, neither of which will last forever. They may not last very much longer, in fact, be cause America is wasting both its riches and its power at a very high rate of speed. Still, the Americans have Rama’s three blessings, and also blessings from Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda. So they will con tinue to thrive—for a while.
“Now, was no one else blessed by Lord Rama? Well, Russia was; otherwise how could it have ever become a superpower? Russia’s symbol is the bear. The bear Jambavant did help Lord Rama in His quest for Sita, but not as much as the monkeys did. This means that Russia will never have ascendancy over America. Thank God for that; I hate communism!
“Another reason that America is strong can be discovered in numerology. How many states does America have? Fifty: 5 + 0 = 5. Mark my words, if the United States ever adds another state they will be asking for trouble. They use five-pointed stars on their flags, military vehicles, etc. Five is the number of Guru, or Brihaspati—the planet Jupiter—who is the world’s protector. And
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five is also the number of magic and mystery. The Greeks used to go into bat tle with their word for five painted on their shields. Also, the American flag has thirteen stripes: 1 + 3 = 4. Four is the number for foundation, so their foundation is firm. As I always say, if the foundation is strong the building will last; if not it will surely fall.”
“Surely you prefer the six-pointed star to the five-pointed star?” Vima lananda used the six-pointed star as the yantra in the bottom of his firepit when he performed homa.
“They are different, but they are both good. The Jews call the six-pointed star the Star of David, and David was no fool to use this star. It is one of the reasons that the Israeli army always wins. You may not have noticed, but a six-pointed star also appears in the Great Seal of the United States, made out of thirteen individual stars.”
“So America’s foundation is good.”
“Most of it is good. But they have performed some terrible karmas also. Don’t forget that the Americans came into possession of America by theft. Armed robbery, in fact; they used firearms. Shouldn’t armed robbery be a prominent part of their lives today? And since they stole the country by using the Fire Element, shouldn’t they be made to suffer by the Fire Element? We see it already: the whole world is warming up, there are forest fires and droughts everywhere; and if there is ever a nuclear war much of the world will be incinerated.
“And what about drilling oil wells and sucking oil out of the earth? The Americans have taught the world how best to prospect for oil and how pump it from the ground efficiently. Oil is the earth’s blood, so shouldn’t they have their blood sucked in return? They must, and look what their medical science is doing to them: it is sucking their blood. Every time one of them goes to a doctor he gets at least one blood test. One thing is for sure: when all these karmas catch up with them they will truly be ruined. The question is, when will these karmas catch up with them? So long as the Americans can just re main true to their heritage and remember to be generous they will continue to prosper. Whether or not they are able to do so will depend on how well they can improve their own innate natures, their collective svabhava. It will also depend on how well their good qualities can continue to function in the face of the powerful distortion that the weight of all their evil karmas is creat ing. Thanks to Lord Rama’s blessings there is still some hope for them.”
Silence descended for a few moments before he continued.
“I tell you, Robby, there is very little to karma besides blessings and curses. Read the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and you will find blessings and curses on nearly every page, just as you find in your Bible too. I have already
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shown you how blessings and curses worked in the case of Prithviraj and Ak bar. Now listen to how a blessing influenced a famous Western ruler.
“Long ago there lived a Rishi who was a Kurma Guru. From the outside he would sit silently like a tortoise (kurma), seemingly inactive. But on the in side he would secretly watch what his disciples were doing and would help and nourish them from a distance. In that ashram lived Shabari, an old Shudra lady who used to sweep and scrub to keep the place clean. One day the Rishi’s pet disciple came by and felt compassion for her. He asked her, ‘Ma, do you do any kind of sadhana?’
“She replied, My son, I am just a poor illiterate woman; I know nothing of Sanskrit.
“The boy told her, ‘Ma, even if you can’t recite the Veda you can still call on God. You just repeat, “Master, when will you come? Master, when will you come? I am making everything clean for You.” Repeat this all the time, when you are doing your work and when you are at home, and you will see the re sult. He gave her this phrase as a mantra in her mother tongue so she would be able to pronounce it. Whatever a Rishi gives you to recite is a mantra, no matter what language it is in or whether it is grammatically correct or not.
That is the power of a Rishi.
“Every day, all day long, Shabari repeated her mantra. She did it so long and so well that when Lord Rama, who was God incarnate on earth at that time, came that way He stopped to meet her. He even had to accept her gift of jujube fruits to Him. You see, in a Rishi’s ashram all work according to their capabilities and all get results. Isn’t that the way it should be? The Rishis never refused anyone if they were sincere.
“Shabari was so thrilled that Rama had come to her that she wanted ever thing to be perfect for Him. In order to make sure that Rama would enjoy each fruit she wanted to test them to make sure that they were sweet. So she bit into each jujube and tasted it first before giving it to Him. Now, as you well know people in India never offer any food to anyone else that they have al ready tasted. You would never offer such food to a guest, and most especially not to your Lord and King; that would be one of the gravest of insults.”
“And Shabari didn’t know this?!”
“How could she not have known it? The upper caste people around her would have reminded her of it regularly. But her joy at seeing the Lord Him self was so immense that she forgot everything except wanting to do her ut most to please Him. When Rama looked inside Shabari and saw the depth of her devotion and sincerity, He ate those berries joyfully.
“Rama then blessed Shabari that she would rule as a queen in her next birth. This is the Law of Karma again: first the austerities, then the rewards. She had to
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wait many centuries until a good opportunity presented itself, but eventually Shabari became a queen. In fact, she became Queen Victoria, the Empress of all India. Even though her penance was not of a quality that would have enabled her to become an Indian ruler, she did have the qualifications to become queen of a nation of asuras. The real reason that England, which is a nation of Shudras and Mlecchas (barbarians) as far as we are concerned, was allowed to rule over us was so that Shabari could rule India by ruling England. Because Shabari in her incarnation as Victoria had a vague remembrance of her previous life some of her previous qualities shone through. This explains why she always believed in religious toleration. She was a well-loved queen, and people still remember her here favorably. Why, there’s even a Victoria Memorial in Calcutta.”
“And Victoria Terminus on the Central Railway right here in Bombay!”
“Precisely. Now, after she died Queen Victoria must have descended into some lower womb. This became inevitable because she did not persist with the austerities which had brought her to that position. Wasn’t Queen Victoria distressed in her last days? Here again is the Law of Karma: you do austerities which result in great enjoyments, but then the enjoyments make you forget to continue you austerities and down you go. Tapeshwari se rajeshwari, aur rajeshwari se narakeshwari: penance to riches, and riches to ruination.”
“She needed someone to guide her; where was her guru, the Rishi’s disciple?”
“Well, he had no desire to be born in the West, so she had to go there on her own. But he must still be around somewhere, looking after her from afar like a good Kurma Guru should. The Rishis never forsake their ‘children, even after both they and their children’ have left their bodies. There is no limitation of time, space or causation when it comes to love. If Queen Victo ria had really been lucky she would have had the kind of positive influences around her that Akbar had around him when he became Emperor. Despite his blood-stained heritage he had so many saints blessing him, and had such good samskaras from his past birth as Prithviraj, that he was able to over come his inborn svabhava. Akbar was truly lucky in that like Birbal almost all of the people around him were unique, and amazing.”
“Except his children.”
“No, not at all,” retorted Vimalananda, annoyed. “If his son Salim was his greatest disappointment one of his greatest satisfactions was his daughter Taj. His pet name for her was Dilaram. She was a very simple girl on the outside, but very deep within. Once Akbar asked her, ‘Why don’t you ever dress up well to impress the members of my court?’
“She replied, ‘But I am wearing twenty costumes, and to prove it she took all of them off one by one. When the last was removed she stood there with her hands covering her breasts, not her genitalia.
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“Akbar accosted her furiously: ‘Shameless girl! What do you mean by standing like this before me? Where is your modesty?
“She replied, ‘But father, you have seen me without clothes many times when I was young. Since then these have grown, she said as she indicated her breasts, and this,’ she said, indicating her vulva ‘has not. So I must cover these.
“What could Akbar say then? She was right. Another time she helped him win a crucial game of chess. You know, Akbar was an expert chess player, what is called a shatarangi-he could think one hundred moves ahead. For enjoyment he would use courtiers as chesspieces on the big chessboard of in laid stone that he ordered laid out in his courtyard. You can still see it at Fate hpur Sikri.
“On this occasion he had rather gone overboard. He was playing with one of his viceroys, and was so confident of his superior skills he had bet the vice roy his kingdom, with the added bonus of Dilaram for a wife. Unfortunately Akbar was having an off game, and at one point he had to stop and think hard. He realized that unless he thought of something sensational that he would be finished-checkmated after his next move.
“Then Dilaram came to him and showed him how to win the game. She spoke in a couplet: ‘Move your rook like this, and he will have to move like this; he has no choice. Then move your pawn forward two squares and he will be checkmated, and you will not lose your Dilaram.
“Akbar did as she advised, and won. He tried to make her accept so many things as a reward, but she refused everything. She never married, and when Akbar died she left everything and went to Gokul, where Krishna lived as a child. She was a great devotee of Krishna. When she got to Gokul she said, ‘Here, Krishna, I have come to you. And she merged.”
“A Muslim devotee of Krishna?’
“Is that so hard to believe? Rasa Khan, the author of some of the greatest devotional songs of Krishna ever written, was also a Muslim. So was Khan-i Khanan Rahim, the son of Akbar’s boyhood adviser Bairam Khan. Rahim was something else entirely. When he was governor of the province of Avadh he used to bestow gifts with his hand uplifted and his eyes downcast, to show that God was the real giver, not he.”
Rahim’s wife, Aram Banu Begum, was Akbar’s daughter.
“It was well known in court that though a Muslim Rahim had become a devotee of Krishna. Some of the more bigoted Muslim courtiers were there fore always scheming against him, hoping to trip him up in some way so that he would be humiliated. After a number of abortive schemes they came up with a metrical plot and proclaimed a poetry completion contest. In this sort
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of competition the first line of a couplet is given to which a second line must be appended. The prize goes to whoever creates the best second line, the line which best fits with the first. This sort of challenge, which has been used in In dia since ancient days, was also used to identify someone who had long been missing, or in hiding. In such cases the line that would be publicized would be the first line of a couplet known only to the seeker and the person sought.
“The first line that was concocted for this competition was kaffir he wo jo khyal nahi islam ka, which translates something like this: ‘Whoever does not believe in Islam is an infidel. The bigots were sure that they had Rahim now. If in his second line he spoke favorably of Krishna it would be a direct insult to Islam, and he could then be accused of blasphemy. If on the other hand he spoke favorably of Islam everyone would know how weak his devotion for Krishna was, and how willing he was to compromise his principles. His op portunism and his fear of loss of position and freedom would thus disgrace him. Rahim frankly did not like the idea of such a trial by verse. But for some reason Akbar insisted, giving Rahim no choice but to accede to his sover eign’s wishes.
