Slow Down in the Garden: What is 'I'?

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Bala, Inner Saraj Valley, Himachal Pradesh



9^th October, 2014



“Smile, breathe and go slowly”

Thic Nhat Hanh



“Be happy in the moment, that's enough. Each moment is all we need, not more”
Mother Teresa



“What is your name?......What is your quest?.......What is your favourite colour?”

The Bridgekeeper, Monty Python and the Holy Grail





Waking early to a totally clear sky, I decide to do my stuff and take a bike ride the long way to Banjar so as to score a glimpse of distant snow caps, as is my passion. Rather than the relatively good 8 km road this is a 15 km unsurfaced road with some sections reduced to a mud bath. But at one point the views north and east reveal distant high mountains.

My plan is to visit Wolfgang, a German married to a local (Bunti) and living a short walk from Banjar market. I first met Wolfgang and Bunti in 2011 in Pushkar and took an immediate liking to them. Slightly older than me, I had a lot of shared values with Wolfgang and we are both Indiafiles... although he has obviously taken his passion a few steps more than I ever did in marrying a local woman and spending at least half his life in India. I probably did learn at that time that they lived near Banjar, but had completely forgotten this fact when about a year ago, while also living in the valley for a couple of months, I passed this guy walking up the road to Jibhi who did seem familiar to me. Later I found him sitting with Rana (the owner of the house I was renting) and the pieces begin to fall into place. We spent a number of lazy days sitting and talking on the verandah at his house over the following weeks; met up again in Pushkar in February this year; kept in touch by email while he was in Germany and me in Turkey; and have again started our conversations back in the valley.

On the way to Banjar on this morning, I pass a small temple complex just down from the road which I recall Wolfgang once pointed out to me from across the valley while we were on the track to his house. I decide to stop and take a look. The track winds down to the village of Bala where the temple is located. I soon realise that this is an ancient place that is now a veritable garden within the garden that is Saraj Valley. As I pass the main temple, a man emerges from a room to my right clad in protective netting holding a honey-combed tray and surrounded by not angry but active bees. Just behind him is Vivekananda Baba.... the resident holy man/ baba at this temple... clad only in his gumpcha wrap and totally oblivious to the swarming bees.

Vivekananda approaches me and it is soon evident that he speaks good English. He starts asking questions which seem sure to have more than surface meaning. The first is “You are coming from where?” I tell him I stay in Jibhi and have come from there this morning, avoiding the usual answer about my country of origin. However, another man who is standing nearby soon establishes my nationality. Vivekananda motions me to come and sit next to a small Hunaman temple in the sun. We talk a little, he telling me how he has resided here for 30 years in relative peace and quiet and that before that he was for many years the chella cum cook for the baba who used to be at Kirri Ganga in Parvati Valley. I remember Wolfgang telling me this story... how the local temple committee had kicked that baba out of Kirri Ganga for his indiscriminate smoking of charis with foreigners and his cohabitation with a foreign woman.

Kirri Ganga is a remote mountainside temple next to hot springs about 9 km walk up a spectacular gorge from where the road ends at Pulgar on the Parvati River (about 3 hours ride from Jibhi where I stay). It attracts makeshift basic guest houses (tin walls and roof) in summer to cope with the many mainly foreigners who trek there and stay days or weeks, being far too cold for human habitation in winter (and too remote). The place is known in local legend as the place where Shiva and Parvati first made out. So that fact plus Shiva being the god of chillum smoking (among many far more important attributes) kind of makes a nonsense of the temple committee's moral judgements about Vivekananda's guru.

Next Vivekananda asks me: “So, from all your travelling to many places, what have you found?” I quickly decide that the only sensible answer is to point to myself (as the thing found) and say “I was always here of course and I need not have looked to find anything”. We discuss this some more and I indicate that it is the 'now', the 'present' and the 'void' where I find my inner consciousness and true self.

His final question is “What is 'I'?” I elect to pass and take that one on notice. It is time for me to proceed on my original purpose of visiting Wolfgang and Bunti. Baba's parting shot is “So you are in a hurry?” which sets me into laughter and some explanation that I am expected by Wolfgang and that I will come another time and sit longer with him.

I liked this unassuming (if questioning) baba and decide that indeed I will return and sit some more with him in the sun next to the Hunaman temple. Whether I can answer his questions is another matter, but I suspect the answering is not the thing... it is the posing of them and the rush of my monkey mind as it tries to find an answer to what may not really have one that is the more important process.

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Comments

[Marguerite]

I am I said :)
Now that question has got me thinking although I suspect it is meant to make one think............I look forward to you future conversations with this baba. I hugs!!!

[taracloud]

A spot of paradise
As usual, I love your quotes and your going the extra mile/km to see high mountains. How lovely to live in a place where you are posed such real questions in your daily meandering. That Kirri Ganga and gorge sound magical. What a fabulous spot you've found!