Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I told him I only wanted to stay two days. Then I mentioned the
monkeys.
'This is India,' he replied. 'Monkeys will be there.'
I suggest that some bars or netting on the recess would easily
prevent monkeys from being there. He waved this theory aside like
a fly. Then I recounted the recent saturnalia in my guts.
'You foreigners are not able to eat our food.'
I waited for sympathy, receiving only a casual suggestion that I
might try eating solely curds and bananas for a few days.
'You may eat them in dining hall,' he offered generously, rattling
off the times when I could do so. 'All times must be punctual,' he
cautioned. 'This is ashram, not hotel.'
Some malevolent entity was again striking matches in my lower
intestine as I made my way into the
mandir
for a ritual the official
had told me about. Small but opulent, this structure contained little
more than a white marble tomb. I assumed it must be where the
Maharshi was interred, but soon learned it housed the remains of
his mother. The ceremony in progress was an offering of milk to
her, who, in typically Hindu fashion, had come to represent the
Mother. The cult of a guru is frequently self-contained. The guru
becomes in effect your god, and his wife or mother or sister becomes
your goddess. It's a family affair.
I knew little about Ramana Maharshi, let alone his mother, and
felt like an intruder amid the hushed boredom of this ceremony.
The cloying smell of steaming buffalo milk was also getting to me.
The whole temple, with its extravagant profusion of white marble,
began to make me think of milk. Then a white-hot shoal of starving
piranhas thrashed in my colon without warning and I had to tear
back across the road.
Ten minutes later, I staggered off the squatter, gasping. Only
then did I notice the thorough ransacking my room had recently
undergone. Everything once in my bag was strewn over the floor,
much of it under the beds. Anything made of paper had been chewed
or torn to shreds. A bottle of antibiotics had been smashed, the two-
tone capsules scattered among shards of brown glass - obviously
not as tasty as the diarrhoea pills.
Wearily I scooped it all up, placing everything I possessed -