“The fanatics could hardly wait for the month to pass until the day of Ra him’s dishonor, but soon enough that day arrived. All the poets who assem bled before the Emperor spoke glowingly of the greatness of Islam and the perfidies of the unbelievers. All, that is, except Rahim, who was kept for last, that the suspense might magnify the expected stigma. But when it became Rahim’s turn everyone was dumbfounded when he took the given line as the second line of his couplet, not the first. His couplet became:
Khyal he wo lam, gesu mere pyare ghanashyam ka. Kaffir he wo jo khyal nahi islam ka. Belief there is in that‘lam’ that is formed by the locks of my be loved Ghanshyam.
A heretic is anyone who does not believe in this ‘lam. “Rahim had created a verse which actually praised Ghanshyam (Krishna) by making a brilliant play on the Arabic word Islam, which can mean in Hindi ‘this lam’ (is lam). The Arabic character for the sound ’lam’ is a stroke that looks something like the silhouette of someone’s hair. Rahim could thus legitimately take the word islam to mean ’these locks of hair, and could then say that the only true infidel is whoever fails to have faith in Krishna’s hair, that is, in Krishna Himself.
“All the zealots were of course quite discomfited by this sudden turn of events, but what could they do? He had beaten them fair and square. The Em peror was overjoyed that Rahim had acquitted himself so brilliantly. But
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when he summoned Rahim for congratulation Rahim told him, ‘Your Maj esty, you became Emperor thanks to my father, and it is partly thanks to my worship of Krishna that your rule has been maintained. To my knowledge I have never given you any cause for censure, and yet to test me you sanctioned this competition. Now I have lost interest in your court, and I am leaving your service. Despite Akbar’s pleas he left, and then Akbar’s real problems began.”
“This was not exactly a curse?”
“No, Rahim was too noble a man to curse anyone, certainly not the man whose salt he had eaten for so long. No, he simply withdrew the prayers for protection which he had been regularly offering up all during the time that he had been in Akbar’s service. Without those prayers Akbar began to experience the effects of his own karmas more strongly. Akbar still survived for a while longer, for he was lucky enough to have been blessed by a number of saints. The Mughals as a dynasty had even been blessed by one of the Sikh gurus. But when some of the later Mughals tortured the later Sikh gurus the Mughals lost that blessing. This led them to eventually lose India to the British.
“And how do you think the British lost India? They might still be ruling here now were it not for three curses, delivered to them by three kings that they had treacherously overthrown and sent into exile. One was King Thibaw of Burma, who was such a good sadhaka that he could even perform a little Vajroli. Another was Wajid Ali Shah, the ruler of Avadh, who had so per fected his sadhana that Krishna Himself would come and dance before him. And the third was the last of the Mughals, Bahadur Shah Zafar, who was a true poet. His last poem was a heartbroken lament for his fate; ‘How ill starred you are, Zafar, that for your burial you could not even obtain two yards of earth in the bylane of your beloved, namely India. At one time he had’owned’ all of India; now he retained not even six feet worth of his cher ished country in which to be buried. And it was all because of the Britishers. Can you imagine the anguish that he and the other two rulers must have felt as they died? Anguish that was strong enough to bring down the British Em pire? That is the power of a real curse. So long as Victoria ruled the Rishi’s blessing protected her in her position as Mistress of India. As soon as she died these curses were free to exert their effects since none of her successors had the kind of blessing that she had had. Curses and blessings: the Law of Karma. Remember that, my boy, when you are over there in your country.”
My departure for the United States at the end of August 1980 coincided al most to the day with the start of my Sade Sati. During my absence from the
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scene Vimalananda continued to procure horseflesh, beginning with Red stone, whose other half he purchased from Erach Ghasvala. He also obtained in partnership with Tehmul a very likely-looking filly that he named Meher unnissa in honor of the Emperor Akbar’s daughter-in-law.
Kamaal slipped out of Vimalananda’s hands in early 1981. After cooling his hooves in first Lafange’s stables and then Tehmul’s yard without ever notch ing a win, we had sent him to be trained by Lalloo Dalal. Lalloo, who was a friend of Tehmul’s, had approached Vimalananda with a promise to make Kamaal win, and there seemed no reason not to let him try. Lalloo trained mainly for Nawab Saheb, a refined member of the minor Muslim nobility who sold jewels to pay for the corn bills of his horses that ran in colors resem bling some peer’s livery. One of Nawab Saheb’s daughters became very friendly with Lalloo; they were seen everywhere together. It was rumored they were having an affair. Wags commented that such an affair was a sensi ble use of her time, for it gave her a crow’s nest view of Lalloo’s plans for Nawab Saheb’s horses.
Despite Dalal’s promise Kamaal seemed to owe nothing to Vimalananda, for he continued to lose even there. But when Vimalananda requested Lalloo to send Kamaal back to Tehmul’s yard Lalloo refused to do so until all his ar rears had been cleared, and he counterattacked by demanding immediate settlement of his unpaid bills for extras. Vimalananda being just then ex ceeedingly low on cash he had little alternative but to transfer Kamaal to Lal loo in payment of those ‘arrears, which seemed suspiciously high. Immediately after the transfer Lalloo shifted his horses east for the Hydera bad season, where Kamaal won without further ado. That sudden win cre ated great suspicion in all our minds. Lalloo’s explanation was a model of innocence: “For some reason the horse decided to take the bit at last. All my hard work on him finally paid off; I only wish it had done so while you still owned him.” Though we might doubt him we had no way to challenge his version of the story, for horses are not machines.
Just before I arrived India again in October 1981, Vimalananda lost his be loved dog Lizoo, who had simply grown too old to continue to live. Vima lananda, who valued love above all else, was hit hard by the loss of this being who loved him purely and unconditionally. I tried to soften the shock of this blow by taking him on a round-the-world tour in December 1981 and Janu ary 1982. A sparkling win by his new filly Meherunnissa on December 26 while he and I were at my parents’ home in New Mexico raised his spirits suf ficiently to spur some of his old enthusiasm. He became so merry, in fact, that he was able to convince my teetotaller parents to sip a little champagne in Meherunnissa’s honor.
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Back in India in January 1982 Vimalananda went to Bangalore to settle with Ghasvala for the other half of Stoney’s second foal. He was accompanied by the scheming Miss Bambhani, who was making noises about entering the racing business herself. But once in Bangalore, Vimalananda discovered that Ghasvala had understood their agreement to be for a half-interest in the first foal only, not the second. Ghasvala, moreover, wanted considerably more for that second foal than Vimalananda was willing or able to pay. As a sop Ghas vala offered him a good deal on another filly, which Vimalananda accepted reluctantly. His heart was set on Stoney’s new foal, and he also questioned whether this other filly’s action (foot-joint configuration) was a little too up right to be healthy. Ghasvala assured him that this would be no problem. Vi malananda named her Ramakda (“Toy”). Though she did endear herself to us with her ‘toy-like’ ways her upright action did in fact interfere with her running, which did nothing to endear Ghasvala to any of us.
In February 1982 Vimalananda took me to meet his Junior Guru Maharaj for the first time. He had not dared introduce me before, for he knew what Guru Maharaj could do to me if he lost his temper. In fact, Vimalananda had sent me off to the United States suddenly in May 1977, ostensibly to recon nect with my family, just days before Guru Maharaj arrived unannounced in Bombay for his first visit there since 1959. Even then Vimalananda refused to let Guru Maharaj in the door until Guru Maharaj promised that nothing would happen to Lizoo so long as he remained there. Lizoo had become a dog due to Guru Maharaj’s curse, after all, and Guru Maharaj wanted to close out his karmic account with her to free himself of that rnanubandhana. On his part Vimalananda wanted both to retain the love of his doggie as long as he could, and to continually remind Guru Maharaj of the repercussions of this curse.
Guru Maharaj had migrated back to his place of residence before I made it back from the United States that year. After completing such a journey he would not venture off his hill again for at least twelve years. If I was to meet him 1 thus had no choice but to proceed to his mountain. Vimalananda ac companied me to protect me, as he had previously protected Lizoo, and to get Guru Maharaj to agree to give Redstone the same kind of riderly treat ment that he had given Stone Ice a decade before. Vimalananda wanted this in trade for doing some unspecified but essential work that Guru Maharaj wanted done. But Guru Maharaj was not ready to deal, and we had to leave empty-handed.
At the door Vimalananda said to Guru Maharaj, “At least do something for my boy here; do some Rakta Shuddhi (purification of the blood) for him!” At this Guru Maharaj, whose love was truly unparalleled, stared at me with
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studied bluster, pulled hard on my hair, and started to sting me with slaps about the body. “So, you want Rakta Shuddhi, do you?” he shouted, and after he had finished his work he said, “OK, that’s Rakta Shuddhi!”
A beaming Vimalananda hugged me as we walked toward the car. “What was all that about?” I wondered aloud.
“Rakta Shuddhi-great! He’s removed a number of your karmas that have been perverting your mind. You’ll be much improved now, whether you like it or not.”
I began to think that Vimalananda had partially turned me over to Guru Maharaj, as if saying, “I don’t know what to do with this one, Maharaj; you handle him.” As time went by I discovered the truth of this surmise; Guru Maharaj later told me that he had had to promise Vimalananda that he would not kill me while he was improving me. However, in the coming years Guru Maharaj took pains to harass me over such things as my then girlfriend and my diet, and came near to causing me serious grief in the imbroglio over Aghori Baba’s stick—which is another story.
As Vimalananda and I drove away from Guru Maharaj on the day of that last meeting they were to have in the flesh we saw two pigs coupling–a sight which sent Vimalananda into a rapture of joy: “Guru Maharaj has not de serted me yet! Redstone will win very soon!” And so he did.
Shortly after Redstone’s first win I was sitting with Vimalananda in Bom bay when Erach Ghasvala called with the sad news of sudden deaths of both Stoney and her new foal. I feared Vimalananda would become distraught, but he was actually happy: “She is free now,” he said, “to take a better rebirth, to continue her development. Shouldn’t I be overjoyed about that, if I truly love her? Moreover, I now have her son Redstone with me, so the karmic link continues.
“And besides, Erach didn’t deserve to have her. He agreed to take her not out of love for her but because he thought he’d be able to make lots of money off her children. Breeding animals for sale is a big karma, even if you are not raising them for slaughter. This is why I never bred my Lizoo. I had no place to keep all her puppies myself, and if I had given them away I would not have been able to keep track of what was happening to them. If one had gone to a family that tortured it I would have had to bear most of the blame, first be cause I had arranged for it to be brought into the world and then because I placed it with that family. Animals are as big a responsibility as people. Or maybe bigger, in that they can’t speak up for themselves.” Though I knew that Vimalananda had had some hand in the unexpected demise of mare and foal-I had seen him at work too often to think otherwise he never admit ted any complicity.
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Now that Redstone was the only son Stone Ice would ever foal Vima lananda paid even more attention to him, and while we continued to pamper all the horses by bringing them carrots, apples and other treats Redstone re ceived extra-special pampering. One reason that Vimalananda liked Red stone was a certain whorl of hair located in an auspicious spot on his body. He was also overjoyed that Redstone was not an asrudar, a ‘horse who will make you cry. In such animals the whorl on their foreheads is so low that they can see it. An asrudar makes you weep by mangling your prosperity; ei ther it will personally bankrupt you by losing when you have bet on it heavily, or it will make money for you even while it is causing your business to fail. Stone Ice’s perfect star on her forehead, well above the line of her eyes, was one of the things which made her lucky, Vimalananda, who had learned what he knew of horse markings from a Maharashtrian nobleman, the Chief of Jat, would point out such signs to me when he saw them. One strongly propi tious combination is the panchakalyana (“five auspicious markings”), which is defined as a horse who sports four white socks and a white forehead blaze.
