I am going to skip ahead a couple of days in my itinerary, to when my solitary stay was terminated by the entry of a flat mate. I had been warned when I took the room, that I could have it to myself for the first three days, but that I would have to share it for the remaining couple of days of my stay. Notwithstanding my foreknowledge, I was still surprised when the appointed day rolled around and I heard a knock on my door in the morning. My guest had arrived.
I sized him up quickly. Thoughts of the unknown do inject some excitement into my imagination from time to time, but when it comes to sharing a room with some unknown character, I am a shade circumspect. I was a little leery of rooming with some weird wacko. Who knows what types there are out there? Anyway, he passed my instant visual examination and entered the room. He was tall and presentable with short blond hair, not at all scruffy looking. I learnt that he worked as an air traffic controller in a Scandinavian country. I am tempted to give him a glamorous name like Thor*, but my dear critics tell me that I play around too much with words and other literary tricks, so I shall stick to the insipid algebraic notation I have been using so far, and call him X4 instead.
(* The Vedic-Indian counterpart of the Norse Thor is probably Indra)
Well, that was interesting. My life must have passed through the airspace and hands of several air traffic controllers over the years, but I had never actually shared a room with one. I wondered what brought him to Amritapuri. I asked him and sat back, expecting to hear some story connecting him with Amma. It turned out he had not even heard of Amma - the Satguru, Saint and Mother to millions. By virtue of my self-declared status as sadhak and devotee, I fancied that I had a special spiritual connection with Amma, but this man’s connection with Amma, it transpired, was merely physical. He was there for Ayurvedic rejuvenation therapy, I was told. He had done his due diligence on the internet and discovered that the panchakarma clinic in the ashram at Amritapuri was the best value for money proposition available at that time. I mentally awarded myself 10 brownie points for being more evolved than he was. A not so Humble Worm after all!
There was only one bed in the room which I had already occupied. There was a spare mattress. Although I didn’t really want to take the trouble of transferring my bed linen to the mattress on the floor, I politely offered to swap places. He was nice enough not to take up my offer, so I stayed put while he unpacked around his mattress. Later on, when I learnt that he was many years my senior in age, I felt bad at my churlishness. Hindu tradition inculcates deep deference for age, and my self-indulgent behavior was clearly in flagrant violation. But the damaging deed was done and the bad karma already incurred, so I decided to move on. After a shower, he was ready to step out of the room to track down the panchakarma clinic on the ashram grounds. I had a rough idea where it was located and guided him according to my knowledge. So we stepped out together, then I went my way and he went his.
Late that evening, after dinner, we met up again in our room. We were both reclining on our mattresses, preparing to hunker down for the night. Some small talk was exchanged. I gathered that he was 50 years old and divorced. I commented that he did not look that old at all. At first glance, I had put him down at 30+ but even later, when to my mild surprise**, he stripped down to his underpants preparatory to sleep, the sight of ever so slightly sagging muscles did not cause me to raise my estimate of his age by more than 10 years, to around 40. Although I had intended it as a purely factual observation, he took my comment on his relatively youthful appearance as a compliment and seemed genuinely pleased. He was definitely very fit. There was no doubt about that. No flab and no tummy tumbling over the waist.
(** because I rarely, if ever, sleep in my underwear and definitely not when I am in company, unless it is with the wife, in which case, clothing is occasionally optional. But, I figured they probably did things differently in the West, or at least in Scandinavia.)
He told me about his panchakarma experience^. Apparently, they make you drink gallons of oil and clarified butter (ghee) and also pump oil through all your orifices. Then you have to evacuate all the oil you were made to take in, by throwing up and moving your bowels. You get to do this many times. Then when you’re totally pooped (oops, pun unintended), you get a vigorous massage in a tub of oil, I think. With the possible exception of the massage, the rest of the program didn’t sound like much fun to me, but my Nordic friend seemed to have relished the experience. It made him feel good, and his body was really toned up, he said. It was interesting, that I had a seemingly higher reluctance to undertake this kind of wet Ayurvedic treatment, despite being immersed in the tradition, relative to X4, who was clearly delighted to drown in a tub of oil, even if, traditionally in super cold Scandinavia, they probably don’t see a tub that often. On second thoughts, let us upgrade that from interesting to weird. It is like that other weird thing in my life: although I spent several years in Kerala, a scant few hours away from Amma, I never knew or cared about Her while I was there. I had to go several thousand miles away overseas, before I met Her and developed a longing for Her. Who can say why things happen the way they do? Every child asks such questions but few adults have answers.
(^ This is also described in a book titled Amma & Me written by an Amma devotee called Manoharan Chace who lives in Amritapuri.)
Om Amriteshwaryai Namah
Thursday, November 10, 2005
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