Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
holding a switch of stiff straw with which she commenced sweeping
footprints and auto treadmarks from the compound dust. Her neat
but threadbare sari was tied up between her spindly legs as if a huge
nappy, and her withered breasts hung down like spaniel's ears. With
not a tooth in her head, she looked over, displaying what could have
been a smile or a scowl. After all, I was responsible for most of the
footprints and treadmarks.
Now, the story of Siva Bala Yogi (literally, Siva the Baby Yogi), as
I heard it some time later, was this: When still a boy of thirteen, and
bearing another name, of course, he'd been playing one day with
some friends under a mango tree. A fruit fell from the tree, and out
of this fruit sprang the god Siva. Siva told the boy to sit in
padmasan
,
the yogic lotus posture, but the boy was understandably reluctant
to comply, so Siva had to force him down. He immediately went
into a trance, and he stayed in it for ten years, eating and drinking
nothing ('He live on air only'). Rats came and nibbled his fingers,
severing the nerve ends and locking them into the clasped lotus
mudra
; his legs withered from lack of circulation, his whole body
growing around the position he was in. Villagers came and built a
hut around the holy phenomenon; then, as his fame spread, they
built a bungalow around the hut. When he was twenty-three, he
emerged from the trance with Wisdom, and with his present title.
He began to recount the tale of his divine encounter and teach his
devotees meditation - a subject he clearly knew much about - and
remained consistently frugal with food: besides air, he consumed
only fresh orange juice. He was then, in 1974, I was told, a mere
thirty-five years old, yet he had collected a small but fervent crowd
of believers around him, most, by the look of them, very local
villagers. Considering that I went on to meet a yogi in the Himalayas
who claimed to be 963 years old, Siva Bala
was
just a baby in his line
of business.
These villagers drifted in to sit beside me in a large antechamber
or hallway just inside the door. A man sold me half a coconut and a
small string of flowers, the requisite offering for bhagavan. They
were lean, wiry people, these devotees, all of them freshly washed
and neatly dressed, with sandal-paste marks on their foreheads and
the incessant mumbled buzz of sacred mantras on their lips. The