The American Stud Book, a copy of which I had brought Vimalananda from the United States, spurred his interest in Redstone’s possibilities yet fur ther. He would spend hours pouring over the permutations and combina tions created by such noble progenitors as Potoo000000 (Pot8os, or Potatoes) and Waxy, or studying the ramifications of the fact that about 90% of all thoroughbreds are descended from a single stallion named Eclipse who was foaled during an eclipse and never lost a race. We pondered such ques tions as coat color inheritance-chestnut, bay, brown, black, grey, red roan and blue roan-and why most of the issue in the line of a horse named Gera nium had light-colored eyes. Equine, human and divine lineages became a favored topic of our conversation as he enhanced my knowledge both of horseflesh and of the genealogical complexities of Indian myth.
Ancestry even crept into seemingly unrelated subjects, as it did on the evening of a day during which we had discussed with a vet effective treat ments for the ‘sand cracks’ that afflict the hooves of certain horses. Vima lananda began that evening by musing on the nature of the Three Gunas: Sattva (equilibrium), Rajas (activity), and Tamas (inertia). Devas basically have Sattvic intellect, asuras Tamasic intellect, and humans Rajasic intellect. To advance spiritually you first replace Rajas and Tamas with Sattva in your consciousness, and then use Sattva to conquer Sattva itself, that you may go beyond the Gunas. Good karma is basically something that helps free you from your rnanubandhanas and the bondage of Rajas and Tamas; bad kar mas have the opposite effect. Enlightenment lies beyond the influence of all of these gunas.
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As he was meandering along in this vein inspiration suddenly hit him, and he slipped into story mode:
“It happened once during the reign of Caliph Haroun el-Rashid that three marijuana-smokers who were sitting in the main bazaar of the city of Bagh dad started to have a loud argument about which of them was greatest. They made such a noise that they were called in before the caliph, who asked them who they were.”
“Who were they actually?”
“They were actually Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. Now please listen. The first said, ‘I am an expert on horses’ pedigrees. The second said, “I can tell every thing about a man from his face.’ When the caliph turned to the third that man said, “I think it will be better if I don’t tell your majesty who I am, be cause if I do you will have my throat cut.’
This man’s cheek immediately enraged the king, who ordered all three to be confined until he had some opportunity to test their abilities. The first two were housed together and received a regular ration from the palace kitchen, while the third, still smiling, was kept alone and got nothing to eat.
“One day, when the caliph was in a peculiar frame of mind, he sent for the three and told them he was ready to take up the matter of their examinations. He brought out a horse and asked the first man if it was purebred.
“After looking it over the man told the king, Definitely not!
“The king became wild and said, ‘How can this horse, which is a present from the Shah of Iran, not be purebred? Tell me how you know or you will die for it!
“The first man answered, ‘I merely looked at the crack in his hoof. All for est animals have cracked hooves. This horse must have also come from the forest, where the rough ground has caused this crack
“The king was so shocked that he could say nothing further. He then turned to the second man and said, ‘Now, am I of royal lineage or not? Tell me my true lineage!’ He was thinking that he would hear that he was of the family of the daughter of Hazrat Imam Hussein. Imagine his reaction when the second man prefaced his remarks with, ‘First promise me that you will not punish me for my bluntness,’ and said upon receiving that promise, ‘You are the son of a cook.
“The king drew his sword, just as he had after the reply of the first, and said, ‘If you cannot prove that impossible statement you will surely die?
“The man responded calmly, “Please ask your mother. *The caliph rushed to the harem, found his mother, and with drawn sword and eyes reddened with anger demanded, ‘Who was my father? The late king, or a cook?’
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“His mother looked at him compassionately and said, ‘My son, your father was very old when we married. He could never produce children, and it greatly worried me that there was no heir to the throne. While I was wonder ing what to do I noticed a young cook in the kitchen, strong and handsome to look at. You were conceived after we slept together.
“The sobered caliph returned to his court and said to the second man, ‘You were absolutely right, but how did you know?
“The man answered, ‘It was very easy, your majesty. You sent us rations of food while we were being kept in your palace. No real king would keep an ac count of how much food his guests were eating; only a cook would.
“Now the speechless king had nothing left to ask the third man—who was really Sattva—so he was given leave to go with the other two, without ever dis closing his own special capacity. After all, a spiritual man should never disclose his capacities to anyone. And the caliph learned the lesson of his lifetime.”
The lineage question took a turn for the somber when in spring 1982 the war for the Falkland Islands began. This conflict, coupled with the ingrati tude of certain Americans of his acquaintance, caused the lovely positivity that Vimalananda felt towards Westerners—which had swelled during his re cent world tour—to evaporate with the sizzle of water on a hot griddle, While in the army he had commanded Gurkhas, and was proud of the way they acquitted themselves during this invasion. But he was contemptuous of the operation as a whole: “The Brits have been very lucky in this war,” he ob served sourly, “to have America helping them. Otherwise their entire inva sion fleet would have been sunk by now by the Argentine Air Force. The Americans were very clever: they sold the right bombs to the Argentines, but gave them the wrong fuses. Without the right fuses how would they explodt? Would the Americans have dared to do this to anyone else? No, Thatcher was very clever. She played on Reagan’s prejudices by subtly suggesting to him that the Anglo-Saxon countries should stick together, and Reagan fell for her bait hook, line and sinker.
“But Thatcher is no Victoria, and if she thinks that war can salvage for Brit ain what is left of its empire she had best think again. The Law of Karma is no respecter of persons, places or things. Britain would have been wiser to rec ognize that its day in the sun is past, and to gracefully yield her position of pre-eminence. Had the United Kingdom settled with the Argentine govern ment its grateful populace would have showered the Brits with blessings, which they urgently require. Instead, Thatcher has opened herself and her country to the effects of still more curses, which will enlarge their burdens of karmic debt. This war is going to cost both of them dearly, karmically as well as monetarily.”
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“But what about the karma of the Argentines? They must have done some thing to deserve this?”
“They must have; that is the Law of Karma. Their soldiers killed in the field were destined to die at the hands of those Brits and Gurkhas who invaded; that is fairly straightforward. As for the Argentine generals, well, think of the mountain of evil karmas they had created for themselves by causing so many innocent people to disappear.’ Those karmas had to catch up with them some day.”
“But this defeat is just the beginning for the generals, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes; they have plenty of blood on their hands. They have a lot to suffer yet; the Law of Karma will take good care of them, just like it took care of the Shah of Iran.”
“You are speaking now of the most recent Shah of Iran? The man who is said to have installed a solid gold toilet on his personal jet?”
“Yes, that Shah. Do you remember that he staged his coronation at the an cient Persian capital of Persepolis?”
“I do.” “Persepolis had been a deserted ruin for hundreds of years until the Shah got it into his mind to be crowned there. He wanted to show everyone that he was the legitimate successor to the great Persian emperors of yore, like Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes. But he forgot to ask himself whether those great rulers would enjoy having their ancient citadel invaded by some inconsequential nincompoop. When the Shah’s antics aroused the spirits of those monarchs from their sleep of death they asked themselves, ‘Who is this pip-squeak who dares to strut about comparing himself to us?’ When they looked down on him they saw not a king but the insignificant son of an insignificant cavalry officer who had made himself Shah after a palace coup. All they could hear when this Shah spoke was the barking of an insolent pup. The impudence of this ‘Shah’ who lacked everything that is shahi (regal, majestic) so infuriated the dead emperors that they cursed him. Those were the curses that ended the Shah’s reign, just as surely as the curses of King Thibaw, Wajid Ali Shah, and Bahadur Shah Zafar destroyed the British Empire. If the Shah had re membered who he was, and not tried to pretend to be something that he was not, he might be ruling Iran today.”
“Would it have made a difference if the Shah had actually had some pedi gree, if he had actually been descended from conquerors?”
“It might have; at the very least, it would have made him understand the gravity of the situation into which he was thrusting himself.”
“Do we think it was Saturn who put this coronation idea into the Shah’s mind?”
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“Who else could do it? The Shah’s good karmas had obviously run out, and it had become time for him to experience the results of his myriad evil karmas. Vinasha kale viparita buddhi’when the time for your destruction arrives your mind becomes perverted.””
“And Saturn is just the being to pervert it for you.” “That is his job.” “He certainly does it well.” “Remember that whenever you remember him.”
After Redstone’s next convincing win, in the late spring of 1982, Vima lananda began to suspect that he had a horse who could“go a long way off,” i.e. who could win one of India’s Classic races. The horses entrained for Poona shortly after, and on our way to inspect them there he shared his feel ings with me: “You know, Robby, I thought I had lost my will to live—but I haven’t; not yet! There’s life in the old boy still! And for this I have to thank Mamrabahen. I never wanted to get back into racing, but she forced me to re turn. She did it for her own purposes, no doubt, but just as I blame her for some of my problems I have to thank her for some of my enjoyments, which are due at least in part to her insistence.”
He paused as if in thought, then began again abruptly: “Some years back a certain sadhu lived in Girnar with a few disciples. One day he decided to go off a little way into the jungle and sit in meditation. He was really a good sadhu, and after a short while he was doing so well that Indra became fright ened and decided to send an apsaras down to disturb him.”
In the mythology of the Puranas Indra is always sending some apsaras or another down to disturb some sadhu or other, for a hard-working sadhu who performs enough penance may be elevated by the powers-that-be to the Indra-state, and every Indra will try to protect his own position.
“The apsaras appeared in front of him to tantalize him, but he was so deep in meditation that he didn’t know what was going on around him. Then she used a siddhi to become tiny, and started to dance on him. Still no effect. First she danced on his body, then on his face, and then she jumped onto his mat ted locks. At last the sadhu felt a disturbance, perceived what was going on, and lost his temper. He said to her, ‘Become a female monkey!’ Immediately she became a female monkey.
“When she realized what had happened she began to cry, but he told her to keep quiet and not to worry. He took her back to his ashram and ordered his disciples to feed her sweets and good food whenever she was hungry. Not
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long after that the sadhu left his body, and the monkey lived on in the ashram. When the monkey died she was cremated, and her memorial was placed next to that of the sadhu.
“Look what happened here: Even though the sadhu escaped falling prey to the blandishments of the apsaras he still created some karma for himself, but lost some of his shakti by losing his temper. Similarly, a whole train of karmas has been initiated because of Mamrabahen, but now at least with Redstone there is a chance that we will see some good results of all our work. Nature is so kind!”
