Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Before long, we swerved around a corner I remembered well.
'Sai Ram, Sai Ram,' rasped a familiar voice.
The old blind beggar Joy had condemned as a phony devotee
and millionaire stood with his usherette's tray of framed Baba
pictures, and his eye sockets like a dead dog's nose. These beggars
aged well, I thought, telling the driver to stop. I gave the millionaire
some more rupees to fatten his bank account, for auld lang syne.
In no time, I gasped slightly at the start of that breathtakingly
elegant landscape that I'd never forgotten, with its giant outcrops of
sculptured rock, its blackened mountaintops, its verdant paddies, its
sense of timeless peace. I wasn't sure whether I'd change into Baba-
devotee regulation white, but I'd brought the clothes along in case I
felt like conforming. And I did.
Hopping around by the roadside, trying to find the hole in my
trousers for a foot, I looked up as a small bus hurtled into view. It
was painted with Baba slogans and his emblem, and full of children
from one of his colleges. Most schoolchildren, encountering a
foreigner in the middle of nowhere with his big pale butt exposed to
the elements, would have hooted lewd and humiliating remarks
through the windows. These students merely looked away politely,
and I could hear the singing of
bhajans
as they passed. The children
who attended Baba's educational establishments had always been
unnaturally well behaved every time I encountered them.
Vaguely recalling the lay of the land, I was surprised to find an
ornate concrete arch spanning an otherwise empty stretch of road.
WELCOME TO PRASANTHI NILAYAM, it read, ABODE OF
BHAGAVAN SRI SATHYA SAI BABA. Since Puttaparthi was still a
good few miles away, this seemed premature.
Abode!
I liked that.
It wasn't premature, however. Around the next bend appeared a
small, towerlike structure with a radar scanner on top of it - much
like what you'd find in a minor airport. As we got closer, there was
a sign proclaiming SRI SATHYA SAI AIRPORT. Beyond the
conning tower was also, as one might expect, a runway large enough
to land a medium-sized jet on. Jesus! I thought. But beyond it I saw
another unfamiliar structure. This one was massive: several wings,
surrounded by many three-storey officelike blocks, all in a