He fell silent as we entered the ghats (hills), where all his concentration would be needed, and had me toss a coin, as all drivers did, to the little shrine at the foot of the chief hill. The Konkan coastal strip that contains Bombay is connected with the Deccan Plateau where sits Poona by a road which climbs two thousand feet in the space of a couple of miles. At the time that Vima lananda and I drove it together it was a two-lane highway crowded with the usual Indian transport panoply of trucks, buses, cars, motorcycles, bullock carts and the occasional stray bicyclist, pedestrian and animal. Climbing the ghats was exceptionally stressful because of the need to maintain forward momentum without collision and without overheating the engine. My sen sory awareness became effortlessly heightened when riding with Vima lananda on the ghat section of the Bombay-Poona road as he meticulously preserved gaps between our vehicle and those on the opposite side of the road. I often watched him merrily miss oncoming conveyances by literally no more than an inch or two. “Gauging,” he would say, “it’s all a matter of gaug ing. When your gauging is good you can drive confidently,” whether it be on the road or through life. I had no anxiety as he gauged his way through the ghats since I knew well how well he could control his car; but when we reached that last inch the self-preservation instinct would still send a surge of adrenaline through me anyway, to remind me of my mortality.
One day as we were driving back into Bombay from Poona Vimalananda was so busy chatting with our guest, a horse owner named Willie D’Souza, that he failed to notice that the traffic light in front of us had turned red. In some amazement Willie and I watched Vimalananda forget to stop, but we were less astonished than was the man who had begun to cross the street at about the same time that we barreled into the intersection. Resentment, in credulity, and inspired aggravation flitted in succession across his face as he hurdled out of our way. I was not concerned for his life (Bombay pedestrians are fleet of foot) but I was somewhat troubled that Vimalananda was not too troubled. Seeing this, and eyeing the startled D’Souza, he commented as he drove on, “You should know by now, Robby, that someone is there to prevent
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me from getting into serious trouble even when I goof. And the fellow was not even in serious danger; he had plenty of time to escape. But the look on his face, that was priceless!
“I had a much worse problem the day I was driving down the road, right here in Bombay, when all of a sudden without any warning whatsoever both front wheels fell off! I was shocked, I tell you, shocked! There I sat in the mid dle of the road, holding my useless steering wheel, as I watched my wheels speed away from me. One ended up safely by the side of the road, but the other one rolled all the way across the street and bowled over a bystander. He had to be rushed to hospital, but fortunately was not too seriously injured.” D’Souza and I were now impolitely laughing at the vision of two wayward wheels fleeing the stunned Vimalananda.“There is no security in life, I tell you,” he went on. “One minute you are standing there calmly, minding your own business, and the next you are lying in the street, flattened by a runaway tire!”
The next day as I helped Vimalananda cook lunch I was again reminded of his command over gauging. After we put the food on the fire and went to sit in the other room Vimalananda said, “There is really no end to what you can learn. You know how much I love to cook; and many people have enjoyed my food. I think you will agree with me on that.”
“I have always enjoyed your food.”
“And you know that I have an advantage no Western chef has, thanks to the blessings of Annapurna, the goddess of food. Did I ever tell you what hap pened when Faram’s wife burned the meat?”
“No, I don’t think you have.”
“Well, she burned it absolutely black. She charred it. Faram, as usual, lost his temper and started to shout at her. In the interest of family harmony I told him to shut up, and told her, Ma, please wash all the pieces of meat with soap and water.’ She couldn’t help laughing, and said, ‘Do you know what that will do to it?’ I said, ‘It’s spoiled anyway, isn’t it? So just wash it and don’t argue with me please.’ She washed it, I cooked it, and it came out perfect, without even a hint of burned flavor.”
I had seen his wizardry in the kitchen first-hand, close up, so I believed this story instantly.
“Oh, and by the way, Robby, the food is cooking a little too fast; turn the fire down just slightly.”
Whenever I put a pot on the fire in a kitchen run by Vimalananda I knew that I could safely leave it to cook on its own, in the absolute certainty that the moment anything went wrong with it he would tell me. This was the power of his gauging.
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I adjusted the fire, then thanked him for his care. He took a histrionic whiff of air, said, “Yes, it is. Sometimes when other people are cooking,” he chuck led, “they try to show off how expert they are. I don’t like show-offs, so I can’t help but have a little fun. When they turn away from the food for a moment I will shout, ‘Quick, turn off the fire, the food is burning!’ and before anyone will be able to get there the food will be burnt!”
I laughed too, and was about to tell him what a show-off he was when he retorted: “Well, if they have the ability they can show it off too; who will stop them? What I object to is fakery, pretending to be something you are not. If they were so smart they should be able to turn down the fire from where they are sitting just as easily as I can turn it up.”
Vimalananda’s intolerance for pretenders had more than once before in spired him to show me just how little the run-of-the-mill ‘swami’ in India re ally walked his talk. “Such people show a trick or two and mislead the public into thinking they are some sort of super-dupers,” he would say, before cut ting another godman down to size. “I know one who claims to talk to Parashurama face-to-face. Now, Parashurama is a real Bhagavan, God incar nate, one of the Ten Avataras. Anyone who sees Parashurama loses all interest in worldly things and spends all his time alone. His only answer to people’s questions will be, ‘Leave me alone! Why? Because that is Parashurama’s na ture. Parashurama, who is also known as Bhargava, loves to be alone. He lives almost exclusively on the astral planes and above. Bhargava is also continu ously moving, which means that his devotee would also go on the move. If he doesn’t, and if he says he wants money and an ashram and all sorts of other things, is it logically possible to conclude that he talks to Parashurama face to face? You tell me.”
“Haven’t you ever pretended to be something you’re not?” I asked in mild pique one day after such a diatribe.
“Of course I have,” he said, with a laugh at himself as a memory reared up within him. “Once I was staying with a friend at a Dak Bungalow,” which is a sort of rest house for visiting dignitaries that the government maintains in small towns that lack hotels. “A barber had come to shave me, and when he had me lathered up he said, ‘You know, sir, you look just like Chandramo han, who was a famous movie star of that time. He was a good actor; if you ever get a chance, Robby, go see the movie Pukar. Chandramohan does a beautiful job of playing the Emperor Jehangir in that film.
“I don’t know what came over me, but when the barber said this I smiled and nodded and pointed to myself as if to say, ‘Yes, I am Chandramohan.’ I never actually said in so many words that I was—that would have been too deceptive-but I didn’t correct his misimpression either. The thought that he
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was shaving the great Chandramohan fired up the barber, so he did an excel lent job on my beard. After he left I thought the charade was at an end and I lay down to take a nap.
“I had forgotten, though, that I was in a small town. In Indian villages and towns the barbers act as the news networks. When my companion woke me in alarm from my nap I looked out the window to find the entire Dak Bunga low surrounded by anxious fans, all hoping to see or touch or be touched by the great Chandramohan. It was a hell of a job to extract ourselves from that situation, let me tell you! Ever since then I have thought many times before trying to pretend that I am something I am not. But even in the Chandramo han case I only imitated an actor, not a saint. To imitate a saint is to ask for real trouble. Don’t forget the sadhus in Girnar!”
“What happened to them?”
“Some years back one of the Nawabs of Junagadh (the principality at the base of Mount Girnar) got so fed up with all the fake sadhus and fakirs who were crowding Girnar that he had his men round them all up. Then he ad dressed them: “You shameless idlers! How dare you lie around all day pre tending to mediate! I know that most of you are criminals and good-for nothings. If you are real sadhus, prove it to me! Show me a miracle! If you can’t show me a miracle you are going to have to start working for your food! None of the men was a real saint, so none of them could perform a miracle. The Nawab accordingly had his soldiers put each of them in front of a chakki, a grinding stone, which they had to turn by hand all day long, grinding grain into flour.
“All these phoney holymen bellyached like crazy as they worked, but now it was too late for them to get by just by pretending to be pious. Finally one really good sadhu who had escaped the Nawab’s dragnet came to hear of their humilation and came down the mountain to confront the Nawab.”
“Who was he?” “I don’t know.” I could see that he did.
“This sadhu told the prince, ‘Even if these fellows are crooks you were wrong to lock them up.
“The Nawab, who had no intention of letting some sadhu presume to tell him what to do, replied, “Since you have such a soft spot for these slackers why don’t you go join them in the hoosegow!’ The sadhu shrugged his shoul ders, and accompanied by a police escort went to the prison, where he ad dressed the inmates: ‘When I look at you I am ashamed to be wearing my girwa (ochre-colored renunciate’s clothing); you have stained it so with your hypocrisy! What kind of sadhus and fakirs are you? When the Nawab asked for a miracle could none of you oblige? Stand back!
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“Then that sadhu shouted, “Chakki chalo! Dhana piso! (Turn, grindstones! Grind the grain!). At that, all the stones began to turn on their own. Amazed, the jailers ran to summon the Nawab, who was appropriately impressed by this demonstration. He told that sadhu, ‘Yes, you are the real thing; you can
go.’
“The sadhu replied, ‘No, Nawab Saheb, I can’t go alone; everyone must come with me. Though the Nawab was reluctant to let the frauds go he could not deny the sadhu, and had to set all the sadhus and fakirs free. As they left the jail the good sadhu told them, ‘See that you perform your penance prop erly from now on. If you fail again, you will be expelled from Girnar!”
“Did that lesson reform all those lazybones?” “Yes, for a while.” “Until their natural svabhavas reasserted themselves?”
“Well, it is very difficult to conquer your nature, even after you have de voted your life to your sadhana. Fortunately someone is always there to test anyone who claims to have his nature under control.”
Vimalananda’s love of staging practical examinations of putative saints led him one day to take me with him to pay a call on a baba (“saintly person”). Our visit was a stopover during a test-drive of a used car that Vimalananda was thinking of purchasing, and the hour we spent cooling our heels before we could see the great man did nothing to improve Vimalananda’s temper. Still, as soon as we were ushered into the august presence Vimalananda bowed to him, very low, to show humility. This pleased the baba a great deal. Then he asked Vimalananda what sort of business he was in, and Vima lananda replied, “The machinery business.”
“Oh,” replied the baba, “machinery business very good business.” Then he opened his hand, and some ash poured out onto our expectant palms, for he was one of those people who make things like ash appear from thin air. I col lected both heaps of ash in small pieces of paper and folded them into little bundles, which I put into the car’s glove compartment after we had said our goodbyes. I accidentally left them there when we returned the car, and within the week that car got smashed both from the front and from the rear. Shortly thereafter the baba had a heart attack and later came down with other dis eases. Vimalananda claimed not to know how any of this happened, calling it a coincidence. If so it was a truly conspicuous coincidence; I was mightily im pressed.
“I began by touching his feet,” replied Vimalananda when I brought up the subject, “because in India when you meet a saint you always touch his feet. Touching shows humility, but more importantly it allows you to steal some of the saint’s energy. Generally energy enters the body through the head and
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exits through the feet. A true saint is the embodiment of his deity and the en ergy emanating from him is the energy of that deity. By touching a saint’s feet you collect a little of that energy, which purifies your own consciousness and makes it more subtle. The saint loses some of his own peace of mind by this, which is unfortunate for the saint; this is how many saints go bad. First they achieve a good state, maybe by doing hard penances in strict seclusion. Then when they come back into the world they start absorbing the confusion and attachment of their devotees, and they too become worldly. A sensible saint will never let anyone touch his feet except on special occasions, like Guru Purnima.
“Anyone with subtle intelligence who touches a saint’s feet will be able to learn a great deal about that saint’s innate qualities. Touching this fellow’s feet was my first test; I wanted to see how sensible he was and how much energy he had. He unfortunately scored zero on both counts. Next came the ques tion of my ‘business. If he had any kind of real power at all he should have been able to know that I was in the race horse business and not the machinery business. But he had nothing except ash, which did not impress me. There are so many ways in which to produce ash and trinkets from what seems to be nowhere. It’s too bad that the old man is unwell, but he should have known better than to try to show off. I am just sorry for the poor car; that ash was the cause of its ruination. Now you see how sticky karma can be!”
“Don’t you think you were a little hard on him?”
“Hard?! I was hard on Taat Maharaj. Taat means ‘gunny-sack, which is what this fellow wore. One of my friends brought me to Taat Maharaj by tell ing me he could sit in samadhi for hours at a time while his followers sang and chanted. I didn’t believe it, so I went to have his darshana (the viewing of a saint or deity). Sure enough, I could see that he was merely closing his eyes and fooling everyone. On top of that I was supposed to bow down to him! While I waited there I examined the room carefully and came up with a plan. Back at home I sharpened the point of a long iron nail until it was razor sharp. A few days later I returned to Taat Maharaj and got into the line to touch his lotus feet. When I got to the head of the line I bent down, raised the nail high above my head, and jabbed it into his foot. My God! What a howl came from that charlatan! His bellowings even drowned out the warbles of his singers.”
“Wouldn’t most people have responded to a nail in the foot even if they were in samadhi?”
“No, not if the samadhi is genuine. A person who is in samadhi has no knowledge whatsoever of the outside world so long as he remains in sama dhi. If Taat Maharaj had actually been in samadhi he would have felt nothing
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from that nail, not even a pinprick. But he was just pretending, so he felt it all. Everyone was so stunned that I had time to rush out the door to where an ac complice was waiting in the getaway car, and off we sped. I don’t like to think about what might have happened to me had I been caught!”
“Was there no karma involved in that little escapade?”
“There is karma involved in every activity, but this karma was worth it to me to see that imposter unmasked. I do have certain advantages in this de partment–the advantages of knowing my own karmas and rnanuband hanas- and I can assure you that he deserved what he got from me. Unless you know your rnanubandhanas, though, and know how to negate your kar mas, never try any stunts like this!”
Knowledge of his rnanubandhanas and how to negate them seemed to spur Vimalananda into action when one of the doctors at my college sang the praises of one Dada Maharaj, who was reputed by some in Poona to be a great saint. “We must go have his darshana,” said Vimalananda enthusiasti cally when he heard this news.
“Hah, so now this fellow’s time is up," I replied with some sarcasm.
“Robby," said Vimalananda, feigning hurt, “am I that bad? Just because you have seen a few coincidences should you always make fun of me when I go to meet some ‘saint? What about Madhavbaba?"
Vimalananda’s appreciation for the genuine article caused us always to visit Madhavbaba Patil whenever he came to Poona. Madhavbaba, who lived some two hours or more south of Poona in Narsobawadi, had been so thor ough in his sadhanas that now he spent all of his time in some world other than ours, lost in contemplation of his Beloved. Vimalananda, who had known Madhavbaba for many years, respected him as a good sadhaka, and for his part Madhavbaba, who never appeared to recognize most people but blessed all indiscriminately, always recognized and remembered Vima lananda.
But I knew Madhavbaba was different, and indeed, my prediction regard ing this Dada Maharaj proved to be true. When first we went to Dada Maha raj he met us perfunctorily and informed us that he had no time for us. Perhaps we didn’t seem sufficiently important to him. The very next day, however, he called us back, and personally welcomed us when we came, ex plaining that he had been soundly remonstrated for his gaffe in a dream the night before and wanted to make amends for his negligence. He verbally pic tured for us his spiritual adventures in Rishikesh, when he had seen angels as cending and descending divine staircases, and then described such other visions as seemed to impress his raptly-listening retainers. But as we sat lis tening politely I could see from the set of Vimalananda’s eyes that he felt his
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work there to be completed. His interest in Dada Maharaj evaporated as promptly as it had developed, and the old man did in fact die just a few months later.
During the 1982 monsoon Vimalananda spent even more time than usual in Poona, focusing most of his energies on Redstone’s progress. During the monsoon it is easier to focus on almost anything in Poona rather than in Bombay, when the rain falls like Thor’s hammer onto the backs of anyone unwise enough to get caught out in a downpour. Once or twice each year it rains 18 inches or more in a single day. Then the overworked storm sewers, which can ordinarily handle up to a foot of rain daily, overflow to send nine months worth of accumulated muck into the laps of the luckless commuters scurring back to homes glazed with mold and mildew. The Poona monsoon, by contrast, is better behaved: it rarely rains more than a drizzle during the day, reserving most of its deluges for the evenings and nights. The rare heavy rain there is at most 7 or 8 inches. Poona during the monsoon is like an En glish city during a warm spell: temperate, green and inviting. It is at its pleas antest then, and the racing is cool and elegant.
When Redstone won yet another race, this time on the Poona course’s ver dant turf, Vimalananda determined to try him in the premier “run-up” race for the Classics: The Colonel Pratap Singh of Jodhpur Cup. Part of Vima lananda’s fondness for the race derived from its namesake, Colonel Pratap Singh, sometimes known as “the Bayard of India," who was one of Queen Victoria’s aides-de-camp and who helped lead the Indian Army in France during the First World War. The only problem, he told me, was that it was supposed to be a “hoodoo" race; no horse who won it ever seemed to win any of the Classics.
“A‘hoodoo’ race?” I asked. “You mean races can be cursed too?”
“Anything can be cursed,” he replied. “Houses, cars, clothes. What about the Hope Diamond? I wouldn’t have it even if it was given to me. First of all it was pried loose from a stone image in a South Indian temple, which was hardly likely to put the deity from whom it was stolen into a good mood. And look at its history! Calamity has followed everyone who has ever possessed it. That in itself should be indication enough that it is cursed. So why not races?"
“Do you think the Colonel Pratap Singh Cup is a hoodoo race?”
“Whether or not it is I have decided to run Redstone in it. If he can’t win it it will just prove that he’s not Classic material anyway. Why live in fear? Better to go for broke!”
And so we did. As the countdown for the Big Race ticked by we exhaus tively evaluated Redstone’s trackwork, fitness, appetite and general mood, and kept our fingers thoroughly crossed. In our spare time we made excur
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sions to those local beings, human and ethereal, with whom we had benefi cial rnanubandhanas. One evening we drove to the Sindhi colony in Aundh, near Poona, to meet a family related to one of Vimalananda’s children.’ These people were bickering among themselves continually, and suffering from one disease after another. When Vimalananda visited them he immedi ately detected the problem: a large banyan tree nearby. No one dared to sleep under the tree at night, for it had a’reputation.’ Vimalananda changed all that, as he has done with the many other trees around India which have be come his friends, and asked the head of the household to offer incense to the tree each week.
The man, who must have thought he was very clever, offered incense daily instead until the spirit in the tree came and stood in front of him and asked him what his intentions were. This terrified him enough to remember Vima lananda’s words, and to revert to a weekly offering. “Now everyone in the house is well,” Vimalananda commented, “all the family members cooperate with each other, and the warehouse of the family business is never empty. No matter how much is removed from the warehouse something always remains there. Many other people have seen this tree, offered it incense, and obtained results. Now the family is happy with me, and the tree is also happy with me and their combined blessings add all the more to my karmic account balance as we prepare for Redstone’s test."
The greatest time-squandering of the entire process centered around Das Bapa, a Tantric from Gujarat who claimed to be able to ensure Redstone’s success. Vimalananda was always on the lookout for someone who could give him the reliable race results needed to make money at the track so that he could evade the karma of divining the results himself. He followed the path laid out in a Marathi saying: pavnyacha sota ne vichu maar. “Kill the scorpion with the guest’s staff.” Why soil your own walking stick with the scorpion venom of karma if you can soil someone else’s? (Substitute “penis” for “staff” if you prefer the ribald interpretation of the word sota.) He had interviewed quite a number of candidates: astrologers, mediums, and one fellow who brought with him a little boy and a dark scrying glass for the boy to gaze into. All these previous contestants had flopped abjectly, however; no matter how expert they might be for other people in other places they always failed with Vimalananda. Perhaps it was coincidence, or perhaps it was not Vima lananda’s destiny to win that way. More likely it was Vimalananda, teaching them valuable lessons.
Das Bapa had been brought to us by Mr. Bundaldas, a semi-nobleman with delusions of efficacy. The Bapa made tall claims of having magically fixed bullock races and stuffed ballot boxes by ethereal means. After Vima
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lananda saw some of his capabilities at first hand he lost some of his prelimi nary doubts about the man’s potential. But he was under no illusion as to the source of Das Bapa’s powers: “I do not doubt that he has done good avish karas before,” said Vimalananda. “He has been possessed by the likes of Ma hakali and of Anjaneya. But you haven’t forgotten what happened at the caves, have you? He claimed he was going to do an avishkara of the spirit of the great Guru Gorakh Nath. But Gorakh Nath was there just part of the time; the rest of the time it was just some ordinary little spirit playing about.
“But of course how could we have expected more? Should we imagine that Gorakh Nath, who is immortal, has nothing better to do than to commune with such a mediocre mortal as Das Bapa? And that too, someone with so much karma on his hands? To do much of their work Das Bapa and his own guru have tortured many many dakinis (the spirits of women who died in pregnancy or childbirth), and have not even spared the spirits of tiny babies. You just have no idea of how horrible is the price you have to pay if you fool about with these rituals."
“How about the karmic implications for us if he does some work for us?”
“First, he has offered to do this work of his own accord. He is thinking of some way to eventually profit from us, of course; he is not trying to help us because he loves us. But that’s not the point. The point is that I didn’t ask him to the work, which makes an immense karmic difference. And besides, we first need to see whether or not Nature will permit him to do anything for us before we worry about how to apportion karmic blame or praise. Right now Das Bapa is dancing on the strength of that spirit named Bhima Bapa that he keeps with him. Well, we can stop that, and then we’ll see how much water he’s swimming in.”
“Is digging up dead babies and pregnant women some sort of very primi tive Nara Bali?”
“It could be, but it is not in the way that Das Bapa does it, because he is not offering those spirits to Ma. He is enslaving them for his own use. It is true that from one point of view everything is sacrifice, including devotion, yoga, and even magic. But Das Bapa’s kind of sacrifice is very selfish, and the karma for it will stick to him like glue. This is why the best sacrifice, the best Nara Bali of all, is the sacrifice of your own self. Offer yourself and all you possess, including your most precious possession–your life–to Ma, and She will save you. But she is not going to save Das Bapa. Just wait until these spirits get their revenge, and then you will see how far away from Nara Bali Das Bapa is.”
Das Bapa was far away from us in Poona during the next ten days, three quarters of an hour away in fact, holed up in the quiet of the Fruitwala Dharamsala in Alandi testing out his predictive methods. Each day Vima
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lananda sent me grumbling to Alandi astride Arzoo’s motor scooter to en quire after Das Bapa’s health, ask about any necessities to be brought to him or his assistant from Poona, and remind him by my presence that we were ex pecting results. To me it was a complete waste of two hours each day, as I was becoming surer and surer that Vimalananda was planning to have Das Bapa’s head on a platter.
Das Bapa and his man Friday resurfaced in Poona just in time for his first quiz, which took place on the race day that fell on the Sunday before the Big Race. We had expected a straightforward list of winners, and what we got was Das Bapa insisting on accompanying us to the track so that he could “exam ine” the runners. It was embarrassing to be seen with him, and galling to have to listen to his “advice.” Though he did predict one winner, or maybe it was two, neither was unexpected based on nothing more magical than fitness and form. While he and his cheering section of one crowed over this glorious suc cess it became clear to the rest of us that all that was left to do with him was to boot him out of our lives as graciously as possible. This task was now more difficult as he had begun to protest confidently that after seeing the track he now had the necessary “range” to do a good job of predicting the results of the next week’s races. We packed him off to Alandi again without delay, to “refine” his technique.
During this week Vimalananda thankfully did not force me to make fruit less runs to Alandi. Instead he sent me to plumb Redstone’s prospects at the Bhuleshwar Shiva temple. Vimalananda’s first journey to Bhuleshwar had been with Dr. Lad; they had set out in search of a different temple, but took the wrong road and discovered Bhuleshwar. When I accompanied Vima lananda on his second Bhuleshwar trek we took a different wrong road, up the wrong hillside, following the pavement even after it turned to dirt and then became a track. When we pressed ahead we found ourselves alone and roadless on the hillside squarely amidst a flock of goats. A sweetly-smiling young goatherd then fortuitously appeared to navigate for Vimalananda as he backed up the hill and down to the paved road, whence we drove off to find the right road, and the shrine.
On our third expedition we reached the right hill, but in the deepening twilight took the wrong fork of the road at its base. We then found ourselves ascending by the old road, which had been condemned. It was much too late to turn back when our thoroughfare suddenly deteriorated into a steeply climbing uneven field of fist-sized rocks without any semblance of a guard rail. Only the sum of our collective good karmas, the weight of our tank-like Austin Cambridge station wagon, and Vimalananda’s determination, pluck, and driving skill got us up that hill—but clatter up it we did, and enjoyed our
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darshana. Thereafter, having learned from our experiences and having passed these tests that Shiva (or whoever) had set for us, we made regular, safe outings to the sanctuary.
Bhuleshwar’s architecture, which is unique in that region of Western In dia, suggests that it was built as a fortified Tantric monastery, though no one knows who the Tantrics were or how long they remained in residence there. Whoever it was that held the fort in the latter part of the 18th century ap pears to have run afoul of India’s then paramount power in the person of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, who dispatched his relative Shaistha Khan to crush their resistance. Shaistha Khan presumably invested the base of the hill and laid siege to the monastery, which cannot have held out for very long since its sole source of water is a small cistern within a bat-infested cave. On some fateful day the remaining residents must have sallied out to be slaugh tered; the astral scent of violent death is thickly palpable in the vicinity. Enough local people have seen enough spirits of the unquiet dead there that none of them stays overnight at Bhuleshwar if they can avoid it. When I once spent ten days there meditating in the old guardhouse I could at night clearly hear faint sounds of battle wafting up to me from below and felt acutely the nearby presence of ethereal warriors. On one memorable evening a ghost outfitted in battle armor went so far as to careen through my room. He paid no attention to me and sped on without stopping, engrossed as he was in his ancient, unseen tussle, submerged in his memories of killing and being killed.
Devout visitors to Bhuleshwar walk first down to the cistern to wash their feet and hands, taking care not to drink its water before filtering it through a cloth to remove any lurking Guinea worm larvae. Then they follow from the cistern to the temple a path that is lined with stone heads and torsos that Shaistha Khan’s men hacked from the monastery’s walls. Only vestiges sur vive of the erotica that once adorned the temple’s exterior. Much exquisite sculpture still remains within, including scenes from the Ramayana and Ma habharata, a giant bull, and a female Ganesha, but here also the raiders sav aged the figures, and most of them are missing limbs.
Inside the sanctum sits a stone Shiva linga (phallic symbol of Shiva) which is unusual not for its shape or size but because it can be lifted from its base. Such lingas are ordinarily regarded as worthless, but at Bhuleshwar water perpetually seeps from some unplumbed shaft into the small cavity which the linga covers. The pujari (ritual priest), after removing a little of this water for the worshippers to sip as Shiva’s blessings, places into the cavity a small metal dish filled with some pieces of the bananas and milk-sweets that have been presented for offering, and closes the cavity with the linga. Then every
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one sits patiently, sometimes for several minutes, for a peculiar scratching sound. Once the sound both comes and dies away, the linga is again re moved, and voila! some of the offerings have disappeared.
Our first thought was that some sort of rodent must be entering the cavity to eat the food, but on close inspection we discovered that none of the holes within the cavity are large enough to admit any but the smallest of mice. Moreover, we on occasion offered the sacred-to-Shiva bilva leaves, which were also “consumed” by this mysterious beast—and what self-respecting small animal would choose bitter leaves over sweet treats? It was a mystery over which we expended much conversation.
We lost interest in what was taking the food on the day we realized that the quantity taken could provide answers to questions. When everything was taken the answer was an unqualified ‘yes’; when one or two pieces remained the answer was ‘yes, with limitations’; and if only one or two pieces were taken the answer was ’limited success. No pieces taken? An unqualified ’no? This mode of divination could be used for lost objects, employment oppor tunities and most any other enquiry provided that everyone there focused on a single query. Once Vimalananda determined to use Bhuleshwar as an ora cle for his runners I was making regular, fatiguing pilgrimages to the spot. Never over the many months that I consulted it for this purpose were its pre dictions wrong: everything taken meant a winner’; a few pieces remaining indicated that the horse would win some stakes money, by placing second, third or fourth; and only one or two pieces taken, or none at all, meant the horse finishes well back in the pack.
On this occasion everything went smoothly: my bus was on time, clouds shaded me from the sun during both my walk up and my walk down, the marvelous tree behind the temple sported a excellent complexion, and each and every piece of my offering was lifted. I consequently went into an excel lent humor, as did Vimalananda when he heard these details. Our frame of mind remained thus until the following afternoon when we happened to run into one of the Stipendiary Stewards as we were leaving the stables. This con spicuous gentleman peered over his nose at us in a way that he presumed to be dignified, smiled disdainfully, and observed to Vimalananda that he was very courageous to enter his “nice little horse” in such a “big race.” I saw fury infuse Vimalananda’s face as he controlled himself and said something neu tral like, “He will acquit himself well, God willing.”
Back in the hotel he said to me coldly, “When this is all over I’m going to have a good laugh at the expense of everyone who thought I was a fool to en ter my ’nice little horse’ in such a ‘big race.’ I’ll enjoy it as much as Birbal en joyed humiliating Mullah Do Pyaza.”
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“What?”
“Haven’t I told you that story before? Mullah Do Pyaza was one of the hakims (Unani physicians) in Akbar’s court.”
“Do pyaza means ’two onions. What were his two onions: his testicles?”
“Probably. Like most of his fellow courtiers Mullah Do Pyaza hated Birbal with a passion, and was always looking for ways to show him up. One day he had a brain wave. He enlisted one of Akbar’s concubines, promising her that the Emperor would start to pay her more attention if she would cooperate.
“An agonized screech rent the air on the appointed morning as Akbar con ducted business in his court. There was a thoroughgoing commotion as two servants carried in the concubine, who had ‘swooned?‘She’s been bitten by a snake, Your Majesty!’ they shouted. She’s dying! What can we do?’
“Sure enough, there on her arm were two puncture wounds which looked suspiciously like those made by a snake. The Emperor’s heart was overcome with compassion. He cried out, ‘Can no one save her?’
“Up sprang Mullah Do Pyaza, who yelped, ‘Fear not, Your Majesty, I am here!’ Then he grabbed the concubine’s arm and began to suck the ‘poison’ out of the ‘bite,’ making a melodramatic pause now and again for effect. When he was finished he told Akbar, “I think she is out of danger now, my liege.?
“ ‘Thank you, oh thank you, Mullah Saheb, exclaimed the relieved em peror. You will be richly rewarded for your gallant services. Then he turned to Birbal and said, “Thank goodness Mullah Saheb was here; you were of no help at all?
“Birbal was nobody’s fool. He had already figured out what was going on. That taunt hardened his heart against the Mullah. He pondered his revenge carefully, and patiently awaited a fit moment to carry it out.
“That moment came on the Emperor’s next hunting expedition. After a hot afternoon of riding down game Birbal signalled to Akbar that he needed to empty his bladder. After dismounting and assuming the stance he promptly began to shout, ‘Oh, I’m dead, I’m a dead man now!’
“Akbar shouted back, What’s the matter!’
“In obvious pain Birbal whimpered, Your majesty, while I was making wa ter a snake bit me on my member. Now I’m done for!’
“Akbar looked around him, spied the Mullah, and said, ‘Mullah Do Pyaza, you saved the life of my concubine by sucking the poison out of her arm. You must do the same for Birbal. He is my most trusted companion; I can’t do without him!
“The Mullah tried to make some lame excuse, but the Emperor would have none of it. Seeing that there was no alternative, and knowing that Birbal had got the best of him, Mullah Do Pyaza got down off his horse. He walked
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over to Birbal, bent down in front of him, and went to work. As the Mullah kissed Birbals penis in submission Birbal whispered to him, ‘So, my child, are you enjoying this little drama now as much as you enjoyed the act you ar ranged in the palace?”
All in the room enjoyed a good horselaugh over that one, and after I had calmed down I asked, “Are you so sure of your four-legged ‘child’ that you are now ready to predict success?”
“Almost, but not quite. Let us see after his spurt tomorrow.”
The spurt, which was the sort of little half- to three-quarters-pace gallop over three furlongs that gets administered as a “lung-opener” to a racer three days before his race, went off well, for Redstone was as fit as a well-strung fid dle. Though Vimalananda still refused to speak definitively he did begin to relax, as if the race was already over and his “boy” had done the job.
It being a terms race there was no handicap to anguish over, and on the eve of the race there was little left to do at the stables except to sit watching Na khodaji, the ever-smiling Rajasthani farrier, shoeing the next day’s runners as the other horses walked their perpetual circles around the stable buildings. A few horses need to wear steel horseshoes on an outing, but most horses get shod just before a race in aluminum racing plates that are much lighter and thinner than the steel shoes they require for daily wear and work. After the race the farrier routinely changes the aluminum shoes back to steel,
Nakhodaji’s intermittent hammering puncutated the persiflage that Teh mul and Dr. Kulkarni were exchanging over tea as they studiously attempted to avoid extra speculation over the outcome of The Race. Only three other runners were left in it-“Everyone else is afraid of the jinx,” claimed the lo quacious Dr. Kulkarni-and everyone wondered whether the meager field would hamper or enhance our boy’s chances. When Redstone’s jockey Chi rag arrived to formally discuss strategy he was admonished to run a conser vative race by keeping Redstone second behind the horse setting the pace. If the pace was too slow for Redstone Chirag should take him to the front, but only far enough to have a clear passage at the bend. Chirag nodded his agree ment, and left to meet the trainers of his other mounts. We departed only when no one remained to talk with. Back at home we spent the rest of the evening in a last perusal of the records of the four runners, trying to deter mine which would best be able to carry the 57 kilos over the 9 furlongs (1800 meters) of the Colonel Pratap Singh Cup. We went to bed early, and after a good sleep, a good breakfast and a light lunch we proceeded with due temer ity toward the racecourse, eyes open to omens.
My first meeting with Vimalananda had taken place on the day that his mare Elan won her first race for him. Vimalananda had gone on to become
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the most important influence in my life. I regarded that initial win as a par ticularly good portent for me. The interest in omens that had been awakened in me by the crash of the monkey’s fist into Arzoo’s mirror intensified unex pectedly one afternoon during 1979 or 1980 on the eve of a race in which Vi malananda had a runner. Vimalananda and I were sitting peaceably in Tehmul’s yard at the Bombay racing stables mulling over the morrow when our gaze turned to a gang of crows who traced a sinister circle around some thing on the ground about fifteen or twenty meters away. Suddenly Vima lananda jumped up and yelled, “Quick, Robby, go scare off those crows!”
Vimalananda believed emphatically in feeding crows, and daily left food for them outside his Bombay kitchen window. One peculiarly hook-nosed crow became friendly and confident enough to eat from the palms of our hands, and feeding him became one of my Bombay joyances. For Vima lananda to request me to disturb crows was thus uncharacteristic enough to snap me to attention. When I rushed over to shoo the birds away I found that they had been harassing a dying lizard. Vimalananda moseyed up behind and stared at the lizard for a compassionate moment before he turned to me to say gloomily, “Well, my boy, our mare will finish in the money tomorrow, but now I don’t believe that the old girl can win. If only we’d noticed this sooner and actually saved the lizard we’d have been guaranteed of victory!” As he predicted our mare did indeed place the next afternoon.
The sight of such a sign before Redstone’s Big Race would have winched us up into a heaven of confidence, but we saw nothing out of the ordinary that day, neither on our way to the track nor as we walked to the stands. The first few races went by uneventfully. Though Das Bapa had come near to groveling for another chance to appear there in person neither of us had wanted to have to deal with him, so he had had to send his list of choices of uncertain value. I was not surprised that none of his picks before the Big Race came true. While I noted that he had selected Redstone as the winner of the that race he must have known that it would have been suicidal for him to do otherwise.
Now Vimalananda rose and repaired for the Paddock. I stood at the Pad dock’s edge, eyeing the four horses as they filed in. Before security had be come so tight I would sometimes flash my badge and go backstage to watch the trainer and grooms perform the saddling ritual and administer final touches, like the tweaking of a forelock to make it lie straight. I saw that scene now in my mind’s eye as the four runners, two with braided manes, began to parade around their owners and trainers who stood in their business suits tense with expectancy giving last-minute cautions to the jockeys in their silks and white breeches. Vimalananda had taught me how to tell something of a horse’s fitness by the sight of his muscles, and it was clear to me that by that
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criterion ours was the fittest in this field. Everything went smoothly as the horses came into the Paddock’s center to be mounted by their riders and then filed out to head for the track. Diverse criteria for success flitted through my mind as I tried to evaluate our prospects. One indicator of failure, which I had found to be reliable in seven or eight cases out of ten, was to see a horse drop dung while parading in the paddock or walking to the starting gate. That Redstone’s bowels did not move in either locale removed one worry from my list.
As the horses wended their way to the gate I pondered the other things that might go wrong. Sometimes a horse who dumped his rider and got loose on his way to the post would gallop away half his energy before he could be caught and remounted. Sometimes one fractious horse would kick another as they were being loaded into the starting gates; sometimes one horse would take so long to be loaded that the others who were already in the starting gates would become fractious themselves. Sometimes a horse would bolt early from the gates again and again, producing a string of false starts that could dishearten other horses and distract their riders. Horses sometimes got left at the start, and some horses just unaccountably got spooked or went sour or hunkered down in obstinacy and refused at the last minute to race.
After what seemed manifold eternities all the horses were loaded. I at least had to concentrate on slowing my breath as my excitement tightened its squeeze on me. Just then, at what was the very last of moments, as the starter lifted his flag and Vimalananda and I prepared to stand to watch the gates open, up popped the ferret-faced waiter whose palm was always open for a tip, bringing us two cups of steaming tea. My heart teetered on the brink for a moment, and then sank down into my dress shoes: tea with milk! Milk, the harbinger no augur wishes to see! Was this last-minute omen going to negate all my work at Bhuleshwar? As I bent down to whisper to Vimalananda, “Does tea signify what milk does?” the flag dropped without warning, and the race began! I shoved my forebodings to the rear of my mind as I whipped up my binoculars and watched Redstone get a good jump out of the gate. It was Saturday, September 18, 1982.
All horse owners are captivated as a race kicks off by a seductive moment or two in which they begin to taste the attainment of their long-cultivated ex pectancies. Disappointments, recriminations, and prolonged autopsies of what actually happened and what might have been await all but one of them at the finish line, but at that moment of the start the owner’s heart and horse leap together. Though I was but a lowly racing agent, that alluring feeling and I were familiars, and I think both I and my owner held our breaths for the first few furlongs of the Big Race and relaxed into respiration only when we
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saw that all was going well. The track had some give in it after a recent water ing; some observers later commented that it might have been a bit overwa tered, and that there should have been false rails. Redstone was second coming out of the gate, and stayed there as the field passed the first few dis tance poles. Two furlongs, four, then six; we could see that Redstone was handy, and that his competition was still more or less even with him.
Everything was happening according to plan, but I continued to think contingencies. What if the jockey fell off? Race jockeys ride above their sad dles, enhancing their speed by leaning forward with their weight above their mounts’ shoulders even though this pose increases the likelihood of a fall. But no fall occurred. As the sound of the thunder of horses’s hooves began to catch up with the vision of their movement we saw them approaching the bend, and began to urge jockey and horse on with our screams.
The straight is very short in Poona, and when we saw Chirag take a good turn and then start to quicken his mount it suddenly became clear to both of us that he was going to win! Now a bellow mounted from the racing public to mingle with ours as Redstone flashed passed us to cross the winning post a length and a half clear of his nearest rival. The third horse was two lengths further away, and the best pedigreed horse of the day a bad fourth. As Chirag sat back in his saddle and began to slow his mount we stopped shouting long enough to think the same thought: Redstone, our “nice little horse,” had done it! I momentarily took back all the nasty things I had thought about Kumar when he leaned over to congratulate us. Mudhol Maharaj was beside himself with fervid glee. Our nearest neighbors wished us well, but most of the other racing patricians glared at us sourly from their boxes, sure that we plebians had no business winning major races.
We ignored these costive disapprovers as we strode down the steep steps to where the beaming Tehmul stood. Some owners become temporarily mute or manic when their horses win, but Vimalananda was a model of evenness and self-possession as he responded to the acclaim of his friends and well-wishers until Redstone arrived. When the whole group started back to the Paddock my shrieks of praise fused with those of the partisan crowd to roll billow-like above all heads-and then it was over. Then all the trainers and owners and bettors and bookies who had had something riding on this race that they had lost let their shoulders sag definitively as they sighed over their fates and be gan to concoct the excuses that would soon be demanded of them.
I strode back to the Paddock rail, where I saw Tehmul’s ferment express it self in his post-race duties: the supervision of the undoing of the saddle’s girth buckles, the inspection of the legs, the fond pat on the nose. Though this might have been merely a Classic tuneup race Tehmul had not yet won
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any Classics, which made this win a good omen for him as well. After the white ball was raised to signify that no objections had been made the results were confirmed and the photos were snapped as the Stewards presented the Cup. We then remounted grandstands that for the rest of that day’s races only one of which Das Bapa’s choice won-remained atwitter at Redstone’s celebrity
After the last race and the obligatory stop at the stables to distribute tips and feed treats to our hero of the day we retired to the hotel for congratula tory Scotch—an assiduously preserved bottle of Black Dog—and for the first of many retellings of the story of Redstone’s Brilliant Run. A few days later the race video arrived, and over the next week we must have relived the race visually at least a dozen times, watching Redstone’s action, noting Chirag’s technique, trying to divine how our “nice little horse” might fare against stiffer competition. The pundits were sure it was a fluke; one turf weekly dubbed Redstone the best horse of the day but sniffed, “he is certainly not of the super class,” and lamented that for the second year in a row the Colonel Pratap Singh Cup had been lifted by an outsider. .
Super class or not our horse had won, a fact which now lured me into what became a maelstrom of omenological fantasies. Though the events that led up to the Big Race had been filled with all sorts of contradictory presenti ments which seemed almost to nullify one another, the revelation that hot tea presaged an entirely different outcome from milk began to exercise my mind. Vimalananda, like Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan, looked to omens as “agree ment from the world,” clues of Nature’s approval or disapproval of proposed human action, and he shared his knowledge of these generously. Useful to kens are often simple: to see milk being brought toward you is usually inaus picious, while water or yogurt brought toward you is normally auspicious. To see a sadhu walking toward you suggests a reduction in prosperity, with a shaved-head Jain sadhu or a Jain nun being a strong sign of likely loss, while seeing meat, fish or a corpse being carried toward you is a strong sign of im pending gain. Most any event can presage something or other, but as I was soon to discover one event becomes a herald for the future only when your attention has consolidated around a specific question that requires resolu tion from Nature.
Omenology bounded squarely to the fore of my consciousness during the very next week as Vimalananda and I were travelling together by shared taxi from Poona to Bombay. When Vimalananda declined to drive to Poona we would usually travel by taxi. Though the taxis normally carry four passen gers he and I would often pay for all four seats that we might enjoy privacy during the three-and-a-half- to four-hour ride. When we reached the taxi
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stand that evening and there were no other potential passengers we sat in the taxi at the head of the queue and prepared to depart. Just then a harried looking man clutching a briefcase rushed up and begged permission to take the front seat. We had no objection, and since it would save us a little money we invited him in.
As we drove away the taxi driver announced self-importantly, “We will stop for fifteen minutes each in Lonavala and in Khopoli.”
“You are only supposed to stop in one or the other place, and for half an hour,” remonstrated the man in the front seat with a nervous promptness.
“I know the rules,” responded the taxi driver severely, “The rules say stops may be had in both places, and that is how it will be. If you don’t like it please take the next cab."
This shut the man up so abruptly that we were drawn to observe him. He was a singularly unimpressive specimen of humanity, and the peculiar com bination of anxiety, preoccupation, distrust and cupidity which oozed from every pore of his blowsy visage had transformed his natural lack of comeli ness into a positively ill-favored mien. Suspicion arose in two minds as one as we in the back seat began to question his identity, and his reasons for clasping his attaché case to his bosom as if his whole future were contained therein.
When we stopped as the driver had promised at Lonavala the front seat man hopped out and promptly disappeared, to reappear only after half an hour. The rest of us were annoyed but said nothing. At Khopoli, after the driver ostentatiously anounced, “Fifteen minutes," the front-seat man disap peared yet again, and when twenty-five minutes had gone by without a sign from him the driver came to the table at which Vimalananda and I sat post snack. He said, “I can’t continue to wait around for this fellow. I’ll give him five more minutes. If he doesn’t show his face by then I am going to go on to Bom bay, and he can come by the next cab. If we leave now will you bear witness of his shenanigans for me at the taxi stand so that I don’t get into any trouble?"
As neither Vimalananda nor I were averse to giving this oaf a jolt we readily agreed to this plan. After requesting the people at the restaurant to inform the man that we had left we sped off, the man’s briefcase lying untouched on the front seat. “I knew there would be trouble with this man as soon as I saw him," said the driver in the beautiful Urdu of the refined North Indian city of Lucknow, which is why I didn’t want to take him with us. When his face did not please me how was he able even to sit in my cab?" Aha! I thought. As a student of physiognomy I knew exactly what he meant. Something was obvi ously improper about the man, something that violated the canons of auspi ciousness, an unsuitable something that should have alerted us to the likelihood of trouble with him. Nature had somehow limned this inappro
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priateness onto his face, and had we heeded the message of his facial lan guage we could have spared ourselves his company.
Had we done that, though, we would have missed sampling the feast of our taxi driver in full extemporaneous flight. By turns self-congratulatory, fearful, indignant and overconfident, his monologue entertained us all the way to the Bombay taxi stand, where he was so pleased with our witness for him that he insisted on buying us paan and cigarettes as treats. We learned then that when the front-seat man had discovered that we had departed with his briefcase he had first clawed at his heart as if it might stop beating. Then, after regaining his composure, he had phoned Bombay in a frenzy to tell the taxi dispatcher to hold his briefcase as soon as it arrived. We three agreed that something ille gal must be involved, which made it even less comprehensible why he would leave his briefcase unattended in the taxi while he galavanted about.
Struck by the momentous nature of this affair I was soon seeing so many omens that were so thoroughly empty of significance that Vimalananda felt obliged to warn me not to get so worked up over divination by auspices. His warning came in the form of a story:
“One day, when Akbar woke early, the first person he saw was a one-eyed dhobi (washerman) scrubbing clothes in the Yamuna. While he was wonder ing what kind of omen this was the washerman happened to look up, and bowed when he saw the emperor. Later in the day Akbar tripped on the steps of his palace and bumped his shin; a bee stung him in the garden; the em press was taken ill; and there was a fire in the kitchen which delayed his lunch. “An ill-omened day,’ bawled his yes-men. ‘Who did you see first thing this morning, Your Majesty?’
“‘I saw the one-eyed washerman.
“His face is inauspicious; put him to death!’ they squealed. Out went a posse of soldiers to arrest the hapless washerman.
“Birbal, who had heard the entire exchange, took the man aside to give him a piece of advice as he stood trembling in the court waiting for the em peror to appear and pass sentence. After Akbar arrived and told the washer man how unlucky his face was the man replied humbly, ‘Begging your pardon, Lord, but I must ask you whose face is really more unlucky: mine or yours?’
“All the courtiers were aghast at the man’s impertinence, but Akbar ges tured them into silence. He said, ‘What precisely do you mean by that?’
“Well, my liege, yours was the first face I saw this morning, and now I’m about to lose my head? Akbar laughed in spite of his attempt to remain sol emn, and asked the man, ‘Who put these words into your mouth?’
“Why, Birbal did, my lord?
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“Well, my good man, Birbal has saved you,’ said the emperor as he or dered that the washerman be rewarded for his trouble.”
“Was Akbar really about to have the man executed for being unlucky?” “Probably not—but you can never tell with kings, yogis, fire, and water.”
Having gleaned from this that being mesmerized by signs and portents can easily deteriorate into karma-creating superstition I again turned my spare neurons to racing, which had by now shifted back to Bombay. Our reappear ance at the Mahalakshmi Racecourse in the fall of 1982 was a festive occasion. Led by Cama and the Godrejs the residents of our home bench greeted Vi malananda heartily and demanded a stride by stride account of the famous victory. Kalubhai also showed up to offer his felicitations. He continued to come listen to Vimalananda’s “talks” in the evenings, but though we also ran into him now and again at the track he and his numerological charts sat else where. It might have been shame over his refusal to take Vimalananda’s ad vice, or maybe he was simply determined to prove Vimalananda wrong.
Vimalananda’s new-found enthusiasm for life got an extra shot in the arm when the erstwhile Maharaja of an erstwhile state on the Kathiawar Penin sula of Gujarat flew us out to one of his palaces to discuss the making of a film there. We and the film’s provisional producer were treated to a concert by the Maharaja’s court musicians, a poetry reading by his court poet, and gourmet food cooked by his two Paris-trained chefs, served at the Maharaja’s usual dinner time of 2 A.M. During this junket I got the opportunity to boat over to the small island on which Vimalananda’s ancestor Sagal Shah had lived fifteen generations earlier. There I saw the very mortar and pestle in which Sagal Shah’s wife had mashed the brains of their son Chellaya during the famous incident when Lord Shiva came to the couple in the form of a cannabalistic Aghori to test their devotion. Back in Bombay Vimalananda began to contemplate some of his old projects that he was now ebullient enough to think of reviving. His most important project, however, contin ued to misfire, for after his strenuous race Redstone seemed to be talking longer than normal to recapture his peak of fitness.
An exhausting race can take everything out of a horse; we didn’t want to wreck Redstone by racing before he had recuperated fully. Even worse would have been to have him break down during a race and have to be put down then and there; it happened from time to time. I still vividly remember the day that a horse dislocated his fetlock right in front of me as I stood at the rail watching his race. I was paralyzed with horror as his entire hoof and the joint above it came loose from his leg and began to flop, now against the front of his shin and now against its back, as he continued to gallop insanely down the track articulating naked leg bone instead of metal-shod hoof against its
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grass. I could barely breathe from empathic pain as I watched the Club’s vet rushing over to where he finally fell, and it seemed to take ages for the captive bolt of the vet’s pistol to finally release him. For that to happen to a horse we knew and loved was so unthinkable that though we were loathe to do so we scratched Redstone’s name from the list of runners for the Indian 2000 Guin eas, the first of the season’s Classic races.
We hoped that rest would enable him to resume form well before the dead line for acceptances for the Indian Derby, for soon a decision would need to be made on whether or not to run Redstone in that most prestigious of races. There is only one Derby in a horse’s career and too few horses with Classic potential in an owner’s lifetime, to turn down a chance however slim to tote home a Derby trophy. But as the Derby deadline neared Vimalananda seemed to relax into a more philosophical frame of mind. A morning or two before the die had to be cast I sat listening to him sing “Avo Nagare More Hari,” a truly angelic song that invites Krishna to abide within the singer. At the tune’s conclusion he put aside his harmonium and told me a story that I had heard many times before:
“Sudama was a Brahmana who had been Lord Krishna’s gurubhai (fellow disiciple); both were disciples of Sandipani Rishi. One day when they were sent out to search for fuel for their guru’s homa fire Sandipani’s wife packed a lunch for them both, but Sudama became so hungry that he ate up both por tions while Krishna got nothing. Krishna, who was Purnatmaka Purushot tama–Perfection Personified—just laughed it off. But you cannot cheat God Incarnate and hope to escape unscathed. Sudama’s fortunes took a nosedive from that day forward and he was soon cast into the direst poverty.
“Years passed for Sudama in a hand-to-mouth kind of existence until one day his wife heard talk of the glories of Dwaraka, where Krishna ruled as king. She immediately sat her husband down and told him to go straightway to Krishna and ask for financial help. Sudama was still embarrassed to see Krishna’s facea guilty conscience biting—and he could not even dream of asking a favor from someone he had cheated. He refused to go, but his wife had had it with being poor and would not take no for an answer. She said, “If Krishna is all-knowing, as you say He is, He will know our plight without your having to say anything and of His own accord will offer you enough to tide us over. When he realized that there was no escape Sudama told his wife that he could not go to his old friend empty-handed, like a beggar. He needed to carry a present with him. The cupboard was absolutely bare, so she went out and begged four handfuls of flattened rice, which she tied in a cloth. Tak ing this present’ Sudama left for Dwaraka with a heavy heart, wondering all along the way what sort of face he could show to Krishna.
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“When Sudama reached Dwaraka he introduced himself as a co-disciple of Sandipani Rishi and was immediately taken to Krishna’s splendid palace. Seeing him coming Krishna jumped up and rushed out to embrace him. Krishna then seated him on his own cot, washed his feet, performed ritual worship of His guest, and fed him sumptuously. Then Krishna reminisced about life with Sandipani, and asked Sudama about all that had happened to him after he had finished his studies.
“All this time there was no mention of either Sudama’s need for money. As the afternoon drew toward a close Sudama lost hope and decided to leave. As he was taking Krishna’s leave Krishna asked him, ‘Didn’t your wife send some present for Me?’ Sudama had been so embarassed at the meagerness of his gift that he had forgotten all about it. As Sudama drew the little cloth parcel from his clothing Krishna Himself grabbed hold of it and ate first one fistful, and then a second. By eating those two fistfuls of rice Krishna consumed all Sudama’s evil karmas from his past births and from this present birth. As He raised the third fistful to His mouth, to remove all evil karmas from Sudama’s births to come, His wife Rukmini, who was the incarnation of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, caught hold of His hand to prevent Him from taking even more. She asked Him, ‘What are you thinking, Lord? If You eat that third handful You will be giving Me away to Sudama as his servant, and I am not
prepared to agree to that.
“Then Krishna laughed, released the third handful of rice, and said to Sudama, ‘Now you can leave. Sudama was so upset that Krishna had ac cepted his gift and offered nothing in return that he lost his temper, and said to Him, ‘Kripana (Miser)! I did not want to come to ask You for money; my wife put me up to it. At least You could have done something for her!’ And he walked off. He conveniently forgot that he was in the wrong; that he was the thief, not Krishna.
“All along the road back to his house he rehearsed the excuses he would make to his wife for coming home emptyhanded.but when he reached his village he couldn’t believe his eyes! His pathetic little hut was gone, and in its place was a fabulous mansion. When his wife came out to meet him he al most didn’t recognize her, she was so well-dressed and looked so satisfied. Then he remembered the last thing he had said to his dear friend Krishna, the Krishna who had done all this for him; he remembered that his parting word to Krishna had been kripana. Now that Sudama was surrounded by luxury he lost all taste for the things of the world. He turned the mansion over to his wife for her to enjoy. He had a little hut built for himself nearby where he spent most of his time, his mind totally engrossed in Krishna.
“It’s true, Robby,” said Vimalananda in conclusion, “it is true that when
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Krishna wants to bless someone He takes away that person’s money, fame, pleasure, and other worldly joys. Eventually, when that man has lost every thing, and everyone he knows has deserted him, he has no alternative but to remember Krishna and to get lost in His bewitching eyes.”
Why he was then retelling me this story was not too clear to me, but as I watched Vimalananda stare at the illumined-from-behind transparency of Guru Maharaj that sat in front of his chair an ill-defined ominousness skit tered like a cloud onto my mind’s horizon. I knew that Vimalananda revered his Junior Guru Maharaj as Krishna incarnate; they used to wear saris and dance together for love of Krishna. I also knew that Guru Maharaj was quite capable of disrupting lives to guarantee spiritual development. At that mo ment a not-quite-formed thought flitted swiftly before my eyes, a thought that, had it been fully fledged, would have been, “I wonder if Guru Maharaj has something up his sleeve."
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